Forget Me Not (Episode 3)
Title: Forget Me Not
Author: Spikedluv
Fandom: Blood Ties (TV’verse)
Rating: NC17/Slash
Pairing: Mike/Henry
Length: 14,690 words
Spoilers: Minor spoilers through 1.20 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but this fic takes place earlier in the season.
Summary: Someone -- or something -- appears to have made Henry Fitzroy lose his memory. While Vicki searches for the cause, Detective Mike Celluci is drafted to keep Henry safe.
Notes: Amnesia!fic with a twist. Written for blood_ties_vs. (DN’s eyes sometimes look blue and sometimes light green; I went with blue for this fic. If you know that I am horribly wrong, please let me know.)
Feedback: Would be greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Written: December 31, 2007
He woke up with a drum pounding inside his skull and the grainy taste of grit in his mouth from lying face down on the filthy pockmarked pavement at the back of the putrid smelling, darkened alley. Getting to his feet was slow work because his head spun and everything he looked at swam in his vision. Leaning against the grime stained wall, he checked himself over for injury, but found none.
He couldn’t remember what had happened to him, that had left him lying alone and unconscious in a foul alley. He needed to get home, shower off the dirt staining his clothes and skin, and the nearly overpowering stench of rotten food. He stepped away from the wall and headed for the light at the mouth of the alley, then suddenly stopped. He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t even know where he was. Worse yet, he couldn’t remember who he was.
He checked all of the pockets in both trousers and coat -- twice -- but found nothing that would help him. No wallet or other form of identification, not even a stamp on the back of his hand to tell him what club he might have stumbled out of, no cell phone, and no keys, for car or apartment. The only thing he found was a business card, bent at one corner.
Vicki Nelson Investigations.
*~*~*
“Where the hell is he?” Vicki swore and bounced her cell phone against her palm, resisting the urge to throw it against the nearest tree. She looked up and down the street, swore again when she didn’t see Henry’s car approaching. Henry had promised to meet her, help her with a case she was working on, and he was normally on time when Vicki asked for his assistance. Not only was he late this time, he wasn’t answering his home phone or his cell.
Vicki hit the speed dial for the office, but before she could even voice the question again, Coreen said, “I still haven’t heard from him.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Maybe you should check his apartment; something could have happened.”
“To Henry?”
“It’s possible. I mean, just because he has super speed and strength doesn’t mean he’s invincible.”
“Tell that to Henry.” Vicki disconnected, stuffed the cell, along with her hands to keep them warm, into her pockets, hunched up her shoulders, and continued pacing.
*~*~*
The gold stenciled lettering on the beveled glass portion of the door spelled out Vicki Nelson Investigations. He knocked on the door, then slowly pushed it open and poked his head around it. “Hello?”
The door opened into what was obviously the reception area. It contained a desk, a small waiting area that held three chairs and a low table with magazines scattered across it, and several file cabinets. A young woman with long, dark hair piled high on her head sat at the desk, staring intently at the computer screen. She jerked her head around at the sound of his voice and greeted him with a jubilant, “Henry!”
Question one was answered; apparently these people did know him. He must have hired them for something, though he couldn’t remember what that might have been.
“You know me?”
The girl, Coreen Fennel if the nameplate on her desk was correct, frowned. “Of course I know you. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he -- Henry, evidently -- lied, rubbing at a bit of dirt on the back of his hand. “So, you’re a private investigator?”
“Is this a test?” Coreen asked. “Because, I mean, not yet. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but Vicki’s been teaching me, and maybe one day . . . . Vicki’s really the private investigator, but I help her out a lot with research and, you know, other receptionist type things. Like answer the phone,” she said when it rang just then, startling them both.
Henry wandered about the reception area while Coreen was on the phone, peered into another office, ran his fingers along the scarred, but well-oiled woodwork, but nothing about this place felt familiar to him. Nor did he remember Coreen, or why he might have hired a private investigator. When Coreen hung up, Henry turned back to her desk.
“So, I hired you?” he asked, hoping that Coreen would fill in the blanks without much more prompting.
Instead, the frown returned. “You work here. Henry, are yo-?”
“I’m a private investigator?” That was surprising, because he didn’t feel like a private investigator, nor did this office feel like a place where he’d spent a lot of time.
“Actually, you write -- draw, whatever -- graphic novels. You’re doing PI work as a, uh, second career.”
That, on the other hand, was disappointing. He was an artist, and apparently not a very good one. “No market for graphic novels, then, eh?”
“Actually, you’re quite good, and quite famous.”
“Really?” He perked up a bit at that news. “Then why . . . ?”
“To suck up to Vicki,” Coreen said, then made an ‘I can’t believe I just said that out loud’ face before her expression turned to one of concern. “Henry, why all these questions? Are you saying that you don’t remember us?”
Henry shrugged, decided he had nothing to lose with being honest, since Coreen was being brutally honest herself. “I’m saying that I don’t remember me.”
Coreen jumped to her feet, sending the chair rolling back into the wall, then just stood there, mouth opening and closing, hands fluttering in the air. Finally she managed to gasp out, “Oh my god!” She ran around the desk, grabbed Henry by the arms and shook him. “That’s bad!”
Henry nodded. “I know.”
“I mean, that, that’s really bad.”
Henry just continued to nod.
“Are you all right?”
Coreen ran her hands over his arms, his chest, before Henry was able to grab her wrists and put halt to her cursory examination. “I’m fine.”
“How did this happen?”
Henry just stared at her and waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Oh, right, obviously you don’t remember. Okay. There is no reason to panic,” Coreen insisted as she started to panic.
“Thank god,” Henry said, then threw himself into one of the chairs, propped his foot up on the low table, ignoring the magazines that slid off onto the floor. It actually felt good to let someone else do the panicking for a while. He felt profound relief at having at least found someone who knew him.
Coreen hurried back over to the desk and picked up the telephone receiver. She dialed, shifted from one foot to the other while the phone rang. Someone picked up on the other end, but Coreen cut off their greeting with a, “Vicki, you have got to get back here!”
“What’s wrong?” a surprisingly clear female voice said on the other end of the line. She sounded strong, and her voice was kinda sexy. Maybe Vicki was Henry’s type, as Coreen had intimated.
“Henry’s here.”
“What the hell is he doing there, he’s supposed to be here with me!”
Coreen bounced in place. “He doesn’t remember!”
“Are you telling me that he forgot about our meeting?”
“No, I’m telling you that he doesn’t remember anything!”
*~*~*
Vicki Nelson leaned against Coreen’s desk, arms crossed over her chest. “You don’t remember anything from before you woke up in the alley? At all?”
“Nothing,” Henry confirmed. “Though I have learned since then that Coreen makes a mean cup of coffee.” He raised his mug in salute to Coreen.
Vicki grimaced. “I can’t believe you’re drinking that.”
“Don’t I like coffee?”
“No, it’s just that Coreen makes it so strong it’ll grow hair on your chest.”
Henry froze, cup halfway to his lips. “It will?” He realized that he didn’t even know if he had hair on his chest. “Do I need hair on my chest?” Henry pulled out the collar of his shirt and looked down it. He did have hair on his chest, though not a thick pelt of it. He wasn’t sure he’d want a thick pelt. “What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s just a, uh, figure of speech,” Coreen said, averting her eyes and blushing. “I’m sure your chest is, um, just fine. Perfect, in fact.”
Henry smiled. “Really?”
Coreen’s, “Really,” in response was more of a squeak than an actual word.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.”
Vicki took her glasses off, rubbed her eyes. Even annoyed because Henry’d missed their appointment and blind sided by Henry’s loss of memory, she had a certain . . . strength of character. Like she knew what she wanted and she’d do anything to make it happen. Henry could totally understand why he’d been attracted to her, if Coreen’s assessment was correct.
“Okay, back to the mysterious memory loss. You woke up with a headache, but no apparent injury.”
“Right.” Henry took a cautious sip of the coffee, his enjoyment of it dimmed by Vicki’s comment that he normally didn’t drink it, as well as the fact that she knew more about him than, well, than he did.
“No wallet, no cell phone, no keys,” Vicki repeated everything Henry had told her.
“Yep.”
“Then how did you know to come here?”
Henry pulled out the business card from his pocket. Vicki snatched it out of his hand and put her glasses back on so she could read it.
“My business card. Are you telling me that they stole your wallet, your cell phone and your keys, but they left you this business card?” She gave it an accusatory wave it in the air.
Henry shrugged. “I have no idea what they did, only that when I woke up, the only thing in my pockets was that business card.”
Vicki’s expressions ran the gamut from wary to confused to concerned. “You’re really not joking, are you?”
Henry thought he should be insulted by that. “Why would I joke about something like this?”
“Who knows with you,” Vicki said. She pushed off the desk and began pacing the reception area. “Okay, this . . . can’t be good. I mean, I would have thought that you were immune to things like this.”
“No apparent physical cause,” Coreen said morosely.
“So that leaves, what, drugs?” Vicki asked.
“Someone he ate, you think?” Coreen suggested.
“Hmm, maybe,” Vicki agreed.
“I’ll check it out,” Coreen said. She threw herself into the chair behind the desk and immediately started tapping at the keyboard. She was much less flustered now that she was actually doing something, Henry noted.
