Chapter 02: Thinking in the Dark

Sookie got into the passenger side of Jason’s truck, never so grateful to sit down in her life.  The last month had been very trying for her.  And when she tried to reconcile the fact that for everyone she knew, much of what had happened to her in that month had actually occurred a year before, that knowledge made her even more weary.  Therefore, bone-weary, she sank into the seat of the truck.

In Sookie’s mind, Godric had met the sun, the Maenad had destroyed Gran’s home, Bill had proposed and been kidnapped by Russell, Eric had killed and then hidden the body of a Were to protect her, she’d met Alcide and gone to Jackson, she had killed Lorena, Bill had attacked her in the van, Eric had chained her up in his basement, she had been fed upon by both Russell and Eric, she had found out that she was a fairy, and then fairies had tried to kidnap her―all a few weeks before!  She could have really used that extra year just to get over all that!  When she added the events of the last two weeks to the others, she felt even more tired.

“Clusterfuck indeed,” Sookie said quietly, almost to herself, but still breaking the silence that had settled between Jason and herself.

“You ain’t kiddin’, Sook.” Jason said, looking briefly at his sister before turning his eyes back to the dark road.  “I need to figure out a way to tell my best friend in the world that I’ve had sex with his girl―well, not his girl anymore, but still . . .”

“Wait!  You slept with Jessica?” Sookie asked.

“Yeah,” Jason said contritely.  “But it was after she and Hoyt had broken up.”

There were a few minutes of silence as Sookie gathered her thoughts.

“Do you love Jessica?” Sookie couldn’t help but ask.

“I don’t rightly know,” Jason said, looking frustrated.  “But I feel real drawn to her.”

The siblings sat in silence for a few more minutes, letting the miles between Shreveport and Bon Temps lull them into their own thoughts as the dark sky began to lighten slightly and day approached.

Jason broke the silence this time, “What about you, Sook?  Do you love Bill?  The blond one―Eric is it?  I can’t believe both of them vamps was gonna kill themselves for you tonight.”

Sookie looked contemplatively out of the window of the truck, hoping to find the answer to Jason’s questions in the darkened trees they were rapidly passing.

“I think I love them both,” Sookie said quietly, looking back at her brother.

“Well whatcha gonna do?  I don’t see either of them vamps anxious to be sharin’ you.”

“I don’t know.  I just wish that there was some way to go back to when I didn’t have either of their blood in me.  I can’t help but wonder how much of what I feel for either of them is chemical and how much is my own feelings.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know about vampire blood, right?” Sookie questioned Jason.

“What about it?  It makes you feel high or it heals you, right?”

Sookie nodded her head before adding, “Yeah, V will make you high.  And if you take vampire blood from the source, it can heal you, but it also does other things too.”

Her brother looked again at Sookie, questions clear in his expression.

Sookie continued, “Well, I’m still not sure I know everything it does, but the first time Bill gave me his blood, he told me that it would sharpen my senses and . . .”  Sookie paused, embarrassment creeping into her tone, “ . . . and increase my libido.”

“What does that mean?” Jason asked looking perplexed.

Sookie’s embarrassment rose as she tried to think about how to explain the meaning of libido to her brother.  “Well, the blood makes you think about sex more,” she finally settled on.

Jason still looked confused, “But I think about sex all the time anyway.”

Sookie rolled her eyes.  “Yeah, well at first, I thought that their blood just made people feel like they wanted to have, you know,” she paused again, “sex a lot more, but then after I drank a couple of drops of Eric’s blood in Dallas, Bill told me that it would make me feel more attracted to Eric specifically.”

“Wait, did you get them crazy dreams too?” Jason asked.  “Them crazy sex dreams?”

“Yeah,” Sookie answered quietly, completely mortified to admit this to her brother.

“And Jessica also told me that she can track me and know when something’s wrong with me.  She found me the night that I thought I was turnin’ into a panther, and she helped me calm down.”

“Wait,” Sookie said loudly, startling her brother.  “You have had Jessica’s blood?  I thought you two had just had sex or that maybe she’d drunk yours!”

