A/N:
One-two, one-two. Is the microphone on? It seems Fanfic has some major problems these days and I had a lot of PMs from frustrated readers who couldn`t open the last chapter. I hope it`s better now. Luckily a lot of you could read it because I got so many lovely reviews. Thank you so much for them. I love each and every one of them 😀
And thank you to Rascalthemutant at the Alexander Skarsgård Library Forum for reading, correcting and suggesting. Now she even had a great idea for a new story. She is amazing!
The next morning it was the smell of bacon that woke me up. I quickly checked my bed to see if there were any uninvited guests in it, but my bed was empty.
Then I heard the knock on my door that had probably woken me up in the first place.
“Come in.” I said while pulling the comforter all the way up to my chin. To my surprise it wasn`t Eric at my door, but Pam.
“Eric wasn`t sure he was welcome in your bedroom so he sent me. As if Eric isn`t welcome in any bedroom occupied by a female Homo sapiens.” Pam shook her head and looked at me. “Good morning. Breakfast is ready,” she said in an over-cheerful voice and went back to the kitchen without closing the door.
I got up, had a quick shower and entered the kitchen clean, but slightly hung-over. I smiled when I saw Eric with an apron, cooking breakfast and Pam at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper. I could certainly get used to living in Norway.
Before my behind had landed on the chair, I had a large plate with eggs, bacon and beans in front of me.
“Eat before it gets cold,” Eric told me in a way Gran could have talked.
Eric sat down himself with a bowl of oatmeal. Pam was just drinking coffee. Then she looked at me.
“So you got home all right last night? You left us so abruptly. I believe you were in such a hurry you left your wrap there. Alcide insisted on bringing it to you, but it got destroyed somehow before he even got to it. I`m sorry.”
“What kind of pretentious name is Alcide?” Eric asked. “And how can he not even pick up a wrap without ruining it?”
Pam giggled a little. “My mistake. I thought I had Debbie`s undivided attention, but it seemed she got jealous of Sookie and the attention Alcide gave her. She took her revenge on the poor innocent wrap.”
“Couples and their games, I just don`t understand it.” Eric looked at me. “This is why I never play games. If I want someone, I tell them as much. I don`t go hitting on other people to get anyone jealous and I certainly don`t ruin peoples` wraps.” He was pleased with himself and continued on his oatmeal.
After a while Eric and Pam were done with their breakfast and were off. I went back to my room a bit sorry about losing a good wrap.
I figured I would do a little work on my laptop. Eric had given me the wireless internet access code and I started logging on to go through the Viking Game`s website.
Xxxx
I had been the good little worker bee all morning, working my way through the website, testing it for Google-visibility and checking how well it performed to users. I had made a ton of notes and suggestions for changes and alterations and was rather proud of myself. I started feeling my shoulders cramp up and figured I needed a little walk to clear up my thoughts and get my blood circulation back. Oslo seemed like a safe enough city to just stroll around in so I put on my sandals, picked up my purse and was off.
I decided to walk in the opposite direction from the city center and ended up in a street called Bogstadveien. That was apparently the high-end fashion street of Oslo. There were expensive brands and fur coats from one end to the other. There were also some cheaper European labels like Lacoste and Benetton, but I knew instinctively that I would find nothing is this street that would fit my taste (or my purse).
I spotted a 7-11 and figured I would buy myself an ice cream in the summer heat. I stood in line for the frozen yogurt and looked at the covers of the magazines next to the counter when I suddenly saw a familiar face. Two actually. On the magazine called `Se&Hør`, which was definitely a gossip magazine by the look of it, I saw my own smiling face and Eric`s less smiling and looking down.
I remembered the paparazzi from yesterday and was almost impressed at how fast they worked. I looked at the text. “Hemmelig kjæreste.” And with smaller letters it said. “Hvem er Eric Northmans nye dame?”
Okay, I could understand `Eric Northman` and I figured `dame` would mean `woman` of some kind, but the rest had me guessing. I quickly bought the magazine and planned on running the text through Google Translate when I came home. Not even a week in Norway and I`m already on the cover of the gossip magazines, I tried to joke to myself, but I didn`t find me funny.
I forgot all about the ice cream and out on the sidewalk I started reading the two pages about Eric and me inside the magazine. Luckily gossip magazines are 90% pictures so I got most of what they were saying.
My name was never mentioned anywhere in the article. I was apparently a `mystisk dame`, which I figured had to mean `mysterious woman`. Apart from the picture of me and Eric, repeated in twice its size inside the magazine, there were also pictures of Eric and other women. A lot of other women. A lot of beautiful women.
I tried to look at the names and titles they were given, but apart from `modell`, which had to mean `model`, I didn`t understand much, until I came to one of the larger pictures where Eric was arm in arm with a rather plain looking brunette. I looked at the caption and was amazed when it said `prinsesse Märtha`. Eric had dated a princess? Well, she would be the girl next door for him, I giggled to myself, remembering the royal castle next to Eric`s house.
Before I knew it, I was back at Eric`s house, nose deep in the magazine. This was probably why I never noticed the strange looking girl who suddenly pushed me hard into an iron fence. The pointy ends went right through my t-shirt and scraped my back hard before I hit the ground. In my surprise, I didn`t even yell. I just lay there looking up into the face of a mad woman with long brown hair sticking out in all directions. When my head fell down on the ground, I looked straight into the eyes of what appeared to be a pig. Who the hell has a pig in the middle of Oslo, I giggled to myself, before realizing that it was probably just a very ugly dog.