Vicki finally came to a stop in front of Henry. “Okay. I’m going to check out the area where you woke up, see if anyone remembers seeing you, if you were with anyone . . . .”
Vicki in take charge mode was very sexy, Henry thought.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” Henry asked with feigned innocence.
Vicki started at him for a few seconds more, unconvinced of his butter wouldn’t melt demeanor, but then she continued. “And I’ll keep a look out for your car, it’s possible they didn’t steal it.”
“Great,” Henry said, “I’ll go with you.” He set the coffee cup on the table and stood, ready to be doing something.
Vicki quashed that with a resounding, “No.”
Henry stared at her, incredulous. “What do you mean, no?”
Vicki snatched her coat off the chair she’d carelessly tossed it upon when she’d returned to the office earlier, worried by Coreen’s frantic telephone call and out of breath. “Just what I said, no.”
Henry’s shoulders went back and his chin tilted up. “Why not?”
“Because it’ll be easier for me to hold up a picture and say, have you seen this man, than to explain that you have no memory of what happened, which would give them absolutely no reason to tell me the truth.”
Henry wanted to argue, but he could see the logic in her reasoning. A missing man, once found, could corroborate their statement, but a man with no memory could not. The door opened just then, saving Henry from having to tell Vicki that she was right. The man who entered had light brown hair, blue eyes, and stood a couple inches taller than Henry. He wore a trench coat that had seen a lot of wear and had a ready smile for Vicki that made the corners of his eyes crinkle up nicely.
“Vicki, hey.”
“Mike! I’m so glad to see you!”
“You are?”
Vicki threw her arms around Mike, trapping his arms at his sides, and rested her head on his chest. Henry felt a little flutter in his belly that might have been the coffee -- it had been pretty strong -- or might be jealousy.
Mike just looked down at the top of Vicki’s head. He sounded resigned when he said, “I’m going to hate myself for asking this, but . . . what’s wrong?”
Vicki stood back, holding Mike at arm’s length. “I need your help.”
Mike sighed, scrunched his face up as he braced himself, then said, “Okay, hit me, what is it?”
“Thanks, Mike. I’ll owe you one.”
Mike held up one hand. “Oh, now wait just a minute, I didn’t say I’d . . . .”
“I need you to take Henry back to his apartment and see if anyone broke in, maybe tossed the place.”
Mike blinked, then glanced over at Henry before looking back at Vicki. “You need me to take Henry back to his apartment to see if anyone broke in.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“No, see, this is the part I don’t get. You need me to take Henry . . . .”
“Yes.”
Mike gave Henry a longer look, and the way Mike’s eyes darkened sent a little thrill through him. Maybe Henry had been jealous when Vicki hugged Mike, but not of Mike. Drawn by an irresistible impulse, Henry skirted the table and moved closer to Mike, circled him. He had a sudden desire to see Mike’s ass, but it was covered by the long trench coat he wore. When he got back around to Mike’s front, Mike was frowning at him. It did something to Henry’s insides. He couldn’t remember ever feeling that way before, but he thought it was a pretty nice feeling.
“What are you doing?”
Henry shivered at the gruff tone. “Are we . . . ?” Henry motioned between the two of them.
“Are we what?” Mike asked impatiently.
“You know, together.”
Henry now knew what they meant when they said that ‘the silence was deafening’, though he couldn’t remember who’d actually said it.
“I take it that’s a no?”
“That’s a no,” Mike confirmed, more adamantly than Henry thought was really necessary.
Henry shrugged. “Mmm, pity.”
“Actually, Henry,” Vicki said, her words slowly paced, as if she were treading cautiously, “we didn’t even know that you . . . .” She twisted her face up, gestured with her hand. “You know.”
“Liked guys?” Henry filled in.
Vicki looked grateful that she hadn’t had to say it. “Yeah, that.”
“Hmm.” It was possible that Henry wasn’t attracted to guys, but given his reaction to Mike, more probable that he’d merely hidden the attraction, even from people who were supposedly his friends. “Well then, when I get my memory back, you think I’ll be mad that I just outed myself?”
“Nah!” Vicki assured him. She grinned. “You’ll be madder that you admitted you were attracted to Mike.”
“As good a time as this is,” Mike interrupted, “want to tell me what’s going on here?”
“Henry’s lost his memory,” Coreen said. “We think it might have been someone he ate.”
“Drugs,” Vicki clarified.
“Oh, thank god,” Mike said. “For a second there I thought he’d lost his mind.”
“Funny,” Vicki said, though Henry disagreed. She clapped her hands together. “Okay, so we have a plan now. I’m going to check out the last place, or would that be the first place, Henry remembers being, and Mike is going to take Henry and check out his apartment. Don’t worry,” she added for Henry’s benefit, “Mike’s a detective with a nice big weapon, so he’ll be able to protect you if whoever did this to you comes after you again.”
Henry couldn’t help himself; he quirked an eyebrow, gave Mike an appraising once over.
Mike rolled his eyes, pulled his trench coat back to reveal the holstered gun. “An actual weapon,” he said.
*~*~*
Since Henry didn’t have his keys, he picked the lock to his apartment.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?”
Henry just glanced up at Mike, then went back to picking the lock.
Mike sighed. “Right, I keep forgetting.”
“Tell me about it.”
Mike pushed Henry behind him as soon as he got the lock open. Henry was about to complain about being shoved around, but the sight of Mike pulling out his weapon from the holster dried out his mouth and he could only stare while Mike slowly turned the door handle and pushed the door open. Mike in protective mode was a serious turn on. Or it could have been the way he handled his weapon.
Seconds later they stood inside the apartment, all their precautions for naught, as the apartment was empty and nothing was strewn about as Henry presumed it would be if the place had been searched.
“Anything missing?” Mike asked as he reholstered his weapon, much to Henry’s dismay. Mike shook his head. “Let me rephrase, anything look like it’s been disturbed?”
Henry looked around the room they stood in, but there wasn’t even a layer of dust on the furniture to mark where something might have sat before being moved. He wandered around the room, looking for anything that looked off, but nothing looked the slightest bit familiar so it was difficult for him to get a feel for what might be missing or out of place.
“Oh, hey.” Henry found his drawing table, and there were a few drawings left scattered on the top of it. He picked up the first one and looked at it.
“Oh, yeah,” Mike said, “you draw comics.”
Henry reluctantly dragged his eyes away from the drawing. “Coreen said I drew graphic novels.”
Mike shrugged. “Whatever.”
Mike walked away and Henry dropped the drawing to follow him. They ended up in the bedroom, which Henry thought might have been fate if Mike had looked a little more pleased to be there. Clearly he and Mike were not . . . anything, despite the fact that Henry was drawn to him.
Henry turned his attention to the lushly appointed bedroom. “Wow. This is mine?”
Mike made a noncommital sound. Henry walked over to the bed, stroked his hand over the thick, soft comforter. Mike peered into what had to be the master bath while Henry opened what turned out to be the closet. The hangers and shelves looked full and he didn’t know how he’d figure out if anything was missing, anyway, so he just closed the doors back up.
“Okay, well,” Mike said. He ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up adorably. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in here, and it’s almost sunrise, so I’m going leave you to . . . do whatever it is you do before sunrise.”
“What are you talking about?” Henry asked.
“You know, the whole bearding yourself in your den thing.”
“Yeah, no, I don’t know.” Henry didn’t know what worried him more, the fact that he didn’t know what Mike was talking about, or the fact that Mike was leaving Henry alone.
“Okay, wait.” Mike paused, took a deep breath. “You and Vicki had the whole vampire talk, right?” Mike nodded his head hopefully.
Henry nodded along with Mike. “No.”
Mike’s encouraging expression turned incredulous. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Henry wished he was kidding, because whatever Mike was talking about, Henry wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Okay, listen . . . .”
Henry covered his ears. “No.”
Mike pulled Henry’s hands away from his ears. “You. Are a vampire.”
“Vampires don’t exist.”
“That’s my line, Fitzroy.”
“Who’s Fitzroy?”
“You. Henry Fitzroy.”
“Oh.” Henry said the name out loud. He kind of liked the way it rolled off his tongue, so he said it again.
“Okay, and I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but we need to make sure you don’t go all vampire flambe when the sun comes up, so you’re going to have to get over your little vampire freak out and help me.”
“If this is payback for me thinking we were . . . you know, then ha ha, very funny, but can we move on?”
Mike scrubbed his face with one hand. “Why me?” Mike straightened, then reached out and grabbed Henry’s wrist, brought Henry’s hand to Mike’s throat, pressed the tips of his fingers against the skin. “That,” he said, “is a pulse. I have one.” Mike moved Henry’s hand to his own throat. “You don’t.”
Henry pulled his hand from Mike’s grasp, moved his fingers all over his throat looking for a pulse. When he couldn’t find one, he said, “So you’re telling me, what, I’m a vampire, the whole nine yards, blood sucking and everything?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Well you’re wrong, and I can prove it.” Henry stomped out of the bedroom, found the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. It held a bottle of wine, the remnants of a six pack of beer, and several bottles of water. No food, not even a jar of mustard. Henry threw open every one of the kitchen cupboards, but they were bare. There weren’t even any plates in the cupboards, or silver in the drawers. He started to hyperventilate.
