TB/GK fic: Solid Soul
I think there should be a Godric icon with the text You met me at a very strange time in my life on it, because I did.
Title: Solid Soul
Author: nightanddaze
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Godric/Eric, Eric/Nate, Nate/Brad
Word Count: 5264
Summary: Godric ties up a loose end that wasn’t really that loose in the first place
Notes: Written for amberlynne, who bid on me far beyond my worth for help_haiti, told me what to do, and then let me do whatever I wanted. Beta-thanks to mclachlan and snglesrvngfrend, any remaining mistakes are mine. Title from "My Girls" by Animal Collective.
Godric has not sat on a park bench for eighteen years. He has not been too busy, but he has been doing other things instead. But tonight there is only this: one hand in his lap, the other on the handrail, the low light from the streetlight on the other side of the empty road, waiting for one figure to pass through the light.
The moon is not high yet so Godric still has time. For this, he has time. He blinks, focused on that one spot, listening for the sound of footfalls. Somewhere in the dark behind him an animal stirs, taking slow steps back toward the path.
Godric blinks again. The moon is higher now, and there are light footsteps coming around the corner. Godric waits, until he sees Nathaniel Fick pass from the darkness through the light and back into the dark again. He runs the same loop almost every night, at the same time, as precise as a clock.
Godric does not watch him go, but he listens to the gravel scrape under Nate’s shoes as he runs down an alley, still looking at the light.
The wind blows all around him, quietly.
&
There is salt on the air, but Godric does not go towards the ocean. He does his best to avoid it unless he is with Eric, who loves the sea with an odd sort of fierceness Godric does not understand.
He was always more partial to the forests where running was a challenge and hunting a true game. He and Eric stalked each other for days sometimes, chasing droplets of blood smeared on leaves, sleeping in sweet rot-smelling caves, searching for one another even though they already knew exactly where they were.
The only trees here are ones that have been planted, in neat little lines to shade the sidewalk. The shadows of the leaves shiver on the pavement and Godric tries to stay within the bounds of them as he walks in the direction of the hotel, just for fun.
This place is quiet, quieter than a Swedish winter in the fourteenth century, quieter than the Dallas nest. In Californian suburbs people are apparently content to be inside with their families, surrounded by love. All Godric can see in the houses is the light from so many television screens.
&
He takes his rest in a tastefully decorated room at the Hotel Amenica, in between the sheets of a bed large enough for four of him, the light shades carefully down and locked to keep the sun from touching him.
Back in the suburb, Nate Fick is likely just waking up, stretching out in his bed, his hands and knees brushing his partner. He will get up, eat his breakfast, dress and go to work, where he will do the important things he does, and then he will come home, just as the sun is starting to dip. And then Godric will see him again after the sun has gone down, when he leaves the house for his run, his hands in loose fists and his eyes always looking forward. Perhaps this time Godric will speak to him.
&
The most important thing Godric learned as the Sheriff of Area Nine was understanding. The second was delegation. Area Nine did not offer him many troubles, and his underlings took command exceedingly well, so he left them for some time.
He went to Rome, not for any reason other than it was a place he had once been. He walked among the tourists each night and tried to see what they did: new, undiscovered territory. Godric had not been here for four hundred years.
Much of it looked the same, but it did not feel the same, although he should not have been surprised to find this to be so. The world was changing and here he was, staring at broken pillars, looking for cracks that had long since become fissures.
He went to France next, and sat in cafés, rolling grapes between his fingers, fiddling with the hot, bitter coffee he had never in his life tasted and would never taste. At the table beside his a young couple traded kisses and Je t’aimes.
During the Second World War he, Eric and Eric’s child had spent some time among the French, both in France and down in Algiers. Eric had liked the idea of being inside of a revolution, although it never ended up being like the old one, not at all.
“Je t’aime,” the girl said.
“Je t’aime, aussi,” the boy said.
Godric closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of the coffee, conjugating the verb in his mind by heart.
&
He made Eric because he understood that forever was too long to be alone, but not too long for greatness to be preserved. So he took a warrior at the height of his being, when otherwise he would have gone to waste.
Godric made him because he was starting to forget things and darkness darker than Death started curling around him as he walked every night.
He taught Eric how to hunt without being obvious, how to protect himself from the sun, how to blend in and how to stand out. He taught him that the femoral artery was the sweetest, even before they knew it had a name. He taught Eric about life.
And in exchange, Eric re-illuminated that which Godric was losing, joy and anger, faith and love. All the things vampires lose because they are not important to survive.
&
Godric can remember years and years of movement across the entire world, but tonight he stays still, waiting for Nate to run by. He has largely forgotten hunting, but the waiting is still there.
On this night he is not alone. To the right of him there is a cat crouched in the grass, intrigued by his non-scent. Godric turns to look at it and it crouches further, its luminescent green eyes slitted.
Godric does not speak to it because it is an animal, but he does the cat the courtesy of looking away so it will not feel so threatened. He stays still while the animal moves warily around him. He can hear it breathing, sniffing at him, so curious.
There was a time when he drank from animals, before now, before Eric. When he was truly wild he had enjoyed the gamey taste of animal blood, although it was not as satisfying as human blood. Tonight he just sits while the cat sniffs at his shoes, trying to figure out what he is.
When Nate runs by the sound of his shoes frighten the cat and it shoots under the bench and into the bushes. Godric smiles.
&
After a thousand years Godric could still recall being made, the terror and the pain, the immense sense of loss that came with losing the sun. His maker had not wished to be alone and so had caught Godric while he gathered wood and drank him dry on a bed of moss.
Godric woke deep under the moss, his nose and mouth filled with sour dirt and blood. He had scrabbled up from the ground, forced to claw his way out while his maker watched, excited to see him.
They had only stayed together for half a century, just long enough for Godric to learn the bare bones rules of his new life, and then they parted, never to meet again. By the time Godric made Eric, he could not remember his own maker’s name, just his looks: long and drawn with snarled dark hair and the loping gait of a dog.
Godric made Eric for the same reason his maker made him. The world was still too large to wander alone and Godric wished to speak to someone as his peer since he had had largely only the wind to keep him company for so long.