The pain in my back was excruciating and my giggles soon became sobs. The mad woman talked non-stop in Norwegian and I had to stop her.
“I don`t understand Norwegian,” I said and the woman just looked at me. Then she laughed a mean laughter.
“Eric has found himself a fucking American? Ok, tell him to keep his filthy hands of you. Actually, tell him to keep his filthy hands off everyone. Do you think your little American brain can manage to give him that message?”
I nodded even though I wasn`t sure. There was nothing wrong with my little American brain apart from the fact that it was about to give in any minute. Just before I fainted, I heard Eric shouting something from far away. The next thing I felt was him trying to carry me inside without touching my sore back and I was gone.
xxxxx
“We must lay her on her stomach on the couch,” Eric said. “Here, let me…” I felt another pair of hands grip my legs, Pam sort of turned my underside, and together they deposited me carefully on the couch.
Eric crouched down to look at my face. It was quite a crouch, because Eric, tall and broad, looks exactly like a huge Viking.
“What has happened to you?” he asked.
I glared at him, so incensed I could hardly speak. “I am a message to you,” I said, almost in a whisper. “This woman stopped me and then she came up to me with this dog that looked like a pig.”
“A pig?” Eric could not have been more astonished if I’d said she had a canary up her nose.
“Sookie,” Eric said gently, “what did this woman look like?”
His face was right by mine, his thick golden hair almost touching my face.
“She looked nuts.”
“By looking nuts, you mean she looked… how?”
“She just looked nuts. She had a wild look in her eyes and her hair was… look, speaking of hair, my hair is getting stuck to my back.” I gasped.
“Yes, I see.” Eric began trying to separate my long hair from my wounds, where blood was acting as an adherent as it thickened. I drifted off again.
xxx
When I woke up, I was alone in my room. I was lying naked on my stomach and the skin on my back was sore and it was painful to lift my head. I fell back on my pillow, moaning from the pain.
Eric must have heard my moan and he was not one to leave a moaning woman alone in a bedroom. My door opened and closed and I heard his footsteps going from the door to the bed.
“How are you doing?” He said and his usual cheerful voice had an edge of worry to it.
“For someone who has just been impaled on a fence, I`m doing pretty well.”
I wanted to get up, but it just hurt too much. This brought something else to my mind. The crazy woman had something to do with Eric.
“Who was the woman? Do you know her? She gave me a message for you, you know.” I couldn`t help adding a healthy dose of accusation to my tone of voice.
Eric sighed. “Yes, I`m pretty sure I know who she is.” He didn`t elaborate.
“Is she a member of your harem?”
Eric had question marks all over his face so I pointed at the issue of Se&Hør that had surprisingly survived the ordeal and was spread out on the floor. He picked it up and after looking at the pages I had been studying earlier, he threw the magazine into the corner of my room.
“Why did you bring that trash into my home?” He said with an icy voice which of course brought out the temper in me.
“Well, excuse me for wanting to read magazines where I am on the front page as an alleged lover of someone I hardly know.” I stared at Eric. “By the way, I haven’t heard an ‘I’m sorry’ from you yet.”
“What do you mean? What should I be sorry for?” Eric was angry, but whether he was mad at the gossip magazines for writing trash about him, at the mad-woman for knocking out his lodgers or at me for…. something, I wasn`t sure.
“The woman who hit you was hardly any of my ex-lovers.”
Eric was quiet for a while, then proceeded.
“I am sorry that she picked on you.”
I glared at him. “Not enough,” I said.
Eric was quiet for some time again, then smiled his teasing smile.
“Angelic Sookie, vision of love and beauty, I am prostrate that the wicked evil woman violated your smooth and voluptuous body, in an attempt to deliver a message to me.”
“That’s more like it.” I would have taken more satisfaction in Eric’s words if I hadn’t been jabbed with pain just then. “Now tell me what my back looks like.”
Eric got a concerned look in his eyes as he bent over my back.
“I washed you while you were passed out, but I really need to get some antiseptic on it to prevent infection. After that I`m going to tape them to make the scaring as invisible as possible. The wounds are more like scrapes than cuts so there wouldn`t be any use in stitching them.”
He looked at my back and then back at my face.
“I am truly sorry that this happened to you, Sookie.” Then he kissed me on my cheek.
Xxxx
If Eric had told me that he had a medical degree, I wouldn`t have been surprised. He was very thorough and careful at the same time. When he was finished being a doctor, he apparently turned into a parent, thinking kisses would take away my pain. Only Eric`s kisses weren`t those of a father to a child. Or maybe Eric and I were so far from father and child that even sweet comforting kisses made me warm all over.
When Eric had kissed my back from my neck to my pantyline, he sighed.
“I want to tell you to yield to me now, Sookie, but I can see that it`s not the time. You`ll just have to yield at some other time. Now is the time for snuggling – and don`t go jumping out of the bed just because I`m also in it.”
And before I could jump anywhere, I felt the bed being weighed down by a large frame and I had an arm draped over my shoulder, carefully avoiding any of the scrapes, and a leg over my thighs. Too sore, exhausted, and undeniably comfortable with Eric on my pillow to protest, I soon fell asleep.
A/N:
I hope fanfic didn`t cause you trouble and that you got to read this chapter. I also hope you liked it 😀
Kos og klem!