Mike smacked Henry on the back of the head. “You don’t even breathe, so knock it off, because we don’t have much time before the sun comes up.”
“You’re not being very understanding.”
“Right, well, we’ll worry about that when Vicki can’t blame me for letting you burn up on purpose.”
Mike walked out of the kitchen and back towards the bedroom, muttering something about a remote. Henry followed because he didn’t know what else to do. While Mike searched the bedroom, Henry popped into the bathroom. He turned the light on and looked into the mirror. He didn’t look like a vampire. His eyes weren’t red, or yellow, or whatever color they should be if he was a vampire. He pulled his lips back and bared his teeth, but they looked normal, as well. Henry flipped off the light switch and stepped back out into the bedroom where Mike was fiddling with a remote.
“What’s that?”
“It’s supposed to . . . . Aha!” Mike said as shutters came down to cover the windows, closing out all illumination from the lightening morning sky.
Henry’s throat closed up and he wondered if he was claustrophobic. “What happens next?”
“Well, since you have a bed instead of a coffin, I’m guessing that’s where you spend your days. So you might want to get comfortable, unless you plan on sleeping in your clothes.”
Henry started unbuttoning his shirt. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go home and get some sleep myself.”
“What? You’re not leaving me here alone?”
“Henry, you’ll be fine. No one broke in.”
Henry was across the room in a flash, fingers curled in Mike’s coat. “They still have my keys!”
The flash of anger -- or was it something else? -- in Mike’s eyes was the last thing Henry saw before the sleep of the dead took him.
*~*~*
Mike managed to catch Henry before he hit the floor. He maneuvered him onto the bed with a grunt. Henry wasn’t as light as he appeared. Feeling extremely put upon, Mike removed Henry’s shoes, then rolled him around until he’d managed to drag the covers out from under him. He draped the covers over Henry and walked away.
Halfway to the door he stopped, turned around. With a sigh he walked back over to the bed and threw the covers back. “You so owe me for this.”
Mike finished unbuttoning Henry’s shirt and took it off him, which wasn’t as easy as it sounded, since Henry was dead weight. Mike snorted at that. He tossed the shirt aside, then stared at Henry’s trousers. He reached for the covers, then grasped the waistband instead. “And don’t think I’m not collecting.”
He’d just remove the trousers, leaving Henry in his undershorts. That wouldn’t be too invasive, right? Eyes half closed, more for his own benefit than Henry’s, Mike unbuttoned and unzipped the trousers, tugged them down Henry’s hips. “Oh, Jesus!” He closed his eyes all the way and dragged the trousers the rest of the way off. Of course Henry wouldn’t be wearing any undershorts.
Mike threw the covers back over Henry’s naked, still form, then hurried from the room. He prayed that he’d soon forget the sight of Henry in all his glory. As he crossed the living room, Mike pulled out his cell phone and dialed Vicki.
“Mike, hey, how’s Henry?”
“Sleeping like the dead,” Mike said. “And thank you, by the way, for leaving it up to me to inform him that he’s a vampire!”
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t even think about that.”
“Apparently.”
“So what are you doing now?”
“Leaving. I need to get some sleep, and a shower would be nice.”
“What? You can’t leave Henry alone!”
“Why not? The apartment was empty, no one had been here.”
“They took his keys and wallet for a reason, Mike. He’s vulnerable during the day, they could be waiting.”
“If they wanted to kill him, they could have done it when he was incapacitated earlier,” Mike pointed out. Vicki remained stubbornly silent. Mike pounded his forehead against the front door. “Did you find his car?”
“No sign of it. I checked the alleys and dumpsters near where he woke up, but I didn’t find his wallet, keys or cell phone, either. I was hoping someone had taken the cash and dumped the rest.”
“All right, fine, I’ll stay here while Henry’s . . . out of it.”
“Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate it. And I know Henry will, too.”
“Yeah, right. Listen, I’ll call down to the station, put a BOLO out on Henry’s car and have them watch his credit cards, see if anyone tries to use them. Getting a trap on his cell phone might take a little longer. Oh, just make sure you have blood for Henry tomorrow. Probably not a good idea to let him loose on the unsuspecting public when we don’t know if he can control himself.”
“Good idea. Listen, Mike . . . .”
Mike hung up before Vicki could thank him again, on behalf of Henry bloody Fitzroy.
The call to the station didn’t take very long. It took more time to explain why Henry hadn’t filed a report himself than to get the BOLO and credit card watch set up. And because the robbery division was swamped, Mike didn’t have a problem being put on the file as the primary, so he’d get the call if the vehicle were found, or if there was any activity on Henry’s credit cards.
Once that was done, Mike was bored. He’d wanted a shower and bed, not necessarily in that order, but it didn’t look like he was going to get that right away, because there was no way he was showering in Henry’s bath, or sleeping in Henry’s bed. Mike took his coat off, resigned to spending the day there, and wandered around Henry’s apartment. He’d been there before, but never for more than a few minutes, so he took the time to look at the pictures and other items that had been important enough for Henry to display in his home.
Mike managed to kill about an hour touring Henry’s apartment. He found the television remote and turned on the morning news programs, hoping to keep himself awake. There were more interviews with celebrities than actual news, so Mike turned the television off. He wandered into the kitchen, thought about a bottle of water, then decided on a beer. It didn’t count as too early if he hadn’t been to bed yet.
Mike ended up in Henry’s office area, sitting at his drawing table, flipping through his drawings. He opened one of the graphic novels that sat on the shelf behind the desk and spent the next hour reading it. When the inch of beer left in the bottom of the bottle was warm, and his eyes were burning from being awake when all he wanted to do was sleep, Mike decided to try and get some shut eye.
He made sure that the deadbolt was thrown and that the chain was hooked, then placed a chair in front of the door for good measure, so that anyone entering the apartment would make enough noise to wake him. Gun at hand on the coffee table, Mike removed his suit jacket and loosened his tie, then laid down on one of Henry’s couches and closed his eyes. Five minutes of tossing and turning later he opened them. He folded his coat under his head and tried again, but it was no use. He couldn’t find a comfortable position on the sofa, which was more torture device than couch.
Mike peeked in on Henry, who hadn’t moved since Mike had left him there hours ago. He checked his watch. If he laid down on the bed now, he’d be awake before the sun set and Henry woke. Mike turned off all the lights in the apartment but for a lamp beside the sofa, so a soft glow filled the living room, and the place didn’t seem so much like a mausoleum. Gun moved to its new spot on the bedside table, Mike kicked his shoes off and laid down on top of the comforter.
When Mike fell asleep, there were several layers of sheets and blankets, and nearly two feet of space, between them. When he woke, Henry was sprawled across him, loose hair tickling Mike’s face as he nuzzled into Mike’s neck.
A frisson of fear-tinged anticipation slithered down Mike’s spine. “What are you doing?”
“You smell really, really good,” Henry said.
Mike shifted nervously. “Swell. Listen, could you maybe get off of me?”
Henry lifted his head, smiled down at Mike. “I have a better idea.”
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like it?”
“Just a little nibble,” Henry said, holding his thumb and forefinger about a half inch apart in front of Mike’s face.
Mike bucked as fear blossomed more fully. He still had nightmares about the last time Henry had bitten him. “No.”
The smile was gone, and Henry looked like he’d been kicked. “What’s wrong?”
“Look, no offense, but we’ve done this before, and it didn’t end well.”
“Did I hurt you?”
Mike’s fear faded at the genuine distress in Henry’s voice.
“Let me see.” Henry unbuttoned Mike’s shirt and pushed the collar away from his neck.
“Look, Henry, you’d been tortured and starved, and you were . . . a little bit out of control,” Mike prevaricated, trying not to think about what Henry tearing at his clothes was doing to him. “And that’s what I’m worried about here.” Mike’s voice rose as Henry’s tongue traced the small scar from the bite.
Mike grabbed a handful of Henry’s hair and pulled him away from his neck. He ignored the way Henry’s body arched, the soft little moan. “That you don’t remember how to feed, and you won’t be able to stop,” he continued, forcing as much firmness into his voice as he could.
“I’ll stop,” Henry said. “I promise. And it doesn’t have to be your neck.” His fingers scrabbled at Mike’s wrist. “I can hear it, feel it, pumping right here.” Henry disregarded the hold Mike had on his hair, slithered down to Mike’s wrist, pressed his nose to the sensitive skin and sniffed.
“Henry, no.”
But Henry wasn’t listening, he was past reason as he tore at the button and shoved the sleeve up Mike’s arm, and Mike was both scared and a little bit turned on.
“Henry.” Mike tried again to reach him as Henry sniffed and licked at his wrist. There was a sting of pain as Henry bit into Mike’s wrist, and then pleasure pooled in Mike’s belly as Henry drew on his blood. The same pleasure that haunted Mike’s dreams, because he feared that he would have let Henry drain him that night if only he could have had just one more second of it.
Mike curled around Henry, whispered in his ear. “Henry, stop, please stop. Henry, please.” It was the most difficult thing Mike had ever had to do, because what his body craved was to just let Henry take as much as he wanted. His reaction frightened him, and he had to fight the urge to give in to the pleasure, grind himself against Henry until the pleasure was all there was. “Henry.”
