saturday night and the moon is out

[feel_human]

Tucked away off the road in Bon Temps, there's a road house. Warm light spills from its windows, and the sound of a jukebox playing drifts out into the muggy Louisiana night. The regular assortment of trucks and Hail-Mary-please-keep-this-lemon-goin'-just-a-little-longer cars sit in the dirt parking lot; what amounts to about half the town's small population... or, at least, of those of the 'drinking age and above' persuasion.

Inside, it's a bar of the type scattered all across the American South: homey, no-nonsense. Booths and tables. A man in a plaid flannel shirt wiping the bar; a crossdresser in the kitchen singing Gospel hymns and rolling his hips in time with the words just to scandalize the prep cook. A handful of waitresses, bustling about.

Sookie makes her way briskly through it all, a tray balanced on her palm and her eyes kept stubbornly front, as voices swarm around her. Aloud, and... less so.

...I’m just going to have one beer tonight Jesus one beer that’s all...

...better not gripe about me eating fries not after what I did for him last night...

...I cannot wait to get the hell out of this podunk town...

 

 "Well, make sure you do, and before it’s too late," she responds, thoughtless, to the young man. "Because every year you wait? You just get more and more stuck here. Believe me, I know."

He stares at her. So do his parents.

So does the other table. And she realizes, too little too late, that he hadn't said that out loud, not at all. She laughs, uncomfortable. "I’ll get y'all some ketchup," she says, brightly, and flees, ponytail swinging against the nape of her neck as she goes.

Stupid, Sookie, she chides herself. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

 

Comments

[gavemea_45]

Sam's nursing his beer at the end of the bar, keeping an eye on the vampire's table and his unpleasant company. The man gives Sookie an ugly sneer as she stops to check in on them, and he can't help his own scowl at that.

[feel_human]

She hurries back to the bar, setting the tray down as she arrives. "Sam, we gotta do somethin'!"

Vampire or not, she can't just stand by and do nothing while the Rats murder him in cold blood. "The Rattrays, they know what he is, somehow – "

[gavemea_45]

"They do?" That gets his attention away from the table and completely on Sookie. He wouldn't have figured them for hunters, although come to think of it some of the crowd John knows is less pleasant than the ones they'd usually hung around.

"Well, okay, I guess, but if that's the case they probably don't need our help--"

[feel_human]

"Not them," she says, impatient. He could suck them dry, for all she cares, and the world would only be better off.

"Him! They're gonna drain his blood and sell it! We have to stop them!"

[gavemea_45]

"Sell it? What the hell," he mutters.

A very pained look crosses his face as she proposes rescuing the vampire. Dean's never going to believe this. However, one look at her's enough to make it clear that she's going to go off on her own if he doesn't help.

Sam sighs and slides from the barstool. "Okay, let's go."

[feel_human]

She allows a moment for a flash of gratitude, before turning around and realizing the booth where Bill had been sitting with the Rats is empty. "Shoot!" she swears, and scrabbles her apron off, dumping it on the bartop before breaking for the front door.

Outside, she pauses in the muggy night air and closes her eyes, listening hard.

– so thick like molasses damn this’ll bring a pretty penny –

"This way," she tells Sam, and makes for the far edge of the parking lot.

[gavemea_45]

He draws his gun from its holster at the small of his back and keeps pace at her side. As they get closer to the end of the lot, where it shifts into the narrow road, some odd rustling sounds can be heard, along with loud whispers.

"Hurry!" a man's voice hisses, to be answered by a woman's whine. "We should have taken him home."

[feel_human]

Her eye is caught by the glint of dull metal in a truck bed; she creeps closer and silently collect the length of chain there as Mack and Denise squabble.

Their soft footsteps bring them around the cars and toward a sheltered, shadowed section of the parking lot, where three figures come into view: Mack and Denise, huddled on either side of Bill's prone body. Silver gleams at his wrists and across his throat, and as his eyes catch hers she thinks she sees a glint of surprise amid the pain.

She lifts her finger in a silent gesture to shush him, then creeps up behind Mack, busily tying off a tourniquet, and brings the chain down hard on his head and back.

He stumbles and swears, then turns, vicious. "You crazy bitch!"

[gavemea_45]

"Get back." Sam steps up beside Sookie and levels the gun at the two of them. It's loaded with the silver shot rather than anything immediately deadly to humans, but it should still have stopping power - and they don't know what he's carrying, anyway. "Right the fuck now."

The vampire's sprawled flat on the ground, he sees, restrained by light silver chain. He'd have thought it'd have taken something heavier, but that it doesn't is good to know.