When Eric woke up, Godric felt that new part of his mind bloom and he dug down to Eric, through the already-stirred soil until he could grasp Eric’s wrist to guide him up to the light of the moon.
Then he brushed the dirt from Eric’s hair and his eyelashes carefully and said, “Broder,” feeling like he understood the word again.
&
Godric does not make a motion, but Nate stops anyway, right in the middle of the street, staring at Godric, at the cat beside him on the bench. He appears startled, as though Godric hailed him.
“Hello,” he calls tentatively. Godric hears the moment he turns off the music-something hard and upbeat-he has been listening to.
“Hello,” Godric replies. The cat’s ears twitch and Nate shifts from one foot to another. He doesn’t end up approaching though, just watches for a moment and then his weight shifts to his toes and he runs on.
For just an instant Godric smells fear, but then it’s gone again, swirled in with the smell of the ocean and city life.
&
He leaves Nate to his peace for a few nights, and instead goes to see what else this place has to offer. It is not much. Beyond the hot slide of human bodies down the street there are only bars-which Godric has stopped caring for-and slick convenience stores. He goes inside one, just to look, and squints under the florescent lighting. The clerk treats him to a dirty look and points at the cooler closest to the counter. Godric can see bottles of Tru Blood behind the streaky glass door.
Godric looks at the crooked rack of postcards next to the candy instead.
He has, in his entire life, sent only a hundred and fifty-six postcards. They are strange things, postcards. Mass-manufactured pictures of places people have been or wish they could be, carrying tiny impersonal messages disguised as well-wishes. Most of the ones Godric has sent have been empty, to save on falsehoods.
Tonight he buys one. It’s a dated photograph of the ocean, white waves licking at the sand, the sun shining in full force. The lower right corner has Oceanside! written on it in pastel pink. On the back there is just enough space to write something insincere like Wish you were here! Godric carefully lays the postcard on the counter and touches a spot on the sea where the sun is burning white.
“Where is this?” he asks the clerk.
The clerk’s eyebrows zip together above his nose and he frowns.
“Why d’you want to go there?”
“I have never been.”
Still frowning, the clerk throws a hand back over his shoulder, in the direction of the wet salt smell.
“Is it hard to get to?”
“No. That’s a buck-seventeen.”
Godric gives up a few wrinkled bills and takes his postcard. The moon’s not yet in the middle of the sky, so Godric goes. The clerk was right, it’s not hard to get there, not if Godric applies a little speed.
The beach is beautiful, completely unlike the silly picture on the postcard. The ocean is dark but the sand is sparkling with the moon and except for the ocean, it’s silent.
&
The ocean was the first place Eric asked to go to, after almost two years of his new life, after they had drank from some nomads with salty boots and broken shells in their packs. Eric touched the shells after they buried the bodies, bringing them close to his face to smell them.
“I used to bring these for my children,” Eric said, tracing the curl in one of the fine peach shells. “These and rabbits’ feet.”
Eric had an expression on his face that Godric had never seen: quiet loneliness and something Godric thought must be love.
Godric watched him turn the shells over and over in his hands, touching the tiny frilly edges, the curls like children’s ears.
“I want to go there,” Eric said, still looking at the shells. “The ocean.”
Tilting his head back Godric sniffed the air. The only salt on the air was coming from the shells, but Godric thought he knew the way.
“Tomorrow night we can start,” he said.
Eric did not smile, but he cupped the shells between his palms before folding them open and holding them out to Godric.
He said, “You can keep these.”
&
Godric thinks about leaving the postcard there on the beach, but he doesn’t. Instead he takes it back to the hotel and writes in an address before setting it next to the lamp and pulling down the light shades.
&
He was long back in Dallas when he felt it, the swell of intrigue and hunger. Eric
Although he did not imagine it much any longer, Godric pictured his connection to Eric as being like the ocean: deep, always moving and so full. He had forgotten existence without it in the very middle of his mind. But he had also grown used to Eric’s ups and downs, his hunger and his anger, his smug happiness and pride. Most times, it was simply another part of Godric.
This night, Godric looked away from Ms. Flanagan talking at the head of the table and closed his eyes, swimming inside himself to where Eric was.
Eric was in New Orleans with his child, Pam, and he was hunting. But not for food. Godric could feel the thrill going through Eric at the prospect of something new to play with, a challenge. Godric felt him, warm with his pleasure, all through his mind in a way he had not for a long time. Godric tried to imprint the feeling so he could come back to it later.
“Godric?” Ms. Flanagan prompted, with mild impatience. “What are your thoughts on the matter?”
Still deep down inside Eric, Godric said, “Of course, I agree with you, Ms. Flanagan.”
&
The feelings did not end that night. There were little breaks, but Eric did not stop feeling in that way. That manner of delight was something Godric thought Eric had given up in favour of wealth and power.
It made Godric curious, especially to feel it night after night. Eric had never bothered to shield himself, maybe because he did not feel Godric in the same full way Godric felt him. It was almost intoxicating, after so many years of quietness.
It was not the cool pleasure Godric felt when Eric found Pam, the sensation of finding a good fit, a partner. This was not like that at all, but Godric still waited for the sting of Eric extending himself further into a new child.
It did not come. Instead one night Godric woke to soft sorrow from Eric, half-hidden by lingering lust and happiness. It lasted all night and then was gone, probably pushed from Eric’s own mind by force.
A short while later Godric paid a visit to New Orleans, before Eric’s own return to Shreveport. They had not been together for years, but Eric was as he always was and likely would be. When Godric entered his office his pleasure was a purring thing enveloping Godric, instantly familiar, and Godric allowed his own happiness to touch Eric’s, tangle up with it a little bit.
“You are well, I presume?”
Eric pulled his head out of the respectful tilt it had assumed when Godric crossed the threshold.
“Yes,” he said, and Godric looked at him. His mind was undisturbed beside pleasure at seeing Godric. “And yourself?”
“As expected.”
Eric nodded. “What brings you here?”
Godric shrugged. “Frivolity. I came only to see you before you go back to Shreveport.”
As a rule, they stayed out of each other’s territories, to keep rumors of allegiance to a minimum, even though the allegiance was alive, well, and only half-hidden.
Eric smiled with one half of his mouth, like an abashed human.