Henry withdrew his fangs from Mike’s wrist, lapped at the bite. When he lifted his head, there was blood on his lips. Henry licked it off, then turned into Mike. He lowered his face, but Mike stopped him before their lips could touch. “No.”
Henry looked like a puppy Mike had just kicked, but Mike refused to relent, because the real Henry would be back soon, the one who disliked Mike, as soon as Henry recovered his memories, and there was no way Mike was giving Henry any more ammunition to use against him than he already had. “We can’t,” Mike said. “Go take a shower so we can get going.”
Henry rolled off Mike as if he’d been electrocuted. He stood beside the bed, gloriously naked and hard. “You can’t,” he said, lower lip trembling, and then he sneered as he stroked himself, unselfconscious of his nudity, and strolled casually into the bathroom.
Mike waited until he heard the water turn on before he reached beneath the covers and squeezed himself, willing away his erection. Henry, on the other hand, was taking care of his own erection in the shower. Loudly. Mike tried to ignore the sounds of Henry pleasuring himself, but Henry was doing his best to make sure that Mike couldn’t do that.
Mike slipped into his shoes, reholstered his weapon -- only thought briefly about using it on Henry -- then escaped to the living room where he called Vicki.
“I hope you picked up blood for Henry,” Mike said in response to her greeting.
“I did,” Vicki said. “Coreen has a friend that works at the hospital and . . . .”
Mike cut her off. “You should probably not tell me the details. Just have it waiting, because Henry really needs to feed.”
“Okay. When will you be here?”
“Half an hour or so,” Mike said. Henry was still in the shower, and from the sounds of it, would be for a while yet, and Mike still had to drop by his apartment for a quick shower and a change of clothes.
*~*~*
“Why do I have to stay here?” Henry sounded like a petulant teenager.
“Same reason you couldn’t go with me last night,” Vicki said, with much more patience than Mike would have been able to manage.
Henry had been peevish and argumentative since they’d left his apartment. The only time Mike had gotten any peace was when he’d been in the shower, and even then he’d been self-conscious, wondering if Henry would do something to embarrass him. He’d even gone so far as to imagine Henry forcing the issue Mike had neatly -- barely -- sidestepped earlier by sliding the curtain back and stepping into the shower with him.
Mike had nipped that little fantasy in the bud right about the time he’d started stroking himself to the image of Henry arched under the spray, water droplets painting his skin. This time his erection took longer to go down, despite the cold water Mike had rinsed off under, and Henry’d had a self-satisfied smile on his face when Mike had finally emerged from his bedroom, fully dressed.
Mike dragged his attention back to the discussion between Henry and Vicki just in time to hear Henry say, “If whoever did this knows me, and knows about my relationship with both of you, they could come here looking for me.”
“Don’t worry,” Vicki said, patting her pockets to make sure she had everything, “Coreen will take care of you.”
“That’s not my point,” Henry said, and Mike could see the effort it took not to stomp his foot in frustration. It was actually amusing to see that Mike wasn’t the only one Vicki had this affect on. “You’re putting Coreen in danger by leaving me here.”
Vicki rolled her eyes, her patience clearly worn since Mike had tuned them out. “You’ll both be fine. If you’re worried, lock the door, and if anything happens, call me.”
They darted out the door while Henry was still processing that, and Mike heard Henry’s, “What am I supposed to do all night?” through the closed door. Vicki opened the door back up and poked her head inside. “Help Coreen research.”
“And what are we going to do?” Mike asked as they hurried down the hall away from Vicki’s office, and Henry.
“We are going to question prospective witnesses, since nearly everyone was gone by the time I got there this morning, and see if we can find Henry’s belongings tossed away somewhere. Speaking of, any news on Henry’s car or the credit cards?”
“Nothing,” Mike said, “but I’ll call in to check. You know,” Mike added as he pulled out his phone and dialed, “you’re going to owe Coreen hazzard pay after tonight.”
*~*~*
Coreen watched Henry pace the office until she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Want to help me research?”
Henry stopped pacing long enough to ask, “Do I like to research?”
Coreen made a face, shrugged.
“Great.” Henry flopped himself down into one of the waiting chairs, propped his foot up on the table. “What are you researching?”
Coreen bounced. She rarely had company while she was researching, and it wasn’t often that she got to spend time with Henry. “You, actually. Your memory loss, anyway.”
“Drugs,” Henry said.
“No, we dropped that line of inquiry,” Coreen said. She snagged a book off the desk and plopped down beside Henry. “Vicki and I tossed around some ideas, and we realized that you probably would have been able to tell if the blood was tainted before you drank it. You told us once that you could smell us, which is . . . kind of icky, but we figured it meant that you can probably tell if blood is drugged or diseased, and stay away from it. Oh!”
Coreen twisted in the chair, placed her hand on Henry’s arm. “Sorry about not mentioning the whole . . . vampire thing. It didn’t even cross my mind to tell you. I mean, I’m just so used to it.”
“Does everyone know?”
“That you’re a vampire, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“No, it’s still a big secret. Only a few people know.”
“You, Vicki. And Mike.”
“Yeah.” Coreen watched the changing expressions as they flickered across Henry’s face, and wished that she could tell what he was thinking. She did the only thing she could think of, and changed the subject. “So, wanna help me research?”
“What are we looking for?”
“Supernatural, uh, entities that cause memory loss.”
“Supernatural.” Despite the fact that he was a vampire, a perfect specimen of the supernatural, Henry sounded skeptical.
“Yeah. I mean, you can take care of yourself against humans. You’re strong and super fast, and you’ve got that smell thing going on for you, and, you know, hearing, so it’d be tough for someone to sneak up on you. So if it wasn’t human, then it must have been . . . .”
“Supernatural.”
“Yeah.”
Henry took the book out of Coreen’s hand. “Demons, Fairies and Other Monsters. Sounds interesting.”
“Oh, it is! It’s my favorite.” Coreen patted Henry’s hand. “You start with that one, I’ll get another one.”
They each skimmed two books, and by the time she finally closed her second one Coreen was losing some of her perk. Even the time she’d come across a demon that stole your memories and left you a vegetable, and she’d jumped out of her chair screaming, only to have Henry remind her that he wasn’t a vegetable, didn’t deliver enough adrenaline to keep her going.
“I need coffee.”
“I think there’s still some in the pot,” Henry said. He was looking through the pile of books on Coreen’s desk that they still had to search.
Coreen made a face. “Oh, no, not that stuff. The good stuff at the coffee shop down the block.”
“That’s not the good stuff?”
“No, it’s terr-.” Coreen broke off at the expression on Henry’s face.
“Let me get this straight, the coffee that you offered me last night is not only not the good stuff, you know it’s terrible?”
“I was just being polite! I didn’t think you’d say yes, you never say yes.”
“I couldn’t remember that!”
“I wasn’t thinking! Look, I’ll make it up to you by buying you a really big cup of the good stuff. You can get all kinds of flavors.”
“Really? But what if someone sees us?”
“Sees us buying coffee? Did you used to live in a world where coffee was, like, illegal or something? Because it’s not anymore.”
“No, but I’m now living in a world where I can’t remember who stole my memories!”
“Oh, yeah, that. Were you scared when you came over here with Mike?”
“No, I wasn’t scared.”
“But you’ll be scared if we go down the block for coffee?”
“I will not be scared. But you don’t have a gun.”
“No, but I’ve got this.” Coreen opened the bottom drawer of her desk, pulled out her bag.
“A purse?”
“A taser,” Coreen said, brandishing the taser.
“I feel better already.”
“Don’t make fun. Besides, you’re super strong, and you’ve got great senses of hearing and smell, so no one can sneak up on us.” Coreen gave Henry her best look of encouragement, but it didn’t seem to be working. “Okay, look, you stay here and I’ll go alone.”
“You can’t go alone! What if someone grabs you to get to me?”
“Okay, you’re really starting to freak me out here.”
“Finally.”
“But I really need some coffee. Good coffee,” she clarified when Henry pointed towards the coffee maker.
Coreen set the phone so it went straight to voice mail and they headed out. They were back fifteen minutes later with two flavored coffees and a bag of cookies, and no one had followed them, attacked them, or even looked at them funny.
They set up camp on the couch in Vicki’s office. Coreen carried in the tray of coffees and the bag of cookies while Henry grabbed a couple more books off the desk. Coreen passed out the coffees and Henry handed over one of the books. The coffee and cookies were gone before they’d finished looking through their respective books, so when Coreen came to the end of hers she picked up their trash and carried it out with her when she went to switch books.
When Coreen went back in to Vicki’s office, Henry was just looking off into space, the open book propped up on his knees. “Hey, you all right?”
Henry’s smile was forced. “Yeah, fine.”
Coreen sat on the couch, curled her legs up under her and set the book on her knees. “We could talk.”
“Do we often talk?”
“Well, no. I mean, you’re more action guy than research guy, so you go off with Vicki usually. But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk now. You look, I don’t know, sad.”
“I just, I don’t know who I am, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to act, and it’s . . . frustrating.”
Coreen couldn’t bear the uncertainty in Henry’s voice. She leaned over and placed her hand on his arm. “However you act is the right way, because it’s how you feel, right?”
“Except, I’m not really me right now. I mean, I would never have made a, uh, pass at Mike, would I, before?”
“No. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t want to.”
