After the altercation with Pearly

[onceaviking]

He feels heavy and sluggish.
He looked down as he sat down on the bed and lifting his face feels like more of a chore than it ought, but he manages, looking at Pam.

His cheekbone seems to have righted itself, but it is still fully visible.
His flesh is torn, red and charred. His skin is white as paper.

He blinks slowly a couple of times.

Comments

[lazy_but_loyal]

Pam had been silent on their way up the stairs, swallowing back her worry and concern. But once in the safety and seclusion of Eric's room, she too feels free to allow herself to break down.

"Oh, fuck," she breathes out, as if she couldn't hold it in any longer. And she can't.

She sits beside him, her brow knitted deeply as she gently turns his head so she can see how far his healing has progressed. One palm cradles his uninjured cheek, the other is placed lightly on the back of his head.

"Jesus Christ, Eric..."

A sudden flash of anger flares up in her, but it's useless, at least for the time being.

"You need to feed. Now. Who do I have to find for you?"

[onceaviking]

He lets her move his head, wincing a little at the renewed pain.
And the feel of her worry and anger.

"Not Jay," he murmurs. "I already fed in him. Maybe Emcee. The German."

He has told her about him. He thinks. But thinking is difficult. Everything is grey and sluggish.

[lazy_but_loyal]

She lets him be but keeps the one hand at the back of his head, her fingers combing through his hair.

Frowning a little, she remembers him having mentioned the German, but she has to make certain of his choice.

"Do you trust him?"

With this situation, with the condition he's in, with being in his room.

[onceaviking]

"Yes," Eric murmurs, letting his eyes drift shut.

"He's a soft, little thing. And he owed me. He has paid his debt already, but he did so willingly, so -"

He opens his eyes again.

"He is like a women, Pam."
And they both know how women get around Eric. Some women at least.

[lazy_but_loyal]

She raises an eyebrow. Now she's curious.

"All right."

With a short, sharp sigh, gathering her reserves, she stands up. And she leans in to press a light kiss to Eric's temple.

"If I don't find him right away, I'll leave a note for him. And I'll get you a glass of donor blood from the bar. I know it's not fresh and it tastes like shit, but you have to have something in the meantime."

[onceaviking]

He nods and lies back down on the bed. Slowly.

Trusting her to handle this.

[lazy_but_loyal]

With one last look of concern at him stretched out on the bed, she turns and heads out the door.

Downstairs, she casts her sharp eyes around the room. She has no idea what the German looks like or what he smells like, but nobody here seems to fit the description of a 1930s cabaret entertainer. She even asks one of the waitrats, whom she usually avoids contact with, if anybody named Emcee is currently in the bar. It responds with a negative.

So she goes to the bar for a pen and paper. In her graceful, flowing hand, she writes,

To Emcee,

Eric Northman urgently requests your presence. Come to his room as soon as you receive this message.

Pamela De Beaufort

She trusts the bar to deliver it to this curious person whose name is a title and not a name.

Then she asks for a glass of blood. She smells it, tastes it. She sighs and shakes her head. No, not this mix of synthetic stuff, the real donor blood that's in the refrigerator. A note on a napkin appears, granting her permission to go behind the bar to get what she needs. Pam does so, and after emptying a blood bag into a glass and heating it up in the microwave, she heads back upstairs.

"He's not there," she says upon entering Eric's room and locking the door behind her.

"I don't know how well this blood will work, but you have to try it."

She crosses the room toward the bed.

[onceaviking]

He manages to get up on one elbow.

He really does look like shit.

Holding a hand out for the glass, he mutters, "What the fuck was that guy, Pam? Apart from a raving madman."
It's most a rhetorical question. And meant to distract her from the fact that his fingers are shaking.

[lazy_but_loyal]

"No fucking idea," she mutters in return as she places the glass in his hand. She still notices that his fingers are unsteady, so she makes sure he won't spill anything.

"You should've seen him earlier. He was staring at the Observation Window like a fucking idiot. I could barely get his attention, so it's not my fault he didn't know what the rules were. Asshole."

[onceaviking]

Eric drinks. Deeply.

It helps. A little. Not enough.

"I hope he resists and gets torn into a million pieces. Did you see his face? Whatever he was, it wasn't human."

He wipes his mouth and can't help groaning a little as the healing momentarily speeds up enough to be visible. Regrowing skin fucking hurts.

[lazy_but_loyal]

"Fucking demonic, that's for sure."

She tilts her head, peering at Eric's own face, speaking of faces.

"It's working a little."

A little.

She takes the empty glass from him and wanders over to set it down on the low table.

"Was the guy in the red cape who I think he was?"

[onceaviking]

"Yes and no," Eric replies. His voice still sounds hoarse but he also sounds a little more there.
"I've spoken with him once. The name is the same, but - " He shakes his head. "It's a different version."

Not to mention the fact that it is disconcerting when things you very explicitly do not believe in suddenly show up.

[lazy_but_loyal]

"Goddamn place gets weirder and weirder," she sighs, rubbing her brow, and she sits down beside him, facing him.

