Take Me To Church *One Shot*

Take Me To Church

I think my life had a different course plotted when I first saw him.  I think that’s true, but my pursuit of this man, this creature, this elusive lover of my dreams had cost me my memories and my soul.  I was nothing now but the shell that held the dream that one night I would do something that would garner his powerful favor.

I think this is true.  I think that because sometimes in my dreams I catch glimpses of who I used to be, who I was before I saw Eric Northman for the first time.   I don’t remember it, that memory was stolen from my mind, along with countless others.  I believe it to be true because now, to remember who I am I read my old journals and try to collect the pieces of me that I willingly bartered away every time I entered into his presence.

Every night I went home and wrote down everything I could remember, and even then I knew that pieces of me were being stolen.  The bloodstains on my clothes I couldn’t explain, the pounds I didn’t remember losing, and the aging that I saw in the mirror proved that things were happening that I didn’t know about.  Some nights I wondered if I had already climbed that tall Swedish mountain and had the ecstasy of that success stripped away from me as well as my sense of self.

I prayed that it wasn’t so.  I didn’t believe anyone heard the prayers I sent up, but every night I prayed to myself between the covers of countless journals.  I knew from how they treated me that I was less than person to them, but they took me in, and let me play my bit part on the stage of their night.

I could not and would not walk away.

I knew from my journal that Fangtasia had been my idea.  His throne that he graced every night was my idea.  Elevating this creature of the night to a god had been my idea.  My journal told me that I wanted to take the sadness away from his eyes.  I didn’t remember seeing it but I had at one time, or so the pages of me said.

The pages told me that while taking Longshadow as my lover had not been my idea, I had come to see that it could be to my advantage to learn how to please a vampiric lover.  To learn what they want and what they need so that I might please him best of all of them.  I traveled that dark hell, and gave up more of myself to get closer to him.

I didn’t read those pages often.  What I did with Longshadow I could not believe that I would ever do with Eric Northman.  Those depravities, those abuses were not part of his darkly dreaming soul.  Of all these recorded nights, I am drawn over and over to one part.

I wanted this to be closer to Eric, and I find myself further away than ever.  The disappointment in his eyes when he looks at me now guts my soul.  I wish I knew how to get from here to there.

For all that I had longed to hold his gaze and feel his touch, I knew in my writing that how he treated the fangbangers was not what I wanted.  I called him master and longed to have him call me his.  He used them, fed from them and sent them on their way and in my deepest darkest pain I thought even that, that would be better than nothing.

Those thoughts only underscored that I was nothing.

I had made myself nothing in pursuit of this one thing that I coveted above all others.

In those moments I knew why he could never love me.

I was unworthy.

I wanted this to be closer to Eric, and I find myself further away than ever.  The disappointment in his eyes when he looks at me now guts my soul.  I wish I knew how to get from here to there.

When I read those words I felt the darkness swirling at my feet, the realization that I had come too far away from the kind of woman that he would have ever seen.

He didn’t want to be a god.  The pedestal I had made for him was too tall. He had no interest in posing there.

Then, just as I connected these dots, my memories would be wiped again and I would be lost in the quiet roar of glamour, knowing that there was something I was supposed to remember, some path that I had found and had been just about to step on before it disappeared.

When he told me he was dying the world fell away from me, as the realization that all my sacrifices had been for nothing.  It was all for nothing.  My immortal god was dying and I would never have a chance to show him the soul that I cobbled together from my writing to offer him something that might be worthy of him.

It was by accident that I found him alive and returned to the temple that I made to worship him. I was elated that finally I had taken the time to reread and remember all of me, and put together the closest thing I could manage to the woman that had walked through the door of his video store so long ago.

I took this woman to the temple and waited for my god to appear.

When he entered like storm I had such plans for what I would say and what I would do, but the man I found before me was not what I had imaged nor what I had hoped to find.

“Were you ever gonna tell me you weren’t dyin’?  Or do I just not matter to you at all?”  He swept toward me, hitting the bar beside me so hard that it vibrated.  His face was a mask of pain and anger, and I searched my patched memories for all the times I had ever seen this look on his face.  I came up with a name.

Sookie.

Only she did this to my dream lover.  For all the times I had envied her, hated her, longed to be her, tonight I was so glad that I was not.  I could not have borne the pain of hurting this wondrous creature as she had so obviously done.

Again.

“Ginger!”

“What?”

“I’ve spent my entire night flying around dealing with other people’s relationship problems.  Now, does that sound like me to you?”

“No. No, it doesn’t.”

“No, so if you’re feeling a little jilted that you weren’t the first person I came running to when I got cured, I apologize.” I knew who he had gone to first. It was who he always went to first.

She was such a fool, and I felt my hatred for her come bubbling up again.  Before I could give voice to my anger on his behalf he took my breath away with his next words.  “And I would like to make it up to you by fucking you.”  I took a breath.  A deep breath and closed my eyes.