“But the point is, I wouldn’t have. And I wouldn’t have . . . .”
Coreen leaned forward. “Wouldn’t have what?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, you can tell me!”
“No, I can’t. You’d tell Vicki.”
Coreen was insulted. “No I wouldn’t!”
“You would so! She’d give you that steely-eyed glare and you’d cave.”
“Well, maybe, but only if she had to know. If it was important that she not know I wouldn’t tell her.”
Knowing Henry, he only gave in because he really needed to talk to someone about this. “I wouldn’t have bitten Mike.”
“But you didn’t know what you were doing! Vicki said you were mad with hunger and pain . . . .”
“Not then. Earlier tonight.”
Coreen felt her eyes go wide. “You bit Mike!”
Henry fell back onto the couch. “I couldn’t help myself. He smelled really good. I mean, really good.”
Instead of feeling jealous, like she sometimes did in comparison with Vicki, Coreen found herself grinning. “So, was it good for you?”
Henry rolled his head against the back of the sofa so that he was facing her. He stared at her, and then his lips twitched. “Very.”
“And?” Coreen said eagerly, enjoying dishing with Henry.
“And what?”
“What about Mike?”
Henry shrugged. “I think he enjoyed it, too. More than he wanted to, anyway. And that’s the part you can never, ever tell Vicki. Ever. I’m serious. That’s just between us girls.”
“I won’t,” Coreen promised. She held up her hand, all fingers but one curled in. “Pinky swear.”
Henry stared at her hand as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it, then held up his own, pinky sticking out. Coreen grinned as she wrapped her pinky around Henry’s, and swore to herself that she would never tell anyone what Henry had told her, no matter what threats or bribes they used against her.
“Okay,” Coreen said, her pinky still wrapped around Henry’s, “tell me more.”
“There’s not much more to tell. Mike wouldn’t let me . . . .”
“Finish him off?” Coreen covered her mouth and squealed. “I can’t believe I just said that!” She laughed nervously and pointed at Henry. “You can’t tell anyone!”
Henry smiled. “I won’t, if you won’t.”
“I won’t, I promise!”
“Then we’re good.”
“Yeah. Hey, Henry?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I give you a hug?”
Henry raised his eyebrows.
“I mean, you look like you could use a hug, and later, when you get your memory back, you’ll be all stoic and you wouldn’t admit you needed a hug if they held hot irons to your feet, so . . . .” She shrugged.
“All right.”
Coreen stood up on her knees, not even caring that the book slid off onto the floor, and hugged Henry. “We’re going to figure this out.”
“And I’ll go back to being all stoic, and pretending I’m not attracted to Mike, and we’ll never talk like this again.”
“Well, yeah, probably, but, hey, at least you’ll remember who you are. That’s good, right?”
“Yeah. Tell me, what was I like?”
“You mean before you lost your memory?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’re confident, and smart, and you care about people even if you don’t like to admit it.”
“So, an arrogant know it all with intimacy issues?”
That startled a laugh out of her and Coreen slapped Henry’s arm. “That’s not what I said! And certainly not what I meant.”
They sat in silence for a while, and before it could get too awkward, Coreen suggested they get back to research. Henry agreed, then asked for paper and a pencil. Coreen brought him a lined pad of paper, then a handful of copy paper when he asked for something without lines. Coreen sat down with her book while Henry curled up in the corner of the couch with the paper, using the pad for support.
“Have I ever drawn you?” Henry asked as the pencil danced over the paper.
“No. Are you drawing me now?”
His lips curled in a half smile, Henry glanced up at her, then back down at the paper. Coreen squirmed in pleasure, and felt blood heating her face. She’d remember this night forever, even if Henry didn’t. And she’d never do anything to make him sorry that he’d confided in her.
Continued in Part Two
Author: Spikedluv
Fandom: Blood Ties (TV’verse)
Rating: NC17/Slash
Pairing: Mike/Henry
Length: 14,690 words
Spoilers: Minor spoilers through 1.20 The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but this fic takes place earlier in the season.
Summary: Someone -- or something -- appears to have made Henry Fitzroy lose his memory. While Vicki searches for the cause, Detective Mike Celluci is drafted to keep Henry safe.
Notes: Amnesia!fic with a twist. Written for blood_ties_vs. (DN’s eyes sometimes look blue and sometimes light green; I went with blue for this fic. If you know that I am horribly wrong, please let me know.)
Feedback: Would be greatly appreciated.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Written: December 31, 2007
He woke up with a drum pounding inside his skull and the grainy taste of grit in his mouth from lying face down on the filthy pockmarked pavement at the back of the putrid smelling, darkened alley. Getting to his feet was slow work because his head spun and everything he looked at swam in his vision. Leaning against the grime stained wall, he checked himself over for injury, but found none.
He couldn’t remember what had happened to him, that had left him lying alone and unconscious in a foul alley. He needed to get home, shower off the dirt staining his clothes and skin, and the nearly overpowering stench of rotten food. He stepped away from the wall and headed for the light at the mouth of the alley, then suddenly stopped. He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t even know where he was. Worse yet, he couldn’t remember who he was.
He checked all of the pockets in both trousers and coat -- twice -- but found nothing that would help him. No wallet or other form of identification, not even a stamp on the back of his hand to tell him what club he might have stumbled out of, no cell phone, and no keys, for car or apartment. The only thing he found was a business card, bent at one corner.
Vicki Nelson Investigations.
*~*~*
“Where the hell is he?” Vicki swore and bounced her cell phone against her palm, resisting the urge to throw it against the nearest tree. She looked up and down the street, swore again when she didn’t see Henry’s car approaching. Henry had promised to meet her, help her with a case she was working on, and he was normally on time when Vicki asked for his assistance. Not only was he late this time, he wasn’t answering his home phone or his cell.
Vicki hit the speed dial for the office, but before she could even voice the question again, Coreen said, “I still haven’t heard from him.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Maybe you should check his apartment; something could have happened.”
“To Henry?”
“It’s possible. I mean, just because he has super speed and strength doesn’t mean he’s invincible.”
“Tell that to Henry.” Vicki disconnected, stuffed the cell, along with her hands to keep them warm, into her pockets, hunched up her shoulders, and continued pacing.
*~*~*
The gold stenciled lettering on the beveled glass portion of the door spelled out Vicki Nelson Investigations. He knocked on the door, then slowly pushed it open and poked his head around it. “Hello?”
The door opened into what was obviously the reception area. It contained a desk, a small waiting area that held three chairs and a low table with magazines scattered across it, and several file cabinets. A young woman with long, dark hair piled high on her head sat at the desk, staring intently at the computer screen. She jerked her head around at the sound of his voice and greeted him with a jubilant, “Henry!”
Question one was answered; apparently these people did know him. He must have hired them for something, though he couldn’t remember what that might have been.
“You know me?”
The girl, Coreen Fennel if the nameplate on her desk was correct, frowned. “Of course I know you. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he -- Henry, evidently -- lied, rubbing at a bit of dirt on the back of his hand. “So, you’re a private investigator?”
“Is this a test?” Coreen asked. “Because, I mean, not yet. I’ve still got a lot to learn, but Vicki’s been teaching me, and maybe one day . . . . Vicki’s really the private investigator, but I help her out a lot with research and, you know, other receptionist type things. Like answer the phone,” she said when it rang just then, startling them both.
Henry wandered about the reception area while Coreen was on the phone, peered into another office, ran his fingers along the scarred, but well-oiled woodwork, but nothing about this place felt familiar to him. Nor did he remember Coreen, or why he might have hired a private investigator. When Coreen hung up, Henry turned back to her desk.
“So, I hired you?” he asked, hoping that Coreen would fill in the blanks without much more prompting.
Instead, the frown returned. “You work here. Henry, are yo-?”
“I’m a private investigator?” That was surprising, because he didn’t feel like a private investigator, nor did this office feel like a place where he’d spent a lot of time.
“Actually, you write -- draw, whatever -- graphic novels. You’re doing PI work as a, uh, second career.”
That, on the other hand, was disappointing. He was an artist, and apparently not a very good one. “No market for graphic novels, then, eh?”
“Actually, you’re quite good, and quite famous.”
“Really?” He perked up a bit at that news. “Then why . . . ?”
“To suck up to Vicki,” Coreen said, then made an ‘I can’t believe I just said that out loud’ face before her expression turned to one of concern. “Henry, why all these questions? Are you saying that you don’t remember us?”
Henry shrugged, decided he had nothing to lose with being honest, since Coreen was being brutally honest herself. “I’m saying that I don’t remember me.”
Coreen jumped to her feet, sending the chair rolling back into the wall, then just stood there, mouth opening and closing, hands fluttering in the air. Finally she managed to gasp out, “Oh my god!” She ran around the desk, grabbed Henry by the arms and shook him. “That’s bad!”
Henry nodded. “I know.”
“I mean, that, that’s really bad.”
Henry just continued to nod.
“Are you all right?”
Coreen ran her hands over his arms, his chest, before Henry was able to grab her wrists and put halt to her cursory examination. “I’m fine.”
“How did this happen?”
Henry just stared at her and waited for the other shoe to drop.
“Oh, right, obviously you don’t remember. Okay. There is no reason to panic,” Coreen insisted as she started to panic.