"Might be in your favor that he's on Security, though. You can play up to the whole Norse god thing if you need to."

Thor had requested a little chat with them when all is sorted with the crazy guy.

[onceaviking]

"When I had the - disagreement with Sunshine, we both got celled immediately. Despite my face having been burned off. So -"

He shrugs.

If all they get is a talking to, perhaps cultural bias is already in their favor.

"At least he and the Goth understand honor."
Sometimes, modern people makes him so frustrated that he can barely contain it.

[lazy_but_loyal]

She nods and shrugs as well, and she reaches over to rub his knee.

"Well, you're my Norse god, whatever the case."

Her lips may twitch in a faint smirk but the way she looks at him through her eyelashes belies her devotion to him. If coming to her defense and fighting for her is old-fashioned, then she's fine with that.

[onceaviking]

He smiles a little at the smirk. Despite the way it makes the pain flare up again as the muscles of his face move.

And he places his large hand on hers. His thumb stroking her cold skin.
Slowly. Feeling the delicate bones of her wrist, the graceful curve of the fleshy part beneath her thumb.

[lazy_but_loyal]

She's about to tell him not to smile, that it would hurt, but the notion makes her smile, and she shakes her head, lowering her eyes.

His hand almost completely covers hers, dwarfing it. For all the gruesome violence he can perpetrate with those hands, he has always been gentle with her.

She glances back up at his little smile that must hurt right now. And for a split second she sees herself leaning in, kissing him. But it would probably be even more painful.

So she quickly dismisses the thought.

She wants to pull her hand away, but...

[onceaviking]

He isn't looking at her.
He is looking at their hands. Hers so small beneath his. Hardly visible. Elegant. Fragile.

He knows she isn't, not when she is not compared to, say, him. Physically. And he knows her inner strength, her core of steel. And yet, he cannot help but want to protect her. Shield her.

His thumb strokes widen, move a little up her forearm. Just above her wrist.
Her skin is smooth. As his.

He looks up at her. Her hair. Her high cheekbones and the shadows cast by her long lashes.
The delicate spot where her earlobes join her jaw, the stillness beneath where a human would have a beating pulse. Visible to any vampire.

Her lips. Perfectly shaped, but no longer perfectly painted.
He won't mention that.

Her eyes. Huge. Deep.

[lazy_but_loyal]

The way he looks at her hasn't changed in the century since they met, and that is what still gets to her. She can feel his eyes drift to every part of her, as intimately as if his glances were kisses.

He meets her gaze, and she falters, lowering her eyes with a rapid flutter of lashes.

She hadn't realized it but her hand had slid higher up his leg to just above his knee.


--There's an abrupt knock on the door, three short, sharp raps.

It startles Pam, and she turns her head, her touch tense.

It was just a lapse into sentimentality. That's all.

[onceaviking]

"Just a moment," he says, raising his voice a little.

The door's locked.

He starts getting up from the bed.

[i_am_your_host]

When the Master of Ceremonies had entered the bar tonight, it was at the end of a show, so he was in high spirits, flushed with adrenaline and the rush of hearing laughter and applause and catcalls. His only intention was to have a drink and perhaps a frivolous distraction, but upon going up to the bar, he receives a note.

The words, so formal and cold, yet written in such a feminine hand, and with such a cryptically urgent tone, is a little disconcerting. Emcee stares at it for a few moments, his demeanor the complete opposite of when he came in.

What could Eric possibly want? ...Well, his blood, yes. But why the note?

Pamela De Beaufort.

Eric had warned him not to approach her on his own. He had sort of laughed that off, but right now the danger is imminent.

Surely she can't be that dangerous.

Then again, Emcee is about to enter a room with two vampires in it. Yes, he is about to do this.

He folds up the note and slips it into his coat pocket, and with a bold and determined step, he heads upstairs.

After knocking on Eric's apartment door, he hears him call out. A little anxious, he glances up and down the hallway, waiting.

[lazy_but_loyal]

Eric starts to try to get up, but Pam stops him.

"Just sit up. I'll get the door."

She won't have him lying down and looking incapacitated because that's not what he is.

Standing, she straightens out her dress, her expression devoid of any emotion, and crosses the room toward the door.

[onceaviking]

He would prefer to get the door himself. But she is right.

He sits up, scooting back to rest against the headboard, and turns his head a little, so the first thing a Emcee sees will not be his ravaged face.

Trying to ignore the pain.

[i_am_your_host]

The door opens.

And the first person he sees is a beautiful but quite imposing blonde woman wearing a tight red dress and a stone-faced expression.

He blinks up at her. Then recovers.

"Fraulein De Beaufort?" he says evenly with a small bow and a polite smile. "Good evening. I am the Master of Ceremonies. I understand that Herr Northman has sent for me."

[lazy_but_loyal]

What.

Seriously.

This guy?

Really?

(He does have fabulous eye makeup, though.)

Nonplussed, Pam starts to internally question the company that Eric keeps here, but he has his reasons for everything, so this...person must have some value to him.

"...Yyyyeah."

She steps back, opening the door wider.

"Come on in."