After so long spent kneeling at his pedestal begging him to see me, he had finally opened his eyes.

“Did you not hear me, Ginger? You and I are finally gonna fuck.”  All the pages of me flipped through my mind and I said the impossible.

“Why?”  He blinked and pulled back from me as though I had struck him.

“Because it’s what you want!  It’s what you have always wanted.”  He was right, and he was oh so fucking wrong that I lacked the words or the wherewithal to explain why his words were like a knife in my heart.  I did want to fuck him.  But only if he wanted to fuck me.  The shreds of who I had been stood up then, and reached out and took his hand in mine.

“No.”

“NO?” his face broke my heart.

“No. I would do anything for you.  I would fuck you right here, right now if that was what you wanted, but I can tell that it is not.”  He blinked and I saw his shoulders slump in defeat.  Not because of what I had said, but because the weight he had been carrying when he walked through the door finally broke him. “If I could I would take this pain you have from you.  I would offer you my life if I thought it would make the tiniest bit of difference, but I know that it would not.  For that no one could be sorrier than me.”

The radio was playing over the speakers of Fangtasia and in that moment Take Me To Church by Hozier started playing.  I smiled and thought that for all my planning and hoping and waiting there  was nothing more perfect that could have laid down the soundtrack to this moment. It reassured me that I was making not only the ONLY decision I could make in this moment, I was making the BEST decision.

His hand still in mine, I pulled him to me and wrapped my arms around my god and started to sway softly to the music.  He let me do that, and I smiled when I felt his arms come around me and his chin come to rest on the top of my head.
My lover’s got humour
She’s the giggle at a funeral
Knows everybody’s disapproval
I should’ve worshiped her sooner

If the heavens ever did speak
She’s the last true mouthpiece
Every Sunday’s getting more bleak
A fresh poison each week

Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life

 

“I know what it feels like, Eric.  It’s an ache that nothing can heal, except maybe time. You have plenty of that.”  I hugged him closer for a moment.  I stopped then, enjoying the feel of his large cool body next to mine, willingly.  I had so much I wanted to say, and about four minutes to speak the words that we would be both be living with for the rest of our lives.

 

No Masters or Kings
When the Ritual begins
There is no sweeter innocence than our gentle sin

In the madness and soil of that sad earthly scene
Only then I am Human
Only then I am Clean
Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen

 

“The one thing I am taking away from all this is that to give yourself over completely into the hands of someone else, someone that you pin all your hopes and dreams on, will lead to your destruction.

“What you have done tonight doesn’t sound like you.  Sounds like you have already started down this path.  All you have is yourself, Eric, never let anyone take it from you and above all things, never ever just give yourself away.  There is no one who will ever love you as well or as much as you can love yourself.”  He hugged me closer then, perhaps because I was crying, but I chose to believe it was because he had heard me, maybe for the first time ever he had actually heard me.

It felt fucking amazing and I hugged him back just a little tighter, too, before I went on.

“You taught me that, Eric.  I admit, I am a slow learner, but you had the advantage in that you and Pam kept chipping away at who I was with your glamour.”  I heard him take a breath, to speak and I squeezed him tighter.  I didn’t want his apologies or excuses.  “Glamour that I consented to every time I walked through that door.  I was just focused on what I wanted, so much so that I was willing to ignore what it was costing me.”  I raised my head then and looked in his eyes, which were even more stormy and pained than when he walked in.

Seeing his pain for me vindicated my long held belief that he was worthy of my sacrifice, even if it was a sacrifice that he had never asked for, and had never wanted, at least not from me.

“I’m not going to fuck you, Eric.  Think of me perhaps as being the only person who would never treat you so callously, like a thing.  Think of me perhaps as a fool for passing up what I have paid for with blood and pain and soul and thousand times over.  Think of me as you will, and I will have some peace at last knowing that you think of me at all.”

I pulled him down to me then and kissed him softly on the cheek.  I lingered there, wishing that this had turned out so very differently for us both.  His large hand came up to my face and when I pulled back I looked at him and smiled through my tears.

He looked as he did all those years ago, as immune to time as he was to me.

I did the impossible then, I walked away.  The door of Fangtasia closed behind me for the last time as the final words of the song faded out.

Take me to church
I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies
I’ll tell you my sins and you can sharpen your knife
Offer me that deathless death
Good God, let me give you my life

32XXXXXXXXXXX23

I cried myself to sleep that night. The next day a package arrived by courier.  I opened a box full of money and a note.

To fund the dreams of the woman that was, and is.

Thank you, for everything.

Eric

I cried as I packed, but by the time I crossed the Shreveport city line I was smiling.

I was thinking of all the ancient cultures and mythologies that I had studied so long ago in college and wondered if in a thousand years someone would find the temple I had built in a strip mall to the god of my heart, and if his throne would still be there waiting for him to return.

 

~The End~

 

A/N-Special thanks to Hozier for his haunting song Take Me to Church.