“Have you fed?”
Godric smiled back, the way he always did.
That night he fed straight from Eric, tasting the mix of Eric and the delicate salty-sweetness of the AB blood Eric drank from an unfortunate student. He drank deep from Eric, drinking the story right out of him: the boy, another student, young and strong and confused, running from his problems.
Eric groaned when Godric disengaged, his mind still raw and open. Godric soothed him by licking the wounds on his neck gently as they healed, tasting Nate on his tongue.
&
For the next year or so Godric lived the story, drifting through Eric’s memories of the boy to keep himself entertained while, world-wide, vampires dealt with the consequences of coming out of the coffin.
He saw the tryst as Eric saw it, and then imagined it, independent of Eric’s body, Eric’s hunger and Nate’s eagerness. He relived a run-in with vampires and a practical blood-bond, meant to heal; hours of sex, the flat pale soles of Nate’s feet facing the ceiling, Eric’s fangs bared, both their breath rushing even though Eric didn’t need it; quiet talk across a thousand year divide; and a little sadness when Nate went back to his real life, New Orleans probably nothing but a dream to him.
It was distant, but also wonderful, to feel every tiny thrum of emotion once more. But also strange, like probing a wound in the seconds before it healed. The feelings did not last, but then again they were never Godric’s feelings to begin with.
&
Summer in California is very beautiful, even out here in the suburbs. Someone near the park has jasmine bushes and the smell mixes beautifully with the salt-struck smell of the ocean and the strange intoxicating smell of the city. If Godric did not have enduring business in Dallas, he might stay here, for a little while.
The cat is under the bench near Godric’s ankles, noisily chewing on a moth it caught while Godric watched the moon rise. When it’s done it emerges from under the bench, its silky grey fur rubbing Godric even through his trousers, and hops up next to him, washing moth-dust off its whiskers.
Together they watch a man and a woman walking a limping old bulldog down the street, talking about a book club and something called Oprah. When the man sees Godric he waves and Godric lifts his hand in reply.
Tonight Nate is late, but not by long, six minutes or so, according to the sky. Not that it matters. Godric has time enough to wait.
He hears Nate’s shoes long before Nate rounds the corner, hears the fall of his footsteps as he slows down, watching Godric closely. The air smells like jasmine and musky fear.
Nate stops, still across the road, his hands open at his sides. Tonight he is not listening to music, not bothering to carry the little white player with him. Even from this distance he looks ready to fight.
“What,” he says, loud and flat, and the cat beside Godric bristles, leaping off the bench when Godric stands, skulking back under to watch Godric cross the empty road to where Nate is.
Nate shifts on his feet, drawing himself taller than he initially appeared. The smell of his fear has cooled and he keeps Godric’s gaze.
“You’ve been watching me,” he says.
“Yes,” Godric admits. “Nate.”
Nate narrows his eyes. He doesn’t move but his heart speeds up. “What the fuck do you want?”
Godric closes his eyes so he can listen better, remembering how much Eric liked to listen to the thump of Nate’s heart.
“Do you remember Eric Northman?” he asks. Nate’s breath hitches and suddenly on the air is the smell of confusion and old lust.
&
Once, close to seven hundred years ago, Godric almost saw the sun. He and Eric were down in some German catacombs and he woke too early and almost stepped right out into the sunset. He saved himself, but scorched his face and had to stumble, mostly-blind, back into the dark.
Eric had been concerned when Godric’s pain woke him, holding Godric still although Godric was not moving and touching his burnt face carefully, but he still asked what is was like, the sun.
Godric could see the vivid colours and perfect shape in his mind, but he did not have the words to tell Eric about the blistering beauty of it all, which was perhaps for the best, because Godric never did forget it.
&
They meet, not that night, but a few days later. Nate is already there when Godric walks into the coffee shop, a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. It’s busy, bustling with humans that are talking, drinking, and working. Nate picked this place, not blinking until Godric agreed to meet him here, safe in public.
Godric does not order anything. A handful of years ago it might have been a good pretense, but now he does not bother.
Nate saw him as soon as he touched the door handle, and he watches Godric approach with his body carefully held, his face shielded. One of his hands is around the cup, the other pressed to the table.
Godric sits across from him at the little table and smiles. “Thank you for meeting me. I know I startled you the other night.”
“You watched me for a month. That’s not so startling as it is weird.”
Godric keeps smiling. “I turned out to be someone unexpected though.”
“I’ll say. I didn’t even know Eric had a…maker.”
“We all come from somewhere, Nate.”
“Yeah.” Nate touches his coffee cup. “But you’re so unlike Eric.”
“Am I?”
Nate looks at him and nods. “I think so.”
“Perhaps,” Godric says, “there was a time when we were more similar. But I am a thousand years older than him, and that is certainly time enough for us to become who we are.”
“A thousand years,” Nate says flatly, awed. “How old are you? Eric never told me how old he was.”
“Two thousand,” Godric says, and Nate leans back in his chair. No one is sitting close enough to pay them much mind, except for the one who is covertly watching from behind Nate.
“So Eric is a thousand years old?” Nate asks.
“He does not look it,” Godric says. “Nor do I. But we have seen things you could never imagine.”
“Yeah,” Nate says, still clearly stunned. He takes a drink of his coffee. His face is a little pale.
“It is too long of a story to tell in one sitting, but perhaps you would like to hear some of it?”
Nate sits forward again. “Really?”
“Of course.” Godric looks beyond Nate’s shoulder. “Would you like to invite your partner to join us?”
Nate stiffens, looking back over his shoulder, making eye contact with the man sitting two tables back, baldly watching them now that he knows he’s been seen. Then he turns back to Godric.
“How did you know?”
Shrugging, Godric says, “You smell of the same things.”
Nate flushes, although Godric is only thinking of soap and fabric and spices. He rubs his thumb on his chin and almost looks back, but doesn’t.
“I think he’s okay where he is,” Nate says finally, still flushed, smelling of warm blood now.
“Very well,” Godric says, and then he opens his mouth to tell Nate about history, from his own beginning.
