THE BEST LAID PLANS

by Apache

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

We planned this better than D-Day.

Just before dawn, because he'll get sluggish, less apt to kill.  His place, so he'll feel maximum secure. (He didn't say it, but I bet he's also thinking, like I am, that if this fails, it'll be easier for him to get rid of the body from here than from my apartment.)  Biting into the jugular, not the carotid, because he likes oxygenated, arterial blood best and will be less apt to keep drinking venous blood for the sheer pleasure of it. (A month ago, I didn't know the difference between the two, let alone that they tasted different.  Oh God this is sooo weird...) Plus the pressure is less; the vein will have a better chance of closing, less internal and external leakage afterward.

Driving over to Vachon's at the end of my work shift, my brain went back over every little detail.  Ordinarily -- well, with a real guy -- I'd be thinking about makeup, perfume, lingerie, what I'm wearing, if he'll like it, how it will go.  If I'll like it.

Oh, I'm thinking about how it will go, alright.  If I'll survive it.

But... I have never, never wanted to be with a man so much in my life.  That expression, joined at the hip-- even when I'm blowing him off, I feel connected to him, glad he's there, glad just to look at him.  In a perverse way, I enjoy his confusion and his hurt as well as his happiness just because it's him. And the little part of me that's been completely secure about this all along, the part of me that -knows- I'll be okay as if it's seen the future, is still there, and it's still sure.

Actually, most of his participation in this plan was "yes" and "no," with occasional informational addenda.  It's kind of cute, really: Vachon is a little bit squeamish about his own vampire habits, sort of like mortal prudery.  Which I'm full of, to be perfectly honest -- I mean, we weren't virgins in my sorority, but we weren't a bunch of biker sluts, either.  But I can't afford to be shy or demure or anything this time, because it will kill me dead if we do a single thing wrong.  I know for him it's all mixed up with not letting mortals know anything about vampires -- *don't write this word down,* I think like a reflex now -- but it's also personal to him.  It's like with an ordinary guy dying of embarrassment if you ask why he wears jockeys or boxers.  (Not if, *why* -- that's the one that gets them.)

Dying of embarrassment... no...  Actual dying is what's on the line here.  For me, anyway.  What it means to him... I don't know.  We had a fight along the way, during which he pointed out that for him this is not about pleasure, that *vampire* sex is his pleasure.

To me, vampire sex sounds a lot like the torture from the old Fu Manchu movies called 'the death of a thousand cuts.'

Death.  Everything vampire leads back to death...

But that's not going to happen.  I know that for sure.  I don't know how I know, but I know.  Fate.  Destiny.  I don't know, but I *know.*

Even so, my whole body got the shakes as I went into the church.  My shift had been quiet; Nick was preoccupied with I-don't-know-what-and-he-wasn't-saying, which happens so frequently it doesn't bug me anymore.  It's just Nick.  It doesn't make him any less reliable or terrific a cop.  And I was preoccupied with the "T-minus five hours" countdown that was happening in my head.  I bet I looked at my watch more times tonight than I usually do in a whole month...  And now, here it was.

The place was illuminated with a zillion candles, which would have been romantic if Vachon ever cleaned the cobwebs off the candelabra.  He wouldn't let me do it, either, so I was left thinking either he really likes the whole horror-movie appearance of the place, or he really likes spiders, or he doesn't want me interfering with his space or it's some vampire thing I know nothing about (they have a spider cult religion?)....  the pointless exercise of trying to guess Vachon's thinking.  Anyway, the warm golden light of candles...

And there's Vachon on the bed.

"Hi," I said, shaking even harder.  It's not just fear now, though.

Nothing.  God, you'd think he'd say hello.  So I'm still walking over there, and he's still not moving, not even lifting his head to look at me...  and I hear a sound I've never heard from him before, not the tiger growl of his kill, not the polar bear wuff of his sorrow... no, in fact, I know this noise.  It's perfectly human.

It's snoring.

The son of a bitch is asleep.

Actually, he has started making the church a little more like a place to live in, using some of the big dust covers as room dividers.  And putting in a bed.

"Vachon?"  I sat down next to him on the edge of the bed.

"Vachon?"  I bounced the bed a little.

"Vachon?"  I gave him a nudge.

"Vachon!"  This was a big, hard shove.