“Thank god,” Henry said, then threw himself into one of the chairs, propped his foot up on the low table, ignoring the magazines that slid off onto the floor. It actually felt good to let someone else do the panicking for a while. He felt profound relief at having at least found someone who knew him.
Coreen hurried back over to the desk and picked up the telephone receiver. She dialed, shifted from one foot to the other while the phone rang. Someone picked up on the other end, but Coreen cut off their greeting with a, “Vicki, you have got to get back here!”
“What’s wrong?” a surprisingly clear female voice said on the other end of the line. She sounded strong, and her voice was kinda sexy. Maybe Vicki was Henry’s type, as Coreen had intimated.
“Henry’s here.”
“What the hell is he doing there, he’s supposed to be here with me!”
Coreen bounced in place. “He doesn’t remember!”
“Are you telling me that he forgot about our meeting?”
“No, I’m telling you that he doesn’t remember anything!”
*~*~*
Vicki Nelson leaned against Coreen’s desk, arms crossed over her chest. “You don’t remember anything from before you woke up in the alley? At all?”
“Nothing,” Henry confirmed. “Though I have learned since then that Coreen makes a mean cup of coffee.” He raised his mug in salute to Coreen.
Vicki grimaced. “I can’t believe you’re drinking that.”
“Don’t I like coffee?”
“No, it’s just that Coreen makes it so strong it’ll grow hair on your chest.”
Henry froze, cup halfway to his lips. “It will?” He realized that he didn’t even know if he had hair on his chest. “Do I need hair on my chest?” Henry pulled out the collar of his shirt and looked down it. He did have hair on his chest, though not a thick pelt of it. He wasn’t sure he’d want a thick pelt. “What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s just a, uh, figure of speech,” Coreen said, averting her eyes and blushing. “I’m sure your chest is, um, just fine. Perfect, in fact.”
Henry smiled. “Really?”
Coreen’s, “Really,” in response was more of a squeak than an actual word.
“Thanks.”
“Welcome.”
Vicki took her glasses off, rubbed her eyes. Even annoyed because Henry’d missed their appointment and blind sided by Henry’s loss of memory, she had a certain . . . strength of character. Like she knew what she wanted and she’d do anything to make it happen. Henry could totally understand why he’d been attracted to her, if Coreen’s assessment was correct.
“Okay, back to the mysterious memory loss. You woke up with a headache, but no apparent injury.”
“Right.” Henry took a cautious sip of the coffee, his enjoyment of it dimmed by Vicki’s comment that he normally didn’t drink it, as well as the fact that she knew more about him than, well, than he did.
“No wallet, no cell phone, no keys,” Vicki repeated everything Henry had told her.
“Yep.”
“Then how did you know to come here?”
Henry pulled out the business card from his pocket. Vicki snatched it out of his hand and put her glasses back on so she could read it.
“My business card. Are you telling me that they stole your wallet, your cell phone and your keys, but they left you this business card?” She gave it an accusatory wave it in the air.
Henry shrugged. “I have no idea what they did, only that when I woke up, the only thing in my pockets was that business card.”
Vicki’s expressions ran the gamut from wary to confused to concerned. “You’re really not joking, are you?”
Henry thought he should be insulted by that. “Why would I joke about something like this?”
“Who knows with you,” Vicki said. She pushed off the desk and began pacing the reception area. “Okay, this . . . can’t be good. I mean, I would have thought that you were immune to things like this.”
“No apparent physical cause,” Coreen said morosely.
“So that leaves, what, drugs?” Vicki asked.
“Someone he ate, you think?” Coreen suggested.
“Hmm, maybe,” Vicki agreed.
“I’ll check it out,” Coreen said. She threw herself into the chair behind the desk and immediately started tapping at the keyboard. She was much less flustered now that she was actually doing something, Henry noted.
Vicki finally came to a stop in front of Henry. “Okay. I’m going to check out the area where you woke up, see if anyone remembers seeing you, if you were with anyone . . . .”
Vicki in take charge mode was very sexy, Henry thought.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” Henry asked with feigned innocence.
Vicki started at him for a few seconds more, unconvinced of his butter wouldn’t melt demeanor, but then she continued. “And I’ll keep a look out for your car, it’s possible they didn’t steal it.”
“Great,” Henry said, “I’ll go with you.” He set the coffee cup on the table and stood, ready to be doing something.
Vicki quashed that with a resounding, “No.”
Henry stared at her, incredulous. “What do you mean, no?”
Vicki snatched her coat off the chair she’d carelessly tossed it upon when she’d returned to the office earlier, worried by Coreen’s frantic telephone call and out of breath. “Just what I said, no.”
Henry’s shoulders went back and his chin tilted up. “Why not?”
“Because it’ll be easier for me to hold up a picture and say, have you seen this man, than to explain that you have no memory of what happened, which would give them absolutely no reason to tell me the truth.”
Henry wanted to argue, but he could see the logic in her reasoning. A missing man, once found, could corroborate their statement, but a man with no memory could not. The door opened just then, saving Henry from having to tell Vicki that she was right. The man who entered had light brown hair, blue eyes, and stood a couple inches taller than Henry. He wore a trench coat that had seen a lot of wear and had a ready smile for Vicki that made the corners of his eyes crinkle up nicely.
“Vicki, hey.”
“Mike! I’m so glad to see you!”
“You are?”
Vicki threw her arms around Mike, trapping his arms at his sides, and rested her head on his chest. Henry felt a little flutter in his belly that might have been the coffee -- it had been pretty strong -- or might be jealousy.
Mike just looked down at the top of Vicki’s head. He sounded resigned when he said, “I’m going to hate myself for asking this, but . . . what’s wrong?”
Vicki stood back, holding Mike at arm’s length. “I need your help.”
Mike sighed, scrunched his face up as he braced himself, then said, “Okay, hit me, what is it?”
“Thanks, Mike. I’ll owe you one.”
Mike held up one hand. “Oh, now wait just a minute, I didn’t say I’d . . . .”
“I need you to take Henry back to his apartment and see if anyone broke in, maybe tossed the place.”
Mike blinked, then glanced over at Henry before looking back at Vicki. “You need me to take Henry back to his apartment to see if anyone broke in.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“No, see, this is the part I don’t get. You need me to take Henry . . . .”
“Yes.”
Mike gave Henry a longer look, and the way Mike’s eyes darkened sent a little thrill through him. Maybe Henry had been jealous when Vicki hugged Mike, but not of Mike. Drawn by an irresistible impulse, Henry skirted the table and moved closer to Mike, circled him. He had a sudden desire to see Mike’s ass, but it was covered by the long trench coat he wore. When he got back around to Mike’s front, Mike was frowning at him. It did something to Henry’s insides. He couldn’t remember ever feeling that way before, but he thought it was a pretty nice feeling.
“What are you doing?”
Henry shivered at the gruff tone. “Are we . . . ?” Henry motioned between the two of them.
“Are we what?” Mike asked impatiently.
“You know, together.”
Henry now knew what they meant when they said that ‘the silence was deafening’, though he couldn’t remember who’d actually said it.
“I take it that’s a no?”
“That’s a no,” Mike confirmed, more adamantly than Henry thought was really necessary.
Henry shrugged. “Mmm, pity.”
“Actually, Henry,” Vicki said, her words slowly paced, as if she were treading cautiously, “we didn’t even know that you . . . .” She twisted her face up, gestured with her hand. “You know.”
“Liked guys?” Henry filled in.
Vicki looked grateful that she hadn’t had to say it. “Yeah, that.”
“Hmm.” It was possible that Henry wasn’t attracted to guys, but given his reaction to Mike, more probable that he’d merely hidden the attraction, even from people who were supposedly his friends. “Well then, when I get my memory back, you think I’ll be mad that I just outed myself?”
“Nah!” Vicki assured him. She grinned. “You’ll be madder that you admitted you were attracted to Mike.”
“As good a time as this is,” Mike interrupted, “want to tell me what’s going on here?”
“Henry’s lost his memory,” Coreen said. “We think it might have been someone he ate.”
“Drugs,” Vicki clarified.
“Oh, thank god,” Mike said. “For a second there I thought he’d lost his mind.”
“Funny,” Vicki said, though Henry disagreed. She clapped her hands together. “Okay, so we have a plan now. I’m going to check out the last place, or would that be the first place, Henry remembers being, and Mike is going to take Henry and check out his apartment. Don’t worry,” she added for Henry’s benefit, “Mike’s a detective with a nice big weapon, so he’ll be able to protect you if whoever did this to you comes after you again.”
Henry couldn’t help himself; he quirked an eyebrow, gave Mike an appraising once over.
Mike rolled his eyes, pulled his trench coat back to reveal the holstered gun. “An actual weapon,” he said.
*~*~*
Since Henry didn’t have his keys, he picked the lock to his apartment.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?”
Henry just glanced up at Mike, then went back to picking the lock.
Mike sighed. “Right, I keep forgetting.”
“Tell me about it.”
Mike pushed Henry behind him as soon as he got the lock open. Henry was about to complain about being shoved around, but the sight of Mike pulling out his weapon from the holster dried out his mouth and he could only stare while Mike slowly turned the door handle and pushed the door open. Mike in protective mode was a serious turn on. Or it could have been the way he handled his weapon.