&
Godric bought the book when it came out at a shop that stayed open late and served half-burnt coffee in a café at the back. He sat there, alone in the café, at a table with a short leg, and cracked the spine wide open so he could read: It’s another Iraqi town, nameless to the Marines racing down the main drag in Humvees, blowing it to pieces…
&
They meet twice more in the coffee shop, Godric across from Nate, and the other one -Brad-hovering in the background, frowning, his hands smelling like the silver he has in his pockets.
He has no reason to worry. Godric has no wish to harm to them, or anyone here. He simply wishes to pass his story along to someone who will appreciate it. And Nate does, no longer bothering with coffee, the table empty between their hands.
He listens with attention Godric thought had been bred out of humans by the nineteenth century and doesn’t ask many questions, although sometimes his face turns incredulous which is signal for clarification.
The places of the story that are slick with blood don’t make him flinch, even when the violence is gratuitous: Eric, covered in blood, slumped in the bathtub in parody of Marat, although he cannot keep his well-fed grin off his face, ruining the image. The death of a child for no reason other than her blood was so desirable, her body given to the ocean Eric loves so much. Two World Wars they stood in the middle of and watched.
Godric stops himself. “Does it not bother you?”
“The violence? No.”
Godric moves so his hands are curled together. His head tilts to the side and Nate smiles, but not happily.
“It’s not like vampires invented violence and cruelty,” he says. “We all come from somewhere, you said, and vampires do come from humans, so I think we’ve got you beat there.”
His smile is still unhappy around the truth, but Godric’s is real.
“You’re right, of course, Nate,” Godric says, knowing he made the right choice. “Absolutely right.”
&
Eric personally escorted him to the airport when he left New Orleans, and stood with him while they loaded up the private plane going to Dallas.
It was close to dawn, so Godric did not keep Eric long, simply drew Eric’s face close to his to touch their foreheads together and told him in one of the languages they shared that he was welcome in Area Nine at any time.
“It has been too long,” Eric said, in Swedish, clearly meaning too long since they have seen each other. A thousand years and Eric still yearned for Godric’s company, as though the past was barely enough to get by on.
“Yes,” Godric said, meaning that and something else, too.
&
Their last meeting is more of an accident than anything else. The story has been told and Godric is satisfied that Nate will keep it well, even if it does not live beyond him. Isabel and Stan are likely at each other’s throats by now, and there will be papers to attend to on his desk.
But Godric stays, for a few nights longer, oddly lulled by this place. He feels peaceful here, on this bench, smelling jasmine and the ocean, looking at the stars made dim by the city lights.
Tonight he is not here to see Nate, but Godric hears his shoes scrape across the sidewalk anyway.
Godric looks away from the moon to watch Nate turn the corner, walking, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. His face turns happy when he sees Godric and he crosses the street without looking.
“I thought I might find you here,” Nate says, standing a few feet away. He smells of rough love, salty and dirty, like he only just bothered to pull up his pants and button them before he left. The smell reminds Godric of older times, so many of them.
He nods agreeably. On this trip he has been predictable. He signals to the spot on the bench beside him and Nate sits.
“Can I ask you something?”
The grey cat skitters around in the bush behind them and Godric says, “Of course.”
“Have you killed anyone while you’ve been here?”
Godric shakes his head. “I have not killed anyone in years. At my age I do not require much blood.”
“But you drink it.”
Nate’s right wrist is on his right knee, the thin skin of the inside tilted up. His voice is soft to hide the excitement Godric learned about from Eric’s blood.
“Yes. I’m afraid the substitute does not do much for me.” Godric has never tasted it, and does not plan to. Eric’s blood will last him as long as he needs it to.
Nate’s wrist moves, lifting from his knee, a tiny offer. His face is wide open when Godric looks at him, young like Godric remembers. In his chest his heart is thumping half-wild with the anticipation of giving blood. His smell is slowly deepening into arousal, mixing with the lingering scent of sex and the flowers.
Godric touches Nate’s wrist, the thin skin where Eric drank from him and where his lover has perhaps bit, to make Nate happy. Nate’s pulse jumps against his thumb when he guides Nate’s wrist back down.
“Thank you,” he says, gently, because it is a very kind offer. It would not be hard to drink from him, even here in public, and the wounds could be easily healed with a minute amount of Godric’s own blood. “But I have no need for blood now.”
In the dark Nate flushes, his wrist turning over, and Godric looks at the moon for a moment so he may collect himself, if he wishes. Behind them the cat hisses at one of its brethren and Godric hears a brief tussle in the grass before one of them leaves.
“If you didn’t want blood,” Nate says eventually, his voice curious, “why did you come here?”
“I wished simply to see you.”
Nate’s face draws into confusion. “Why?”
“Vampires do not feel as humans do. Over time, we lose touch with our emotions because we see them as extraneous. That which affects you humans so greatly hardly registers with us. So anything which is able to incite emotion in a vampire is worth exploring.”
Nate looks at him and then nods slowly, half-understanding.
“I have told you a story of violence and blood. But it also contains joy, sorrow, and love. What I did not tell you about was kindness. Kindness is an odd thing for a vampire to experience, but I have done so, on this night and others. So perhaps I am really here, with you, to repay the kindness that I have experienced in my life.”
Godric stands then and faces Nate, who will only understand this much later. But he is a smart man and well-chosen, so Godric has faith in his ability. He pulls the postcard from his trousers and looks at it for a moment, the silly picture on the front and the blank back, his thumb rubbing over his own penmanship, the thin S and the poorly-crossed T in Shreveport. He is only looking sentimentally though. He knows everything is correct, so he hands it to Nate, who stares at it, puzzled, flipping to look at the back and then flipping it again.
“A souvenir,” Godric says by way of explanation. “But if you ever wish to, you can send it. It will go where it needs to.”
Nate looks up from the sun-stroked ocean, and his smile is small and still a little confused, but very genuine. “Thanks, Godric,” he says.
Godric smiles back at him, listening to the night and everything around them. “You are very welcome, Nate.”
&
In his entire life, Godric has received three-hundred and twelve postcards, from lovers, acquaintances, enemies and Eric, but he will not be around to receive this one. It is not a problem though, since this one, which has a return address in Oceanside, California and says, Godric, tell Eric I said hello in long tidy writing, is not really for him anyway.