"Zzzzz.. ?"  His eyes opened about a millimeter.  He smiled.  "Hi, Tracy," he said in a happy wooze.  His eyes opened a little wider.

Vachon's pupils are usually contracted even in very low light; it's one of those things cops notice like second nature.  But tonight his pupils were like dinner plates.... stoned.  My hot Latin immortal vampire demon lover was absolutely gorked out.  In that happy, oblivious, accepting state....

"What have you done?" I said softly.

"Ohhhh," he said beamingly.  "I fed... I ate a lot."  He smiled beatifically.  "I'm kind of sleepy, you know?"  I stared at him.  He smiled some more, and his eyes drifted closed.

This was not part of the plan.  Not part of *my* plan, anyway.  There I was, shaking with fear and desire, in the company of an ecstatically relaxed sleeping vampire.

"Oh Jeez," I said out loud.  And laughed -- I mean, what do you do? I felt like his Mom... don't sleep in your clothes, kiddo...  I laughed again.  Yeah, the best laid plans...

"C'mon, Vachon."  I started tugging at his shirt.  "C'mon, sit up just a little."  The eyes slitted open again, slightly, and the cherubic smile reappeared. //Cherubic... that's the first time I ever thought of that word for Vachon.// I laughed again.  "Come on, arch your back a little, that's it, now your shoulders..."  What a hoot.  It was like trying get clothes off my five year old nephew when he's fallen asleep watching TV or something... he doesn't really wake up, yet he does what I ask.  It's possible to get him completely out of his playclothes and into his pajamas without ever really waking him up.

So I got the shirt off, and there's the sleeping vampire's chest... and I realized my nerve falls short of peeling off his jeans.  OK, well, I can just fold the blanket over him and take off; it's bedtime for both of us anyway.  Not like I'd originally had in mind, but bedtime.

Um, but there's his chest...  He's so pale, and the fine black hairs stand out against his skin so vividly, beautifully even.... "Zzzzzzzz," said Vachon.  It made me giggle.  OK, fine, you want to be an inanimate object?  I'm going to indulge myself.

I bent over him and laid a hand on his belly, right on the soft part where it slopes up toward the ribs.  Cold, cold.  I guess he's just room temperature, but it's kind of like touching a table and feeling the chill before your hand warms it a little...  but he's soft, this is flesh, cold flesh; and not like a corpse at all -- the resistance, the feel of his body under the skin -- it doesn't have the creepy laxness of death. This is just a really cold living being.  Sort of living -- it's eerie because your eyes are saying one thing and your sense of touch is telling you something else entirely.

My hand ran up the curve of the gut to the hard surface of his ribcage, and now I was feeling how the skin and muscle lay over each of the individual ribs, his muscles long and smooth like a runner's, not bunchy but hard, strong, he would have been strong even as a young soldier before this happened to him.  My other hand landed on the other side of his ribs and I just let myself have it, the feel of him... the smooth, cool skin, the soft hairs on his chest, not very curly, more flat and silky, spreading from a patch over his breastbone out toward the nipples and circling them... my hands slid over to the nipples and rubbed them with my palms, swept my thumbs across them and saw how even in sleep they responded, and my fingertips went back to touch them, to feel exactly their slight rising.  I noticed their exquisite rosy brown color and how the points were like buds, the way men always write about women's nipples, but not like flower buds, more like new wood on a tree at the first of spring, like it was a few weeks ago, before the leaves sprout.  At a time of beginning.... I let my hands slide up and down the gentle rises and falls of his pectorals, up to the shoulders, the arms with their muscles, the vivid ridge of the big vein that feeds the biceps, and down his forearms with their carpet of fine black hair, to the small-boned wrists, the long fingers.  And then I started again, flattening my hands on his belly, following the curves that spilled off it to run my hands along his waist, tracing the long line of black hair that runs down from his breastbone past his navel, thin as a flowerstem, flared side to side like the little bits of a wheat sheaf until it reaches another thick patch just below the navel, rubbing the belly again, and back up onto his chest again...  I've actually never touched a man like this before, just free to feel him, not also feeling his hands reaching for me, his body moving on mine, wanting something, wanting to get me... just this pleasure of feeling muscle, feeling a man's body, almost a man's, Vachon so strangely chilly, have to remember what he is....