Seconds later they stood inside the apartment, all their precautions for naught, as the apartment was empty and nothing was strewn about as Henry presumed it would be if the place had been searched.
“Anything missing?” Mike asked as he reholstered his weapon, much to Henry’s dismay. Mike shook his head. “Let me rephrase, anything look like it’s been disturbed?”
Henry looked around the room they stood in, but there wasn’t even a layer of dust on the furniture to mark where something might have sat before being moved. He wandered around the room, looking for anything that looked off, but nothing looked the slightest bit familiar so it was difficult for him to get a feel for what might be missing or out of place.
“Oh, hey.” Henry found his drawing table, and there were a few drawings left scattered on the top of it. He picked up the first one and looked at it.
“Oh, yeah,” Mike said, “you draw comics.”
Henry reluctantly dragged his eyes away from the drawing. “Coreen said I drew graphic novels.”
Mike shrugged. “Whatever.”
Mike walked away and Henry dropped the drawing to follow him. They ended up in the bedroom, which Henry thought might have been fate if Mike had looked a little more pleased to be there. Clearly he and Mike were not . . . anything, despite the fact that Henry was drawn to him.
Henry turned his attention to the lushly appointed bedroom. “Wow. This is mine?”
Mike made a noncommital sound. Henry walked over to the bed, stroked his hand over the thick, soft comforter. Mike peered into what had to be the master bath while Henry opened what turned out to be the closet. The hangers and shelves looked full and he didn’t know how he’d figure out if anything was missing, anyway, so he just closed the doors back up.
“Okay, well,” Mike said. He ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up adorably. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s been in here, and it’s almost sunrise, so I’m going leave you to . . . do whatever it is you do before sunrise.”
“What are you talking about?” Henry asked.
“You know, the whole bearding yourself in your den thing.”
“Yeah, no, I don’t know.” Henry didn’t know what worried him more, the fact that he didn’t know what Mike was talking about, or the fact that Mike was leaving Henry alone.
“Okay, wait.” Mike paused, took a deep breath. “You and Vicki had the whole vampire talk, right?” Mike nodded his head hopefully.
Henry nodded along with Mike. “No.”
Mike’s encouraging expression turned incredulous. “You have got to be kidding me.”
Henry wished he was kidding, because whatever Mike was talking about, Henry wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
“Okay, listen . . . .”
Henry covered his ears. “No.”
Mike pulled Henry’s hands away from his ears. “You. Are a vampire.”
“Vampires don’t exist.”
“That’s my line, Fitzroy.”
“Who’s Fitzroy?”
“You. Henry Fitzroy.”
“Oh.” Henry said the name out loud. He kind of liked the way it rolled off his tongue, so he said it again.
“Okay, and I can’t believe I’m even saying this, but we need to make sure you don’t go all vampire flambe when the sun comes up, so you’re going to have to get over your little vampire freak out and help me.”
“If this is payback for me thinking we were . . . you know, then ha ha, very funny, but can we move on?”
Mike scrubbed his face with one hand. “Why me?” Mike straightened, then reached out and grabbed Henry’s wrist, brought Henry’s hand to Mike’s throat, pressed the tips of his fingers against the skin. “That,” he said, “is a pulse. I have one.” Mike moved Henry’s hand to his own throat. “You don’t.”
Henry pulled his hand from Mike’s grasp, moved his fingers all over his throat looking for a pulse. When he couldn’t find one, he said, “So you’re telling me, what, I’m a vampire, the whole nine yards, blood sucking and everything?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you.”
“Well you’re wrong, and I can prove it.” Henry stomped out of the bedroom, found the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator door. It held a bottle of wine, the remnants of a six pack of beer, and several bottles of water. No food, not even a jar of mustard. Henry threw open every one of the kitchen cupboards, but they were bare. There weren’t even any plates in the cupboards, or silver in the drawers. He started to hyperventilate.
Mike smacked Henry on the back of the head. “You don’t even breathe, so knock it off, because we don’t have much time before the sun comes up.”
“You’re not being very understanding.”
“Right, well, we’ll worry about that when Vicki can’t blame me for letting you burn up on purpose.”
Mike walked out of the kitchen and back towards the bedroom, muttering something about a remote. Henry followed because he didn’t know what else to do. While Mike searched the bedroom, Henry popped into the bathroom. He turned the light on and looked into the mirror. He didn’t look like a vampire. His eyes weren’t red, or yellow, or whatever color they should be if he was a vampire. He pulled his lips back and bared his teeth, but they looked normal, as well. Henry flipped off the light switch and stepped back out into the bedroom where Mike was fiddling with a remote.
“What’s that?”
“It’s supposed to . . . . Aha!” Mike said as shutters came down to cover the windows, closing out all illumination from the lightening morning sky.
Henry’s throat closed up and he wondered if he was claustrophobic. “What happens next?”
“Well, since you have a bed instead of a coffin, I’m guessing that’s where you spend your days. So you might want to get comfortable, unless you plan on sleeping in your clothes.”
Henry started unbuttoning his shirt. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go home and get some sleep myself.”
“What? You’re not leaving me here alone?”
“Henry, you’ll be fine. No one broke in.”
Henry was across the room in a flash, fingers curled in Mike’s coat. “They still have my keys!”
The flash of anger -- or was it something else? -- in Mike’s eyes was the last thing Henry saw before the sleep of the dead took him.
*~*~*
Mike managed to catch Henry before he hit the floor. He maneuvered him onto the bed with a grunt. Henry wasn’t as light as he appeared. Feeling extremely put upon, Mike removed Henry’s shoes, then rolled him around until he’d managed to drag the covers out from under him. He draped the covers over Henry and walked away.
Halfway to the door he stopped, turned around. With a sigh he walked back over to the bed and threw the covers back. “You so owe me for this.”
Mike finished unbuttoning Henry’s shirt and took it off him, which wasn’t as easy as it sounded, since Henry was dead weight. Mike snorted at that. He tossed the shirt aside, then stared at Henry’s trousers. He reached for the covers, then grasped the waistband instead. “And don’t think I’m not collecting.”
He’d just remove the trousers, leaving Henry in his undershorts. That wouldn’t be too invasive, right? Eyes half closed, more for his own benefit than Henry’s, Mike unbuttoned and unzipped the trousers, tugged them down Henry’s hips. “Oh, Jesus!” He closed his eyes all the way and dragged the trousers the rest of the way off. Of course Henry wouldn’t be wearing any undershorts.
Mike threw the covers back over Henry’s naked, still form, then hurried from the room. He prayed that he’d soon forget the sight of Henry in all his glory. As he crossed the living room, Mike pulled out his cell phone and dialed Vicki.
“Mike, hey, how’s Henry?”
“Sleeping like the dead,” Mike said. “And thank you, by the way, for leaving it up to me to inform him that he’s a vampire!”
“Oh. Sorry. I didn’t even think about that.”
“Apparently.”
“So what are you doing now?”
“Leaving. I need to get some sleep, and a shower would be nice.”
“What? You can’t leave Henry alone!”
“Why not? The apartment was empty, no one had been here.”
“They took his keys and wallet for a reason, Mike. He’s vulnerable during the day, they could be waiting.”
“If they wanted to kill him, they could have done it when he was incapacitated earlier,” Mike pointed out. Vicki remained stubbornly silent. Mike pounded his forehead against the front door. “Did you find his car?”
“No sign of it. I checked the alleys and dumpsters near where he woke up, but I didn’t find his wallet, keys or cell phone, either. I was hoping someone had taken the cash and dumped the rest.”
“All right, fine, I’ll stay here while Henry’s . . . out of it.”
“Thank you, Mike. I really appreciate it. And I know Henry will, too.”
“Yeah, right. Listen, I’ll call down to the station, put a BOLO out on Henry’s car and have them watch his credit cards, see if anyone tries to use them. Getting a trap on his cell phone might take a little longer. Oh, just make sure you have blood for Henry tomorrow. Probably not a good idea to let him loose on the unsuspecting public when we don’t know if he can control himself.”
“Good idea. Listen, Mike . . . .”
Mike hung up before Vicki could thank him again, on behalf of Henry bloody Fitzroy.
The call to the station didn’t take very long. It took more time to explain why Henry hadn’t filed a report himself than to get the BOLO and credit card watch set up. And because the robbery division was swamped, Mike didn’t have a problem being put on the file as the primary, so he’d get the call if the vehicle were found, or if there was any activity on Henry’s credit cards.
Once that was done, Mike was bored. He’d wanted a shower and bed, not necessarily in that order, but it didn’t look like he was going to get that right away, because there was no way he was showering in Henry’s bath, or sleeping in Henry’s bed. Mike took his coat off, resigned to spending the day there, and wandered around Henry’s apartment. He’d been there before, but never for more than a few minutes, so he took the time to look at the pictures and other items that had been important enough for Henry to display in his home.
Mike managed to kill about an hour touring Henry’s apartment. He found the television remote and turned on the morning news programs, hoping to keep himself awake. There were more interviews with celebrities than actual news, so Mike turned the television off. He wandered into the kitchen, thought about a bottle of water, then decided on a beer. It didn’t count as too early if he hadn’t been to bed yet.