I think this stands well on its own, but if you're interested, the inspiration for the prompt/story comes from snippets done here, here, here, and here
Title: Solid Soul
Author: nightanddaze
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Godric/Eric, Eric/Nate, Nate/Brad
Word Count: 5264
Summary: Godric ties up a loose end that wasn’t really that loose in the first place
Notes: Written for amberlynne, who bid on me far beyond my worth for help_haiti, told me what to do, and then let me do whatever I wanted. Beta-thanks to mclachlan and snglesrvngfrend, any remaining mistakes are mine. Title from "My Girls" by Animal Collective.
Godric has not sat on a park bench for eighteen years. He has not been too busy, but he has been doing other things instead. But tonight there is only this: one hand in his lap, the other on the handrail, the low light from the streetlight on the other side of the empty road, waiting for one figure to pass through the light.
The moon is not high yet so Godric still has time. For this, he has time. He blinks, focused on that one spot, listening for the sound of footfalls. Somewhere in the dark behind him an animal stirs, taking slow steps back toward the path.
Godric blinks again. The moon is higher now, and there are light footsteps coming around the corner. Godric waits, until he sees Nathaniel Fick pass from the darkness through the light and back into the dark again. He runs the same loop almost every night, at the same time, as precise as a clock.
Godric does not watch him go, but he listens to the gravel scrape under Nate’s shoes as he runs down an alley, still looking at the light.
The wind blows all around him, quietly.
&
There is salt on the air, but Godric does not go towards the ocean. He does his best to avoid it unless he is with Eric, who loves the sea with an odd sort of fierceness Godric does not understand.
He was always more partial to the forests where running was a challenge and hunting a true game. He and Eric stalked each other for days sometimes, chasing droplets of blood smeared on leaves, sleeping in sweet rot-smelling caves, searching for one another even though they already knew exactly where they were.
The only trees here are ones that have been planted, in neat little lines to shade the sidewalk. The shadows of the leaves shiver on the pavement and Godric tries to stay within the bounds of them as he walks in the direction of the hotel, just for fun.
This place is quiet, quieter than a Swedish winter in the fourteenth century, quieter than the Dallas nest. In Californian suburbs people are apparently content to be inside with their families, surrounded by love. All Godric can see in the houses is the light from so many television screens.
&
He takes his rest in a tastefully decorated room at the Hotel Amenica, in between the sheets of a bed large enough for four of him, the light shades carefully down and locked to keep the sun from touching him.
Back in the suburb, Nate Fick is likely just waking up, stretching out in his bed, his hands and knees brushing his partner. He will get up, eat his breakfast, dress and go to work, where he will do the important things he does, and then he will come home, just as the sun is starting to dip. And then Godric will see him again after the sun has gone down, when he leaves the house for his run, his hands in loose fists and his eyes always looking forward. Perhaps this time Godric will speak to him.
&
The most important thing Godric learned as the Sheriff of Area Nine was understanding. The second was delegation. Area Nine did not offer him many troubles, and his underlings took command exceedingly well, so he left them for some time.
He went to Rome, not for any reason other than it was a place he had once been. He walked among the tourists each night and tried to see what they did: new, undiscovered territory. Godric had not been here for four hundred years.
Much of it looked the same, but it did not feel the same, although he should not have been surprised to find this to be so. The world was changing and here he was, staring at broken pillars, looking for cracks that had long since become fissures.
He went to France next, and sat in cafés, rolling grapes between his fingers, fiddling with the hot, bitter coffee he had never in his life tasted and would never taste. At the table beside his a young couple traded kisses and Je t’aimes.
During the Second World War he, Eric and Eric’s child had spent some time among the French, both in France and down in Algiers. Eric had liked the idea of being inside of a revolution, although it never ended up being like the old one, not at all.
“Je t’aime,” the girl said.
“Je t’aime, aussi,” the boy said.
Godric closed his eyes and inhaled the smell of the coffee, conjugating the verb in his mind by heart.
&
He made Eric because he understood that forever was too long to be alone, but not too long for greatness to be preserved. So he took a warrior at the height of his being, when otherwise he would have gone to waste.
Godric made him because he was starting to forget things and darkness darker than Death started curling around him as he walked every night.
He taught Eric how to hunt without being obvious, how to protect himself from the sun, how to blend in and how to stand out. He taught him that the femoral artery was the sweetest, even before they knew it had a name. He taught Eric about life.
And in exchange, Eric re-illuminated that which Godric was losing, joy and anger, faith and love. All the things vampires lose because they are not important to survive.
&
Godric can remember years and years of movement across the entire world, but tonight he stays still, waiting for Nate to run by. He has largely forgotten hunting, but the waiting is still there.
On this night he is not alone. To the right of him there is a cat crouched in the grass, intrigued by his non-scent. Godric turns to look at it and it crouches further, its luminescent green eyes slitted.
Godric does not speak to it because it is an animal, but he does the cat the courtesy of looking away so it will not feel so threatened. He stays still while the animal moves warily around him. He can hear it breathing, sniffing at him, so curious.
There was a time when he drank from animals, before now, before Eric. When he was truly wild he had enjoyed the gamey taste of animal blood, although it was not as satisfying as human blood. Tonight he just sits while the cat sniffs at his shoes, trying to figure out what he is.
When Nate runs by the sound of his shoes frighten the cat and it shoots under the bench and into the bushes. Godric smiles.
&
After a thousand years Godric could still recall being made, the terror and the pain, the immense sense of loss that came with losing the sun. His maker had not wished to be alone and so had caught Godric while he gathered wood and drank him dry on a bed of moss.
Godric woke deep under the moss, his nose and mouth filled with sour dirt and blood. He had scrabbled up from the ground, forced to claw his way out while his maker watched, excited to see him.
They had only stayed together for half a century, just long enough for Godric to learn the bare bones rules of his new life, and then they parted, never to meet again. By the time Godric made Eric, he could not remember his own maker’s name, just his looks: long and drawn with snarled dark hair and the loping gait of a dog.
Godric made Eric for the same reason his maker made him. The world was still too large to wander alone and Godric wished to speak to someone as his peer since he had had largely only the wind to keep him company for so long.
When Eric woke up, Godric felt that new part of his mind bloom and he dug down to Eric, through the already-stirred soil until he could grasp Eric’s wrist to guide him up to the light of the moon.