“Yeah, she has given me hers,” Jason admitted, realizing that there were a lot of things that he and Sookie hadn’t talked about since she’d been back.  “Twice now.  There was once when she and Hoyt found me by the side of the road after all that Hot Shot shit.”  Jason paused a minute, disturbed by the memories of his time with Crystal’s crazy people.  “Then there was tonight.  After the rocket thing went off, I was burned pretty bad, and she healed me.”

“And after the first time―that’s when you started to be attracted to her?  And then you slept with her after that?” Sookie asked, trying to get the timeline straight.

“Well,” Jason looked at her sheepishly.  “To be honest, I thought she was hot before.  I mean, who wouldn’t?  But I wasn’t gonna do anything ‘cause of Hoyt.”

Sookie nodded, encouraging Jason to continue, “But after I got her blood in me, it was almost like I couldn’t control it.  I was thinking about her all the time.  And there were the dreams.  And then I saved her that day the witch was tryin’ to make all the vamps fry in the sun, and then we kissed, and then―well―you know the rest.”

“You’ve had dreams about her?”

“Yep, after the blood, but I don’t wanna talk about them.”  Jason looked very uncomfortable as he tried to shut down the topic.

“Why not?” Sookie asked curiously.

Jason looked a little yellow even in the darkness of the car.  “It’s just that in the dreams, I was all doin’ Jess―you know, havin’ sex with her―and then Hoyt was there.”  He stopped.  “I just don’t wanna talk about it,” he restated firmly.

Sookie nodded, not wanting her brother to feel like he had to tell her something he didn’t want to.  “Okay, Jase.  And then you felt drawn to her?”

“Yeah,” he confirmed quietly.  “I know I shouldn’t have done anything, but when I thought she might die, I just had to go to her, and after that, I just couldn’t stay away even though I tried.”  Jason turned all his attention back to the road, obviously wanting to be quiet again.  This was fine with Sookie as she wanted to explore her own thoughts.

Sookie was contemplative.  She tried to remember how she felt about Bill before he gave her his blood for the first time.  She had been drawn to his silence and had been curious about him.  She’d also been attracted to him physically, at least to some extent.  After all, she had been a virgin at the time, and he seemed to like her.  She knew that she was definitely interested in Bill before the blood, but after he fed her his blood, that interest seemed to turn immediately into an almost obsessive urge to be with him and to love him.  This was exactly what had happened with Jason and Jessica, from what she could gather, except that Jessica hadn’t set up the situation that led to her giving him her blood.  Bill had.

Sighing, Sookie tried to remember how she had felt about Eric before being tricked into taking his blood. She couldn’t help but smile slightly at the way Eric had played on her sympathy to manipulate her into drinking a few drops from him.  But she put that amusement to the side.  Certainly, Sookie had been physically attracted to the Viking vampire at first glance.  It would have been hard not to be.  She remembered how he was slouching in his throne, his hair longer at the time.  She remembered the flattering black suit that he’d been wearing and the way that it had hugged his butt just right; she’d snuck a peek when they were leaving out of the back of the building to avoid the police raid.  She also remembered his piercing blue eyes, which seemed to be able to capture her brown orbs even without glamour.

Sookie realized that her daydream of seeing Eric for the first time was causing her to become aroused as she felt the dampness in her panties.  Embarrassed to have such thoughts in front of her brother―even in the dark truck―she immediately stopped that line of thinking.

She carried on with her thoughts more logically.  Yes, she’d obviously felt attraction for Eric and she’d been curious, but she’d also found him to be rude, and she’d been a bit afraid of him.  Then when she had found Lafayette in his basement after she’d been attacked by the Maenad, all her curiosity about him turned to rage.  She remembered slapping his face before making the deal to go to Dallas in order to save Lafayette’s life.

Dallas confused her feelings for Eric even more―even before she’d taken his blood.  She remembered how Godric had saved her in the basement of the Fellowship of the Sun church and how Eric had come racing in moments later; he’d looked like some kind of Viking war god to her.  Then, he had offered himself to save Godric and her.  He’d asked her to trust him that night, and she had―at least before he’d later broken that trust to get her to take his blood.