[feel_human]

"This is none of your business, you stupid bitch!" Denise spits at her, then glares at Sam. "Do you have any idea who you're messing with? You do not want to get on my bad side."

"I'm not sure you even have another side, you cheap backwoods trash," Sookie says, disgusted, then steps forward, threatening with the chain as Denise scrabbles for the vials of blood already drawn. "Uh-uh. That doesn't belong to you."

[gavemea_45]

Sam puts one in the dirt at the woman's feet and levels the gun back at her face. He splits his cold glare equally between her and the man, wheezing for breath on the ground. "I don't care. Last warning. Get gone, or else."

[feel_human]

"I will kill you for this," Denise promises, and leans forward to grab Mack, dragging him to his feet. "This isn't over!"

Still swearing, she hauls a stumbling Mack away. Sookie waits until they're gone, then drops the chain and rushes to Bill, crouching at his side. "What were you thinkin', goin' off with them?" she scolds, but her touch is gentle as she carefully peels the silver chain off his wrists and throat.

[gavemea_45]

"Sookie--" Sam swings around to keep the gun leveled at the vampire instead, covering her as she sets him free.

Through gritted teeth, he adds, "If you even think about hurting her, I'll finish what they started."

[feel_human]

"Sam, look at him. I don't think he could bite a kitten right now."

Sure enough, Bill's moving slow and sluggish, though the wounds from the silver begin to close almost instantly. He pushes himself laboriously up to sitting as the sound of the Rattrays' car squealing out of the lot ricochets through the trees. "He's right," he says, finally, his glance flicking from her to Sam and back again. "Vampires often turn on those who trust them."

His tone is utterly dry, and a little sarcastic. "We don’t have human values, you know."

"A lot of humans turn on those who trust them, too." She lifts the silver chain and wraps it around her throat. "I'm not a total fool."

[gavemea_45]

"You're not a fool." Trusting, generous, and just a bit reckless, but not a fool. "But I'm taking no chances." He doesn't meet Bill's eyes, keeping his glance around the vampire's chin and watching his shoulders and body for any sign of sudden movement.

"I've seen what can happen."

[feel_human]

Bill's glance slides from her to Sam before he returns it to her. "Oh, but you have other, very juicy arteries." His eyes track down along her body. "There’s one in the groin that’s a particular favorite of mine."

[gavemea_45]

The noise he makes at that is something very near an angry growl. Maybe the vampire himself'll break her kind sympathy for him.

"Are you trying to get me to blow your head off?"

[feel_human]

She could swear there's the faintest hint of amusement toying around the corners of Bill's mouth, and thinks he's just trying to get a rise out of them.

Well, maybe not just. For all she knows, he's telling the truth. "Watch it," she says, sharply. "You might be a vampire, but when you talk to me, you will talk to me like the lady that I am."

Bill watches them, silent. "Would you like to drink the blood they collected?"

She makes a disgusted face. "Ew. No."

[gavemea_45]

"Not a chance in hell." Sam eyes him. "Do you know what they wanted with it?"

[feel_human]

"There's quite an underground market for vampire blood, used as a recreational drug." Bill looks up at him. "I understand it make humans feel more healthy."

His glance flicks to Sookie, then back to Sam, cold and eloquent. "And improves their sex life."

[gavemea_45]

He's pretty sure he looks as weary and disgusted as he feels, at that. "Of course there is. Of all the stupid ideas I've ever heard, that's got to take the cake. Even worse than kids dressing up as Dracula."

[feel_human]

"Actually, we find that very flattering," Bill tells him.

Sookie startles at a scuffle of sound, then relaxes as the brown and white collie comes running up. It sets itself at her side and reaches up to lick her face until she giggles, then turns, stiff-legged, and barks warningly at Bill.

"He's checkin' up on you," the vampire observes.

[gavemea_45]

"You would," Sam mutters. He shifts to the side to have a better angle with less risk of hitting Sookie or the collie, just in case.

"He's a good dog."

[feel_human]

"Oh, no doubt," says Bill. He sounds amused.

The collie washes Sookie's face again, then runs off into the woods, tail waving like a flag and leaving the three of them in their stand-off. Sookie considers Bill, the way he's holding himself, the annoyance in his face. "I reckon you're not too happy about bein' rescued by a couple humans," she says, and he watches her with unblinking eyes.

"Oh," he says, softly. "I think you are somethin' more than human."

[gavemea_45]

"That why you're focused on her?" Sam says, sharp and intent. "Why you're stalking her?"