HOUSE CALL 5 (A STITCH IN TIME)

by Apache

Content:
Het
Vachon/Tracy
Implied or Graphic Sexual Situations
No Violence

Skipping about 25,000 words of preliminaries....  this part happens in the same thread as House Calls, between (iii) and (iv)

OK, it's spring, and a young girl's fancy turns to... the vampire she's been hanging around with for the last several months.

It was one of those times that Vachon was over at my place.  He'd run through his little ritual of investigating something in my apartment. Tonight it was the game files on my computer-- actually, it is truly awesome to watch someone do the huge grid of Minesweeper in three seconds flat.  But now we were just hanging around listening to music.  It was my night off, and every night is his night off, and the whole thing just felt pleasantly languid.

I had a bright idea.  An impulse, a desire.  Call it what you like.  A delusion, maybe.  Anyway, I hopped up and said, "Wait a minute.. don't move, OK?" and trotted back to my bedroom.

My hair is ultrafine and won't hold a snarl any more than it will hold a perm, but I do have a hairbrush as well as a comb.  A good one, boar bristles.  I picked it up and bounced back into the living room, full of my happy impulse.

He flinched when the brush first touched his head.  You have to figure a fair amount of trust was involved in him just letting me come up behind him and touch him at all, since touching is not something we do. That I do.  The rule seems to be, he gets to touch me, my hair, with little strokes, and everything else is hands off.

"Lean forward a little, OK?"  I swear, I truly thought this was harmless.  Between the motorcycle and flying, his hair is always so wild...  Oh hindsight.

The brush couldn't do much at first against a tangled thatch like that, but I'd made up my mind...  After a minute, I could pull it through one section of his hair, and I just kept going.  Long, incredibly thick, heavy black hair, and now I'd given myself an excuse to stick my fingers in it, pick apart tangles the brush tightened, smooth it down when I'd gotten a section clear.

And who doesn't love to have their hair brushed?  The nice scratch across the scalp, the gentle pull on the muscles of the neck... it's a caress, but not too personal, not so intimate that you're crossing a line you can't ever go back from.

He went through stages-- nervously stiff at first, relaxing, and finally complete pleasure-- and I got to have that black silk in my hands and play with it, and make it even more beautiful, even softer.

When I was close to done, I started brushing it flat against his back, so the brush was running lightly across his shirt, down his shoulders, just a little scrape down the ends of the longest hair and teasingly just past them onto his back.

I meant to stop then, but after I'd let a few seconds go by without doing something new with his hair, he rocked forward on the sofa, tucked a knee under himself to get some height, and peeled his shirt off in one quick fluid motion.  All without looking around at me, without a word.

And I was looking at the length of his back, pale and muscular, almost without blemish, the thin, strong body that had been frozen in the middle of a soldier's youth centuries ago.  He bowed his head slightly, pulling the raw ends of the dark hair high onto the white shoulders, still not looking around, not moving at all once he'd presented me with this new situation.

I snorted softly, thinking, yeah, scratch your back and you'll scratch mine?  But the wisecrack would have ruined the moment, spoiled whatever it was he was offering me.  And I really, really wanted to know where this could go.

I stroked his back with the brush so lightly he could barely have felt it, but it was clear from the little shudder that went through him that he had.  So I scratched a little harder with the brush, following the lines of muscles, tracing the ribs outward from the spine, dipping into the grooves where the shoulderblades end, the place where my Dad told me the wings would grow when I got to be an angel.  And I was stroking the back of a demon... unh-uh.  I was doing something, I didn't really know what, with Vachon.

He shivered again as I began to reach around his sides with the brushstrokes, following the ribcage around toward the front -- ticklish?  I wanted to ask, to tease, but this mood, this place we were in together, was as soft and delicate as eiderdown, and more fragile than smoke.  Let it alone... and I ran the brush down his arms, over the short black hairs on his forearms, making a little silent joke of brushing them into a wave pattern.  And then there was nothing more to do, no other part of him to brush, unless I was going to push it, reach around him and run the bristles down his chest, into the line of black hair that runs down his belly toward his groin...  So I stopped.  No pushing this time.  Whatever's going to happen next, let him do it.

And the two of us stood there like sculptures, not speaking, him kneeling on the sofa, me standing behind it, lined up one in front of the other like dominoes or chessmen, for a long moment.  Then his head came up and he twisted around, still propped up on one knee, to face me.