Then he brushed the dirt from Eric’s hair and his eyelashes carefully and said, “Broder,” feeling like he understood the word again.
&
Godric does not make a motion, but Nate stops anyway, right in the middle of the street, staring at Godric, at the cat beside him on the bench. He appears startled, as though Godric hailed him.
“Hello,” he calls tentatively. Godric hears the moment he turns off the music-something hard and upbeat-he has been listening to.
“Hello,” Godric replies. The cat’s ears twitch and Nate shifts from one foot to another. He doesn’t end up approaching though, just watches for a moment and then his weight shifts to his toes and he runs on.
For just an instant Godric smells fear, but then it’s gone again, swirled in with the smell of the ocean and city life.
&
He leaves Nate to his peace for a few nights, and instead goes to see what else this place has to offer. It is not much. Beyond the hot slide of human bodies down the street there are only bars-which Godric has stopped caring for-and slick convenience stores. He goes inside one, just to look, and squints under the florescent lighting. The clerk treats him to a dirty look and points at the cooler closest to the counter. Godric can see bottles of Tru Blood behind the streaky glass door.
Godric looks at the crooked rack of postcards next to the candy instead.
He has, in his entire life, sent only a hundred and fifty-six postcards. They are strange things, postcards. Mass-manufactured pictures of places people have been or wish they could be, carrying tiny impersonal messages disguised as well-wishes. Most of the ones Godric has sent have been empty, to save on falsehoods.
Tonight he buys one. It’s a dated photograph of the ocean, white waves licking at the sand, the sun shining in full force. The lower right corner has Oceanside! written on it in pastel pink. On the back there is just enough space to write something insincere like Wish you were here! Godric carefully lays the postcard on the counter and touches a spot on the sea where the sun is burning white.
“Where is this?” he asks the clerk.
The clerk’s eyebrows zip together above his nose and he frowns.
“Why d’you want to go there?”
“I have never been.”
Still frowning, the clerk throws a hand back over his shoulder, in the direction of the wet salt smell.
“Is it hard to get to?”
“No. That’s a buck-seventeen.”
Godric gives up a few wrinkled bills and takes his postcard. The moon’s not yet in the middle of the sky, so Godric goes. The clerk was right, it’s not hard to get there, not if Godric applies a little speed.
The beach is beautiful, completely unlike the silly picture on the postcard. The ocean is dark but the sand is sparkling with the moon and except for the ocean, it’s silent.
&
The ocean was the first place Eric asked to go to, after almost two years of his new life, after they had drank from some nomads with salty boots and broken shells in their packs. Eric touched the shells after they buried the bodies, bringing them close to his face to smell them.
“I used to bring these for my children,” Eric said, tracing the curl in one of the fine peach shells. “These and rabbits’ feet.”
Eric had an expression on his face that Godric had never seen: quiet loneliness and something Godric thought must be love.
Godric watched him turn the shells over and over in his hands, touching the tiny frilly edges, the curls like children’s ears.
“I want to go there,” Eric said, still looking at the shells. “The ocean.”
Tilting his head back Godric sniffed the air. The only salt on the air was coming from the shells, but Godric thought he knew the way.
“Tomorrow night we can start,” he said.
Eric did not smile, but he cupped the shells between his palms before folding them open and holding them out to Godric.
He said, “You can keep these.”
&
Godric thinks about leaving the postcard there on the beach, but he doesn’t. Instead he takes it back to the hotel and writes in an address before setting it next to the lamp and pulling down the light shades.
&
He was long back in Dallas when he felt it, the swell of intrigue and hunger. Eric
Although he did not imagine it much any longer, Godric pictured his connection to Eric as being like the ocean: deep, always moving and so full. He had forgotten existence without it in the very middle of his mind. But he had also grown used to Eric’s ups and downs, his hunger and his anger, his smug happiness and pride. Most times, it was simply another part of Godric.
This night, Godric looked away from Ms. Flanagan talking at the head of the table and closed his eyes, swimming inside himself to where Eric was.
Eric was in New Orleans with his child, Pam, and he was hunting. But not for food. Godric could feel the thrill going through Eric at the prospect of something new to play with, a challenge. Godric felt him, warm with his pleasure, all through his mind in a way he had not for a long time. Godric tried to imprint the feeling so he could come back to it later.
“Godric?” Ms. Flanagan prompted, with mild impatience. “What are your thoughts on the matter?”
Still deep down inside Eric, Godric said, “Of course, I agree with you, Ms. Flanagan.”
&
The feelings did not end that night. There were little breaks, but Eric did not stop feeling in that way. That manner of delight was something Godric thought Eric had given up in favour of wealth and power.
It made Godric curious, especially to feel it night after night. Eric had never bothered to shield himself, maybe because he did not feel Godric in the same full way Godric felt him. It was almost intoxicating, after so many years of quietness.
It was not the cool pleasure Godric felt when Eric found Pam, the sensation of finding a good fit, a partner. This was not like that at all, but Godric still waited for the sting of Eric extending himself further into a new child.
It did not come. Instead one night Godric woke to soft sorrow from Eric, half-hidden by lingering lust and happiness. It lasted all night and then was gone, probably pushed from Eric’s own mind by force.
A short while later Godric paid a visit to New Orleans, before Eric’s own return to Shreveport. They had not been together for years, but Eric was as he always was and likely would be. When Godric entered his office his pleasure was a purring thing enveloping Godric, instantly familiar, and Godric allowed his own happiness to touch Eric’s, tangle up with it a little bit.
“You are well, I presume?”
Eric pulled his head out of the respectful tilt it had assumed when Godric crossed the threshold.
“Yes,” he said, and Godric looked at him. His mind was undisturbed beside pleasure at seeing Godric. “And yourself?”
“As expected.”
Eric nodded. “What brings you here?”
Godric shrugged. “Frivolity. I came only to see you before you go back to Shreveport.”
As a rule, they stayed out of each other’s territories, to keep rumors of allegiance to a minimum, even though the allegiance was alive, well, and only half-hidden.
Eric smiled with one half of his mouth, like an abashed human.
“Have you fed?”
Godric smiled back, the way he always did.