Vachon's eyes were opening, and he was focusing on me, wakening enough that one of his hands came up, ran up my arm to the elbow and past, feeling the silk of my blouse and then finding the shape of my shoulders below it, up to my neck and my jawline, and then a little pressure saying, lean down to me-- not enough to make me, just enough to be asking, and I bent and his arms came around me and we kissed, a slow, easy kiss, him on the brink of sleep and yet not, me starting to shake again--

He responded to that, shifted, pulled himself up on one elbow as we separated from the kiss and said "shhhhhhhhh..."  And he sat up and faced me, kissed my forehead, my cheeks, feathering light kisses all over my face, around the edges of my lips... as I was kissing him the same way, just light touches, and then his lips came to mine.  Mostly awake, and kissing like a man, but beyond any man I have ever known, with some power, or assurance, or sense of possession that I have never felt from anyone before, like this was the beginning of his taking--

All those words, possession, surrender, they all sound like romance novel junk to me, like women who don't want their own strength, don't really want to run their own lives, would rather just let someone else make their decisions. Not that I don't totally gobble up romantic novels and movies -- but when it comes to real life, do I really expect or even -want- Daniel Day-Lewis to show up with his great big long rifle just as I'm about to be burned at the stake?  No -- I carry a badge and a gun, and I prefer to solve my own problems, thank you very much.  So -- heaving bosom, trailing lace, clingy female with huge eyes that silently plead 'take over my life' -- forget it.  All of it totally revolting if you ask me, and yet here is this vampire, silently asserting his right to me and every nerve in my body is agreeing, 'you bet, I'm all yours...' I've never felt like this with a man, never felt like I wanted it like this, it was just something that would happen, could be nice, but no man ever made me shiver before, it was always just what they wanted and what I wanted, call it a good time, call it love, it wasn't this, not something that made me shiver and it's not just fear of dying that's doing it.  His hands slid under my blouse, cold, but I was already shaking, then came out to the front of my blouse and undid the buttons, with kisses still dropping on my face, my ears, my neck, my hair, and his hands sliding all over me, pushing the blouse away from my shoulders and off entirely, sliding the bra off.

And then he stopped to look.  I was watching his face, and I was terrified... what if he doesn't want me?  I'm just this skinny stick figure of a girl, bones standing out all over me, you could hang a coathanger off my collarbones, my breasts are hardly worth the name, you can pretty much count my ribs.  And then he met my eyes and saw it all, the fear that had nothing to do with what he was, the wanting...  He came another notch awake with that, and his eyes... his eyes are almost black, and it's so dark in there, candles or no, and yet his eyes were glowing at me, full of desire and somehow saying it was only for me, only for this shivering skinny woman, the gawky beanpole with the way-too-thin blonde hair and the huge jaw and weird mouth and the unwomanly body...  He pulled me into another kiss, a devastating, enveloping kiss, crushing me into him, his skin cold against mine but it was the feel of a man, no, *the* man, the only one I've ever wanted like this.  And finally my arms wrapped around him as well, and it wasn't an exploration or an experiment or an anything anymore-- it wasn't even two distinct kinds of creatures anymore, we got lost in each other, everything that was different between us somehow wildly irrelevant to these two people who wanted each other so much.

He pulled me down on the bed, rolling me over the top of him to lie beside him, and kissed me again, just lightly.  He looked awake, and Vachon, now, not that like druggy, inert guy passed out on the bed.  For some reason, it only hit me at that moment t hat it was going to happen after all, and I shivered again, which reminded me that on top of everything else I was actually cold.  I jumped off the bed, and his eyes followed me with a question.  I flipped back the blanket and sheet, and he grinned.  Then I took a really deep breath and started to unzip my skirt.

Vachon's eyes flared like a struck match.

I shook again, but this, of all things, we knew would happen.  And it didn't mean he was completely gone.  Even though there are only the tiniest traces of expression in his eyes when they go vampire, he's still in there, still himself.  The vampire will take over completely, but this isn't the moment, not quite yet...  "Say something," I whispered...