Still, she’d spent a lot more time with Eric than she had with Bill before she’d taken his blood, so her feelings for Eric seemed a lot more jumbled in her head―more complicated.  Of course, after she’d taken Eric’s blood, she’d begun dreaming about him and had certainly become even more drawn to him.  But her feelings had stayed jumbled up.

Again, the complicated web of her feelings for both vampires threatened to overtake her, and she felt even more drained than before―if that was even possible.  She sank into the seat of her brother’s truck even more heavily as a sign indicating that Bon Temps was 15 miles away came into sight, just as the dark sky began to grey.  She glanced down at her watch; it was 6:32 a.m.  She knew it was about another hour until the sun officially rose.

She wondered when exactly she’d become an expert at sunset and sunrise times, and then she remembered that she’d checked for the first time the day after Bill had saved her life from the Rattrays.  She smiled at the memory of him holding her after he’d rescued her from Mack and Denise.  He’d saved her life with his own blood, and that thought warmed her.

“No, scratch that,” she thought to herself, wincing in her seat noticeably; “that was the night he set me up to get attacked.”  She flinched again, causing Jason to look at her; she smiled at him sheepishly and then went back to her brooding.  She shook her head; how could she have forgotten about Bill’s duplicity even for a moment?  She would never have needed to be saved if he hadn’t set her up.  “I must be more tired than I thought I was,” she thought to herself.  No matter how sorry Bill was that he’d followed the orders of his queen and how much Sookie still loved him, she needed to remind herself to be cautious with him.

Sookie readjusted so that she was more comfortable again.  For about the hundredth time in the last few days, she wondered how she could be in love with both Bill and Eric at the same time.  She’d been falling more and more in love with Eric and had been putting Bill behind her until Eric had been taken by Marnie and turned into some kind of zombie.  Maybe her almost dying and then waking up to see Bill worrying over her had warmed her heart to him again.  Maybe seeing Eric almost kill Bill had forced her love for Bill back to the surface; after all, what she’d told Eric was true.  She didn’t want to imagine a world without Bill in it.

But then again, she hadn’t wanted to hurt Eric when she shot him with her light.  She’d wanted to stop him from hurting Bill, certainly, but there was something different about the magic that came out of her hands when she struck Eric.  She just couldn’t quite put her finger on it right then.

Did she even love Eric?  How could she possibly love someone whom she’d seen kill people with his bare hands?  But her Eric had been so wonderful to her―so gentle and loving.  But she’d fallen for him so quickly and in the middle of a crazy situation.  Was it possible that the love she felt might have just been brought on by her grief over losing Bill or even just the craziness of those days?

On the other hand, when she thought about why she’d fallen so hard for Eric, she thought back to when she’d been washing his feet and had accidentally tickled him.  His smile had lit her up, almost from the inside out; it had broken through her heartache, like a sledgehammer through thin ice.  And then every time they’d been together after that, she always felt a delightful mix of excitement and comfort with him.

She sighed.  Her life was so different than it had been 6 months before―no, actually a year and a half before now.  Everyone else had had a whole year without her in it.  Bill was a king for goodness sakes!  And Eric―well―he seemed to be exactly the same as he always was before, at least until his memories were taken from him.  He’d told her that he’d been the only one who’d never given up on her.  She wondered if that was true and what it even meant.  He’d bought her house and asked her to be his, telling her that it was for her protection.  Did he only want to protect her because he wanted her blood and maybe her body?  He’d told her, after all, that she was like ‘sunshine in a pretty blond bottle’.  But he had asked her to be his.  He was right; he could have just taken what he wanted from her if it was only about sex and blood.

As the Welcome to Bon Temps sign came into view, Sookie wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t lost his memories.  She didn’t think she’d have ended up in bed with him―that’s for sure!  “What a clusterfuck,” she thought again to herself.

Sookie decided that she had to start thinking of a plan for dealing with her feelings, and even though sleep seemed to promise only more disturbing dreams of threesomes with Bill and Eric, she knew that she needed rest now more than anything else if she expected to have clear thoughts the next time she saw either of the vampires she loved.

So when Jason dropped her off at her home―actually Eric’s home―she immediately went into Gran’s old bedroom, where she’d spent her last evening with Eric, and lay down on the bed without even changing clothes or brushing her teeth.  She was in a deep sleep within moments.