That night he fed straight from Eric, tasting the mix of Eric and the delicate salty-sweetness of the AB blood Eric drank from an unfortunate student. He drank deep from Eric, drinking the story right out of him: the boy, another student, young and strong and confused, running from his problems.
Eric groaned when Godric disengaged, his mind still raw and open. Godric soothed him by licking the wounds on his neck gently as they healed, tasting Nate on his tongue.
&
For the next year or so Godric lived the story, drifting through Eric’s memories of the boy to keep himself entertained while, world-wide, vampires dealt with the consequences of coming out of the coffin.
He saw the tryst as Eric saw it, and then imagined it, independent of Eric’s body, Eric’s hunger and Nate’s eagerness. He relived a run-in with vampires and a practical blood-bond, meant to heal; hours of sex, the flat pale soles of Nate’s feet facing the ceiling, Eric’s fangs bared, both their breath rushing even though Eric didn’t need it; quiet talk across a thousand year divide; and a little sadness when Nate went back to his real life, New Orleans probably nothing but a dream to him.
It was distant, but also wonderful, to feel every tiny thrum of emotion once more. But also strange, like probing a wound in the seconds before it healed. The feelings did not last, but then again they were never Godric’s feelings to begin with.
&
Summer in California is very beautiful, even out here in the suburbs. Someone near the park has jasmine bushes and the smell mixes beautifully with the salt-struck smell of the ocean and the strange intoxicating smell of the city. If Godric did not have enduring business in Dallas, he might stay here, for a little while.
The cat is under the bench near Godric’s ankles, noisily chewing on a moth it caught while Godric watched the moon rise. When it’s done it emerges from under the bench, its silky grey fur rubbing Godric even through his trousers, and hops up next to him, washing moth-dust off its whiskers.
Together they watch a man and a woman walking a limping old bulldog down the street, talking about a book club and something called Oprah. When the man sees Godric he waves and Godric lifts his hand in reply.
Tonight Nate is late, but not by long, six minutes or so, according to the sky. Not that it matters. Godric has time enough to wait.
He hears Nate’s shoes long before Nate rounds the corner, hears the fall of his footsteps as he slows down, watching Godric closely. The air smells like jasmine and musky fear.
Nate stops, still across the road, his hands open at his sides. Tonight he is not listening to music, not bothering to carry the little white player with him. Even from this distance he looks ready to fight.
“What,” he says, loud and flat, and the cat beside Godric bristles, leaping off the bench when Godric stands, skulking back under to watch Godric cross the empty road to where Nate is.
Nate shifts on his feet, drawing himself taller than he initially appeared. The smell of his fear has cooled and he keeps Godric’s gaze.
“You’ve been watching me,” he says.
“Yes,” Godric admits. “Nate.”
Nate narrows his eyes. He doesn’t move but his heart speeds up. “What the fuck do you want?”
Godric closes his eyes so he can listen better, remembering how much Eric liked to listen to the thump of Nate’s heart.
“Do you remember Eric Northman?” he asks. Nate’s breath hitches and suddenly on the air is the smell of confusion and old lust.
&
Once, close to seven hundred years ago, Godric almost saw the sun. He and Eric were down in some German catacombs and he woke too early and almost stepped right out into the sunset. He saved himself, but scorched his face and had to stumble, mostly-blind, back into the dark.
Eric had been concerned when Godric’s pain woke him, holding Godric still although Godric was not moving and touching his burnt face carefully, but he still asked what is was like, the sun.
Godric could see the vivid colours and perfect shape in his mind, but he did not have the words to tell Eric about the blistering beauty of it all, which was perhaps for the best, because Godric never did forget it.
&
They meet, not that night, but a few days later. Nate is already there when Godric walks into the coffee shop, a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. It’s busy, bustling with humans that are talking, drinking, and working. Nate picked this place, not blinking until Godric agreed to meet him here, safe in public.
Godric does not order anything. A handful of years ago it might have been a good pretense, but now he does not bother.
Nate saw him as soon as he touched the door handle, and he watches Godric approach with his body carefully held, his face shielded. One of his hands is around the cup, the other pressed to the table.
Godric sits across from him at the little table and smiles. “Thank you for meeting me. I know I startled you the other night.”
“You watched me for a month. That’s not so startling as it is weird.”
Godric keeps smiling. “I turned out to be someone unexpected though.”
“I’ll say. I didn’t even know Eric had a…maker.”
“We all come from somewhere, Nate.”
“Yeah.” Nate touches his coffee cup. “But you’re so unlike Eric.”
“Am I?”
Nate looks at him and nods. “I think so.”
“Perhaps,” Godric says, “there was a time when we were more similar. But I am a thousand years older than him, and that is certainly time enough for us to become who we are.”
“A thousand years,” Nate says flatly, awed. “How old are you? Eric never told me how old he was.”
“Two thousand,” Godric says, and Nate leans back in his chair. No one is sitting close enough to pay them much mind, except for the one who is covertly watching from behind Nate.
“So Eric is a thousand years old?” Nate asks.
“He does not look it,” Godric says. “Nor do I. But we have seen things you could never imagine.”
“Yeah,” Nate says, still clearly stunned. He takes a drink of his coffee. His face is a little pale.
“It is too long of a story to tell in one sitting, but perhaps you would like to hear some of it?”
Nate sits forward again. “Really?”
“Of course.” Godric looks beyond Nate’s shoulder. “Would you like to invite your partner to join us?”
Nate stiffens, looking back over his shoulder, making eye contact with the man sitting two tables back, baldly watching them now that he knows he’s been seen. Then he turns back to Godric.
“How did you know?”
Shrugging, Godric says, “You smell of the same things.”
Nate flushes, although Godric is only thinking of soap and fabric and spices. He rubs his thumb on his chin and almost looks back, but doesn’t.
“I think he’s okay where he is,” Nate says finally, still flushed, smelling of warm blood now.
“Very well,” Godric says, and then he opens his mouth to tell Nate about history, from his own beginning.