Now he really grinned, that flash of pure male sexiness that has flattened me since the first time I ever saw it -- and that first time, he still had blood on his face from the plane crash.  It's even more devastating when you're standing right next to his bed -- even if it happens to show you his fangs.  He slipped over to where I was, pushing my hands away from my skirt, pulling the last of my clothing off with urgency, need, and yet not lost in the lust or the blood, not utterly -- kissing my navel, and sort of pretend-gnawing at it, scraping his teeth, his fangs, across the softest part of my stomach, following the curve of my body down, and he whispered back to me, "something."  Pure Vachon-- an evasion, a joke, a reassurance, an act of love...

I was trembling like a leaf now, and some of it was still the sheer coldness of the room. I pushed him away -- it was still possible -- and just reached down and unbuttoned the top of his jeans and started to tug at the zipper, to slip them off.  He stood up to finish the motion, and I slid in between the sheets -- cold, cold, cold, but at least they'll -get- warm -- and then I reached back to help him finish pushing the jeans off, and saw his whole body naked for the first time, so white, with the thick, shadowed patch of black pubic hair and his penis visible against it, erect and darker than the rest of him, as in a human man, but still just barely less pale than absolute white.  He froze, falling into that inhuman stillness that is perfectly natural to him. I was terrified then, and desire is not really the name for why I set my hand on one of his hips and pulled him toward the bed, darting a glance up to his eyes and finding only hot sulphur.

And then he slid in after me, yellow eyes burning like a forest fire, mouth coming down on mine hard and demanding, his hands reaching to grab my hips, holding them hard, by the bones, thumbs digging into my flesh so hard, a knee forcing forward between my legs.  He was wholly a creature of need now, and I couldn't tell if he was Vachon at all, couldn't see him in his eyes, couldn't feel any of the humor or the gentleness anywhere in his hands, in the pressure of his body... and yet he was kissing me, not biting, holding the fangs off my gums, angling his head so teeth hit teeth... funny how my mind was off at some great distance noticing this, knowing the point of no return was long gone, that there was no escaping the hunger that held me, that this hunger wasn't a rape and yet was something that I was far more helpless against than I would have been against any rapist...

He pulled me completely under him, was completely between my legs; I felt his penis, oh God it's cold, felt his hips shifting, the probing to find me, and I couldn't bring myself to help, was just lying there shuddering in the arms of this not-human man I had to have... he found me. There was an instant, a touch, a first entry, and then he pushed all the way into me, ramming, forcing as if he would go to my heart.  My head fell back as I gasped with the shock of it, the coldness and the strength, the ice inside me and the power forcing it deeper, deeper, so hard... my eyes flared wide open and I saw him for just an instant, his head jerking backward then starting to come down again, saw the yellow eyes fixed on mine, saw an expression in them -- some passion, but I didn't know what -- it was more than pure hunger, though hunger owned them, but it was me he was seeing, and, whatever demon is at the core of him, it was Vachon looking--

He struck then, his hair slapping like whips all over my face he hit so fast, and I just had time to think 'oh no, oh no, wrong side,' realizing it was the artery he'd gone for, and there was the fire of his teeth sinking into my neck, the growling purr of his feeding, the power of his first sucking to help the blood rise into him, oh god those convulsions of his body, the arcing to pull my blood out, and his swallowing, gulping...  and then I felt my own heart.

It wasn't like when I've been running and I feel my heart pound. It was racing, but it was... it was like it was coming forward, coming to be exactly between, to be the joining point of our bodies, hot and vital, the opposite of the deep cold penetration of his organ into me, the ice that I could still feel digging further, could feel rocking as a man's lovemaking would rock, that had everything and nothing to do with the other flowing together that was happening, his ultimate possession of me, my heart getting so close to being his heart, our one heart--

It all fell away from me then, like I was going down a slide backwards, slowly, and I was warm and easy with the going.  The pressure of his mouth on my neck was the loveliest, softest touch I'd ever known, and the flow had stopped, there was just the touch.  I thought I was trying to open my eyes, but I couldn't see, I only knew that touch... oh, and the others, both of his arms wrapped completely around me, under me, his body lying on top of mine, the part of him that was inside me, not so fierce and not so desperately cold now, no, I was warm, the universe was warm, my mind was screaming 'he bit you, stay awake, he bit you,' but it was all so warm and easy, and I wanted to keep sliding down.... I thought I felt his tongue on my throat, lapping, thought I felt a fingertip touch where the soft mouth had been, a wetness-- but there was this lovely long fall to go on with, deeper and warmer and softer the further down it went...

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