The Dead Don't Talk

Summary: Eric and Sookie have a messy past. One that keeps trying to catch up to them. How far they get is anyone's guess. AH/AU

~xx~

Note: Any words in other languages are phonetic translations.

Nearly a year. That's how long we'd been apart.

Vanished. Nothing left but note on a cold pillow. How he'd managed to sneak off, like a thief in the night all those times without so much as banging a toe in the darkness I'd never know. I wasn't even a heavy sleeper. Yet somehow, he had perfected the art of being quieter than a church mouse. I knew it was a skill I would never master. In the beginning, when he'd done it, I thought, maybe he didn't want to be around me, that he really had chased me around just for one thing and when he got it, he lost interest. I found out later, that wasn't the case at all.

We were in Amsterdam together. The year before he'd gone had been good. It wasn't perfect and we had a few knock-down-drag-out fights every now and then when we would be reminded of something from our pasts but for where we were, it had been as good as it could be. We picked Amsterdam because the two of us could blend with the population more than anywhere else. The Dutch population was one of the tallest in the world. And with Eric's six-foot-four-inch frame, he blended. He didn't think he would, but he did. Initially, he had wanted to go to Oslo but I put my foot down.

Too cold, I had said. I didn't want to deal with a lot of snow. Though, Amsterdam did get rather cold in winter, the sea level climate and general marsh-like land kept Holland from falling victim to terrible winter storms like its German neighbor.

Before Amsterdam, we'd been moving from place to place every couple of weeks.

"How are you feeling?" He asked quietly, leaning an elbow on the bed.

"Like death warmed over," I mumbled, removing the compress from my forehead.

Eric and I were being shuffled from hotel to motel, to hotel ad nauseam. There was a mole in the organized crime task force. Whoever they were reported our safe house to Viktor, leading me to nearly getting killed. Ever since then, the agents had been extremely tight lipped about every place we moved to. Usually the only time we ever got to leave our cushioned prisons was when we were being moved to a new location.

The stress of it all made me sick and with the constant fluctuations, I caught the flu.

"You shouldn't stay too close," I croaked. My voice went the day before yesterday.

"I don't care if I get sick." And just to prove his point, he snuggled up next to me and wrapped an arm around my waist.

I sighed and curled into him. "Okay," I said, "but don't blame me if you do." I picked up his hand from my waist and kissed the joints of his fingers.

"Would I do that?" He kissed the crook of my neck.

"Yes," I whispered. I don't think he heard me because he continued to kiss me lightly and his hand moved under my shirt and up. "That feels nice."

I don't remember falling asleep but when I woke, the room was dark and I could hear him outside, talking quietly to Agents Kolias and Granger.

He was arguing with them. It felt rude listening in on them initially but when you've been cooped up for as long as we have, nothing really gets to stay private. He wanted to go out. Neither of us had left our hotel room in more than four days. We both had a serious case of cabin fever.

As I listened, Eric only got louder, until he was yelling. His accent came out fully, as it always did whenever he felt strongly about something. He wanted to take me to a doctor. They'd have to get clearance. Until that happened, Eric was stuck doing nothing but pacing a hole in the carpet and watching crappy daytime TV.