&
Godric bought the book when it came out at a shop that stayed open late and served half-burnt coffee in a café at the back. He sat there, alone in the café, at a table with a short leg, and cracked the spine wide open so he could read: It’s another Iraqi town, nameless to the Marines racing down the main drag in Humvees, blowing it to pieces…
&
They meet twice more in the coffee shop, Godric across from Nate, and the other one -Brad-hovering in the background, frowning, his hands smelling like the silver he has in his pockets.
He has no reason to worry. Godric has no wish to harm to them, or anyone here. He simply wishes to pass his story along to someone who will appreciate it. And Nate does, no longer bothering with coffee, the table empty between their hands.
He listens with attention Godric thought had been bred out of humans by the nineteenth century and doesn’t ask many questions, although sometimes his face turns incredulous which is signal for clarification.
The places of the story that are slick with blood don’t make him flinch, even when the violence is gratuitous: Eric, covered in blood, slumped in the bathtub in parody of Marat, although he cannot keep his well-fed grin off his face, ruining the image. The death of a child for no reason other than her blood was so desirable, her body given to the ocean Eric loves so much. Two World Wars they stood in the middle of and watched.
Godric stops himself. “Does it not bother you?”
“The violence? No.”
Godric moves so his hands are curled together. His head tilts to the side and Nate smiles, but not happily.
“It’s not like vampires invented violence and cruelty,” he says. “We all come from somewhere, you said, and vampires do come from humans, so I think we’ve got you beat there.”
His smile is still unhappy around the truth, but Godric’s is real.
“You’re right, of course, Nate,” Godric says, knowing he made the right choice. “Absolutely right.”
&
Eric personally escorted him to the airport when he left New Orleans, and stood with him while they loaded up the private plane going to Dallas.
It was close to dawn, so Godric did not keep Eric long, simply drew Eric’s face close to his to touch their foreheads together and told him in one of the languages they shared that he was welcome in Area Nine at any time.
“It has been too long,” Eric said, in Swedish, clearly meaning too long since they have seen each other. A thousand years and Eric still yearned for Godric’s company, as though the past was barely enough to get by on.
“Yes,” Godric said, meaning that and something else, too.
&
Their last meeting is more of an accident than anything else. The story has been told and Godric is satisfied that Nate will keep it well, even if it does not live beyond him. Isabel and Stan are likely at each other’s throats by now, and there will be papers to attend to on his desk.
But Godric stays, for a few nights longer, oddly lulled by this place. He feels peaceful here, on this bench, smelling jasmine and the ocean, looking at the stars made dim by the city lights.
Tonight he is not here to see Nate, but Godric hears his shoes scrape across the sidewalk anyway.
Godric looks away from the moon to watch Nate turn the corner, walking, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. His face turns happy when he sees Godric and he crosses the street without looking.
“I thought I might find you here,” Nate says, standing a few feet away. He smells of rough love, salty and dirty, like he only just bothered to pull up his pants and button them before he left. The smell reminds Godric of older times, so many of them.
He nods agreeably. On this trip he has been predictable. He signals to the spot on the bench beside him and Nate sits.
“Can I ask you something?”
The grey cat skitters around in the bush behind them and Godric says, “Of course.”
“Have you killed anyone while you’ve been here?”
Godric shakes his head. “I have not killed anyone in years. At my age I do not require much blood.”
“But you drink it.”
Nate’s right wrist is on his right knee, the thin skin of the inside tilted up. His voice is soft to hide the excitement Godric learned about from Eric’s blood.
“Yes. I’m afraid the substitute does not do much for me.” Godric has never tasted it, and does not plan to. Eric’s blood will last him as long as he needs it to.
Nate’s wrist moves, lifting from his knee, a tiny offer. His face is wide open when Godric looks at him, young like Godric remembers. In his chest his heart is thumping half-wild with the anticipation of giving blood. His smell is slowly deepening into arousal, mixing with the lingering scent of sex and the flowers.
Godric touches Nate’s wrist, the thin skin where Eric drank from him and where his lover has perhaps bit, to make Nate happy. Nate’s pulse jumps against his thumb when he guides Nate’s wrist back down.
“Thank you,” he says, gently, because it is a very kind offer. It would not be hard to drink from him, even here in public, and the wounds could be easily healed with a minute amount of Godric’s own blood. “But I have no need for blood now.”
In the dark Nate flushes, his wrist turning over, and Godric looks at the moon for a moment so he may collect himself, if he wishes. Behind them the cat hisses at one of its brethren and Godric hears a brief tussle in the grass before one of them leaves.
“If you didn’t want blood,” Nate says eventually, his voice curious, “why did you come here?”
“I wished simply to see you.”
Nate’s face draws into confusion. “Why?”
“Vampires do not feel as humans do. Over time, we lose touch with our emotions because we see them as extraneous. That which affects you humans so greatly hardly registers with us. So anything which is able to incite emotion in a vampire is worth exploring.”
Nate looks at him and then nods slowly, half-understanding.
“I have told you a story of violence and blood. But it also contains joy, sorrow, and love. What I did not tell you about was kindness. Kindness is an odd thing for a vampire to experience, but I have done so, on this night and others. So perhaps I am really here, with you, to repay the kindness that I have experienced in my life.”
Godric stands then and faces Nate, who will only understand this much later. But he is a smart man and well-chosen, so Godric has faith in his ability. He pulls the postcard from his trousers and looks at it for a moment, the silly picture on the front and the blank back, his thumb rubbing over his own penmanship, the thin S and the poorly-crossed T in Shreveport. He is only looking sentimentally though. He knows everything is correct, so he hands it to Nate, who stares at it, puzzled, flipping to look at the back and then flipping it again.
“A souvenir,” Godric says by way of explanation. “But if you ever wish to, you can send it. It will go where it needs to.”
Nate looks up from the sun-stroked ocean, and his smile is small and still a little confused, but very genuine. “Thanks, Godric,” he says.
Godric smiles back at him, listening to the night and everything around them. “You are very welcome, Nate.”
&
In his entire life, Godric has received three-hundred and twelve postcards, from lovers, acquaintances, enemies and Eric, but he will not be around to receive this one. It is not a problem though, since this one, which has a return address in Oceanside, California and says, Godric, tell Eric I said hello in long tidy writing, is not really for him anyway.
I think this stands well on its own, but if you're interested, the inspiration for the prompt/story comes from snippets done here, here, here, and here