His eyes were pure curiosity.  Just soft and full of wonder.  He was as far into unknown territory as me-- more, maybe.  Push it or stop now? What's possible?  What do I want?  And you?  His eyes are so dark I saw myself in them, a fairly ordinary blonde girl standing in her living room holding a hairbrush.  He reached for me, only landing his fingertips on my arms and curling them to pull me closer, all without any expression but that powerful curiosity, not even any desire.

And me, what was I showing him?  Fear and longing, probably. Confusion tied to a curiosity that's like his, but easier to have, because I'm the normal one who lives in the regular world and is safe there.  I'm the one with a home and a family and a job and a life, with an identity that isn't just some faked passport and a glib line of chatter.  And I was thinking of what he told me, no birds/no bees/no mortals, and feeling like we might just slip through the cracks unnoticed in a moment as suspended as this...

A kiss.  Gentle, but like the pull of his fingers, it just kept increasing until we were pressed against each other hard, kissing each other hard, hungrily, all the pent up desire flooding out into one single kiss, so full of need, a kiss that somehow was made entirely of taking for both of us--

His arms spasmed around me.  He lifted me over the back of the couch, slamming me down, and his body landed on me like a slab of rock. By the time my head hit the pillow, Vachon had clamped his teeth into my shoulder like a bulldog, ripping into the flesh right through the blouse, then holding.  I tried to react, but I couldn't move at all, couldn't squirm, couldn't flail an arm.  He had one hand slapped over my mouth to stop the scream that formed-- an expert move, thumb holding the jaw all but closed so the throat couldn't open, a finger curled inside the mouth, immobilizing the tongue.

And then nothing happened.  The pain was horrible, the fire and pull of his bite into my body, and there was a single initial convulsion of his body-- I felt him suck, felt him swallow-- and then nothing more. I couldn't move, and he didn't move.  There 'd been a moment of that purring snarl I heard when he killed Vudu, and now nothing.

Nothing.  He was rigid, silent, and I only knew he was still conscious by his instant and absolute response to my efforts to squirm.  I tried gnawing on the finger in my mouth, but it instantly and painfully pressed against the roof of my mouth to force my jaws apart.  One finger, that strong.  And nothing else moved.  Most of all, there was no lessening of the terrible grip on my shoulder.  No more sucking, but no letting go. Then, as time went on, the first wave of terror wore off and I realized what had happened, what was still happening.

More stillness.  And then he made another animal noise, something like a polar bear's chuff from way deep in his gut. He let go, got up, grabbed his shirt, pulled it on, and moved into a corner like I was going to attack him, all very fast.  And then he just stood there, arms crossed, eyes blank -- yellow and weird  -- practically catatonic.

Attack him?  I could barely move, but I had to do something about my shoulder.  I also had to take care of him, if it was possible.  We were stupid, and we'd made the same mistake a second time.  And, scared though I was, I was also pretty sure he'd just saved my life again.  //And he's staying...//

"Vachon, thanks."

They were the first words between us since I'd touched the brush to his head.  They didn't come out much louder than a whisper, but they didn't need to.  Then I hauled myself up to go look in the bathroom mirror to find out how bad it was.

Not too terrible, which is to say he hadn't actually pulled out a hunk of flesh.  I peeled off my blouse, which aside from being torn had stains where he'd sucked blood through.  In the front, all I could see was a fairly light imprint of ordinary tooth marks, but using a hand mirror I saw the fang marks on my back.  They were kind of triangular, deep punctures, still oozing blood.

I lost it for a moment then, freaked and closed my eyes and leaned forward against the mirror over the sink, trying hard not to scream, not to frighten the wild animal in my living room -- and not to cause any more pain to the man who was in there with it.  I stuffed a towel in my mouth and cried for a minute as quietly as I could, and then reason came back and started telling me what to do.

//Don't think you can go to the ER with this one, Trace.//

OK, no, but clean it up and slap a bandage on it.  Basic first aid for bites, no matter what bit you.  Or who-- I ducked my head backward to look through the bathroom doorway at Vachon, and said "do I need a tetanus shot?" -- jokingly.  No response.  Still life of a man with yellow eyes and black hair staring at a carpet.  A man gone way deep inside himself, back wedged into a corner. //But he hasn't run away.  He's still right here.//

I have iodine and alcohol and all kinds of good, painful stuff in the medicine cabinet, so I pulled it out, gripped the bottles against my side and twisted the caps off, and poured some on.  It was awkward, though, and I ducked my head back into the open doorway again.  "Think you could lend me a hand?"  Nothing.  I went back to what I was doing, trying to apply a gauze bandage to my own back one-handed.

Twenty seconds or more later, I heard him say "No."

"Huh?"  Darting out to the doorway.

"No," he repeated.  Very quietly, without inflection, but coming back to himself.

He looked up, still yellow-eyed.  "I can't get near you," he said. There was strain in his voice.

"Oh, okay, fine. I'm doing fine," I said hastily.  He was staying, that was the main thing...  I poured some more iodine over the slope of my shoulder, yelped as some of it actually reached the bite marks, and threw a towel over it, scuttling off to my bedroom for a sweatshirt I wouldn't mind staining.

And he was still there...  I went back to the sofa and sat down. I was so far in shock, I think, that I was behaving normally.  The bells weren't starting to ring in my head yet, the moment hadn't come when I'd seriously lose it and flip out and bounce off the walls.  //You first, Vachon,// I thought.  //'Cause you're still here.//

"Is this too close?"  He was about eight feet away, I figured. Arms wrapped around himself like something would fall out if he was jostled.

No answer.  I noticed I was sitting next to the pillow with my blood on it, still very red and fresh.  //That's not helping,// I thought, and turned it over.  No, on second thought... I lobbed it into the bathroom, hoping out of sight was out of mind.

"We need to talk," I said.  TV dialogue-- but what do you say?

The yellow eyes blinked, but the voice was familiar.  Softspoken.  "It's pretty simple.  I just bit you."

"Do I taste good?"  //What are you -saying-, Trace?//

But it was the right thing.  So unexpected it shocked him out of his stillness.  The yellow faded into brown-black, and he was looking at me with the same affectless curiosity we started with.  Then his eyes crinkled a little.  "Wonderful," he said, very softly.

"Good."  This made me grin; everyone likes a compliment -- even a demented vampire one.  "Come sit down."  He didn't move, so I went and got him.  He shivered when I touched him, tried to shrink a little further into the corner, but his eyes stayed dark and human, which was more than I hoped for.  "C'mon, Vachon," I said, and pulled at his arm.  He let me do it, push him down on the sofa and sit a foot or so away, but he wouldn't meet my eyes.

"It's pretty simple," I said, mimicing his tone.  "We want to have something here.  We have to figure out how before something terrible happens."

"You're talking about your death," he said.  His gaze flickered to mine for a split second, then went back to the floor.  "That's all that can happen, unless you come across."

"I don't believe it," I said.  "You're not gonna kill me.  You keep inventing new ways not to kill me, no matter how hard I try... "  Now his eyes were fixed on me, curious, but harder-looking than before.  I gave him look for look.  "Trust me on this, Vachon.  You just won't do it."

"Trust you."  The irony was back.

"Yeah," I said.  I felt crazy and cocky, sure of myself.  Sure I was right about him.  "Vachon--" and then my nerve failed.

We let a long minute go by in silence, but it wasn't awful.

"I've been told it's possible," he said finally, very quietly, not his humorous self at all.  His eyebrows went up at my seeming incomprehension.

"Exactly what you're thinking, Tracy," he said.  "Sex.  Fucking. Lovemaking.  Without coming across."  He sighed. I must have made some kind of sound, because two or three expressions crossed his face that said, don't turn coy now.  And you were never stupid.  And other things I didn't understand. I nodded.

"Or we could just never see each other again," I said.  Now my eyes were glued to the carpet.  A long minute passed.

"You said 'thanks,'" he said softly.

 I looked up, surprised, and found him looking at me with one of those small smiles that come out when he's happy about something, enjoying something.

"Well, I would have screamed, but you didn't let me."

Another smile.  "Tracy..."  It trailed off.  He was looking at me from a pretty far distance.

"It may be inevitable," I said.  I gave him a smile that turned into one of those twisted, rueful expressions.  "Why don't we try to make a plan before somebody gets hurt?"  //Me, actually.//

"Bad idea, Trace," he said, smiling slightly.  "It really is."

But then he slid down the sofa and pulled me toward him, ignoring my "ouch," and stroking my hair.  He sighed, and spoke very softly into the air over my head.  "On the other hand, bad ideas are kind of a specialty with me."

I twisted my head and leaned back to rest it on his chest, and his arms slid around me. It was an actual hug, just me tilted onto his chest, my head tucked under his chin, and him wrapping his arms around me, like an actual couple sitting on a sofa.  Then his muscles tightened for a moment and I heard him take one quick, deep breath, involuntarily.  I froze, and waited.  It happened: he relaxed, I felt his body unclench.  It made me smile.  It'll work, it's destiny.  Or something.

"So... good, huh?"  How else could I tell him?

I felt his head tilt to the side, like it does when he's deep in confusion, and some of those freshly-brushed soft black locks spilled down in front of my eyes.

"The best," he murmured into my hair.

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