Mike ended up in Henry’s office area, sitting at his drawing table, flipping through his drawings. He opened one of the graphic novels that sat on the shelf behind the desk and spent the next hour reading it. When the inch of beer left in the bottom of the bottle was warm, and his eyes were burning from being awake when all he wanted to do was sleep, Mike decided to try and get some shut eye.
He made sure that the deadbolt was thrown and that the chain was hooked, then placed a chair in front of the door for good measure, so that anyone entering the apartment would make enough noise to wake him. Gun at hand on the coffee table, Mike removed his suit jacket and loosened his tie, then laid down on one of Henry’s couches and closed his eyes. Five minutes of tossing and turning later he opened them. He folded his coat under his head and tried again, but it was no use. He couldn’t find a comfortable position on the sofa, which was more torture device than couch.
Mike peeked in on Henry, who hadn’t moved since Mike had left him there hours ago. He checked his watch. If he laid down on the bed now, he’d be awake before the sun set and Henry woke. Mike turned off all the lights in the apartment but for a lamp beside the sofa, so a soft glow filled the living room, and the place didn’t seem so much like a mausoleum. Gun moved to its new spot on the bedside table, Mike kicked his shoes off and laid down on top of the comforter.
When Mike fell asleep, there were several layers of sheets and blankets, and nearly two feet of space, between them. When he woke, Henry was sprawled across him, loose hair tickling Mike’s face as he nuzzled into Mike’s neck.
A frisson of fear-tinged anticipation slithered down Mike’s spine. “What are you doing?”
“You smell really, really good,” Henry said.
Mike shifted nervously. “Swell. Listen, could you maybe get off of me?”
Henry lifted his head, smiled down at Mike. “I have a better idea.”
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like it?”
“Just a little nibble,” Henry said, holding his thumb and forefinger about a half inch apart in front of Mike’s face.
Mike bucked as fear blossomed more fully. He still had nightmares about the last time Henry had bitten him. “No.”
The smile was gone, and Henry looked like he’d been kicked. “What’s wrong?”
“Look, no offense, but we’ve done this before, and it didn’t end well.”
“Did I hurt you?”
Mike’s fear faded at the genuine distress in Henry’s voice.
“Let me see.” Henry unbuttoned Mike’s shirt and pushed the collar away from his neck.
“Look, Henry, you’d been tortured and starved, and you were . . . a little bit out of control,” Mike prevaricated, trying not to think about what Henry tearing at his clothes was doing to him. “And that’s what I’m worried about here.” Mike’s voice rose as Henry’s tongue traced the small scar from the bite.
Mike grabbed a handful of Henry’s hair and pulled him away from his neck. He ignored the way Henry’s body arched, the soft little moan. “That you don’t remember how to feed, and you won’t be able to stop,” he continued, forcing as much firmness into his voice as he could.
“I’ll stop,” Henry said. “I promise. And it doesn’t have to be your neck.” His fingers scrabbled at Mike’s wrist. “I can hear it, feel it, pumping right here.” Henry disregarded the hold Mike had on his hair, slithered down to Mike’s wrist, pressed his nose to the sensitive skin and sniffed.
“Henry, no.”
But Henry wasn’t listening, he was past reason as he tore at the button and shoved the sleeve up Mike’s arm, and Mike was both scared and a little bit turned on.
“Henry.” Mike tried again to reach him as Henry sniffed and licked at his wrist. There was a sting of pain as Henry bit into Mike’s wrist, and then pleasure pooled in Mike’s belly as Henry drew on his blood. The same pleasure that haunted Mike’s dreams, because he feared that he would have let Henry drain him that night if only he could have had just one more second of it.
Mike curled around Henry, whispered in his ear. “Henry, stop, please stop. Henry, please.” It was the most difficult thing Mike had ever had to do, because what his body craved was to just let Henry take as much as he wanted. His reaction frightened him, and he had to fight the urge to give in to the pleasure, grind himself against Henry until the pleasure was all there was. “Henry.”
Henry withdrew his fangs from Mike’s wrist, lapped at the bite. When he lifted his head, there was blood on his lips. Henry licked it off, then turned into Mike. He lowered his face, but Mike stopped him before their lips could touch. “No.”
Henry looked like a puppy Mike had just kicked, but Mike refused to relent, because the real Henry would be back soon, the one who disliked Mike, as soon as Henry recovered his memories, and there was no way Mike was giving Henry any more ammunition to use against him than he already had. “We can’t,” Mike said. “Go take a shower so we can get going.”
Henry rolled off Mike as if he’d been electrocuted. He stood beside the bed, gloriously naked and hard. “You can’t,” he said, lower lip trembling, and then he sneered as he stroked himself, unselfconscious of his nudity, and strolled casually into the bathroom.
Mike waited until he heard the water turn on before he reached beneath the covers and squeezed himself, willing away his erection. Henry, on the other hand, was taking care of his own erection in the shower. Loudly. Mike tried to ignore the sounds of Henry pleasuring himself, but Henry was doing his best to make sure that Mike couldn’t do that.
Mike slipped into his shoes, reholstered his weapon -- only thought briefly about using it on Henry -- then escaped to the living room where he called Vicki.
“I hope you picked up blood for Henry,” Mike said in response to her greeting.
“I did,” Vicki said. “Coreen has a friend that works at the hospital and . . . .”
Mike cut her off. “You should probably not tell me the details. Just have it waiting, because Henry really needs to feed.”
“Okay. When will you be here?”
“Half an hour or so,” Mike said. Henry was still in the shower, and from the sounds of it, would be for a while yet, and Mike still had to drop by his apartment for a quick shower and a change of clothes.
*~*~*
“Why do I have to stay here?” Henry sounded like a petulant teenager.
“Same reason you couldn’t go with me last night,” Vicki said, with much more patience than Mike would have been able to manage.
Henry had been peevish and argumentative since they’d left his apartment. The only time Mike had gotten any peace was when he’d been in the shower, and even then he’d been self-conscious, wondering if Henry would do something to embarrass him. He’d even gone so far as to imagine Henry forcing the issue Mike had neatly -- barely -- sidestepped earlier by sliding the curtain back and stepping into the shower with him.
Mike had nipped that little fantasy in the bud right about the time he’d started stroking himself to the image of Henry arched under the spray, water droplets painting his skin. This time his erection took longer to go down, despite the cold water Mike had rinsed off under, and Henry’d had a self-satisfied smile on his face when Mike had finally emerged from his bedroom, fully dressed.
Mike dragged his attention back to the discussion between Henry and Vicki just in time to hear Henry say, “If whoever did this knows me, and knows about my relationship with both of you, they could come here looking for me.”
“Don’t worry,” Vicki said, patting her pockets to make sure she had everything, “Coreen will take care of you.”
“That’s not my point,” Henry said, and Mike could see the effort it took not to stomp his foot in frustration. It was actually amusing to see that Mike wasn’t the only one Vicki had this affect on. “You’re putting Coreen in danger by leaving me here.”
Vicki rolled her eyes, her patience clearly worn since Mike had tuned them out. “You’ll both be fine. If you’re worried, lock the door, and if anything happens, call me.”
They darted out the door while Henry was still processing that, and Mike heard Henry’s, “What am I supposed to do all night?” through the closed door. Vicki opened the door back up and poked her head inside. “Help Coreen research.”
“And what are we going to do?” Mike asked as they hurried down the hall away from Vicki’s office, and Henry.
“We are going to question prospective witnesses, since nearly everyone was gone by the time I got there this morning, and see if we can find Henry’s belongings tossed away somewhere. Speaking of, any news on Henry’s car or the credit cards?”
“Nothing,” Mike said, “but I’ll call in to check. You know,” Mike added as he pulled out his phone and dialed, “you’re going to owe Coreen hazzard pay after tonight.”
*~*~*
Coreen watched Henry pace the office until she couldn’t stand it any longer. “Want to help me research?”
Henry stopped pacing long enough to ask, “Do I like to research?”
Coreen made a face, shrugged.
“Great.” Henry flopped himself down into one of the waiting chairs, propped his foot up on the table. “What are you researching?”
Coreen bounced. She rarely had company while she was researching, and it wasn’t often that she got to spend time with Henry. “You, actually. Your memory loss, anyway.”
“Drugs,” Henry said.
“No, we dropped that line of inquiry,” Coreen said. She snagged a book off the desk and plopped down beside Henry. “Vicki and I tossed around some ideas, and we realized that you probably would have been able to tell if the blood was tainted before you drank it. You told us once that you could smell us, which is . . . kind of icky, but we figured it meant that you can probably tell if blood is drugged or diseased, and stay away from it. Oh!”
Coreen twisted in the chair, placed her hand on Henry’s arm. “Sorry about not mentioning the whole . . . vampire thing. It didn’t even cross my mind to tell you. I mean, I’m just so used to it.”
“Does everyone know?”
“That you’re a vampire, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“No, it’s still a big secret. Only a few people know.”
“You, Vicki. And Mike.”
“Yeah.” Coreen watched the changing expressions as they flickered across Henry’s face, and wished that she could tell what he was thinking. She did the only thing she could think of, and changed the subject. “So, wanna help me research?”
“What are we looking for?”
“Supernatural, uh, entities that cause memory loss.”
“Supernatural.” Despite the fact that he was a vampire, a perfect specimen of the supernatural, Henry sounded skeptical.
“Yeah. I mean, you can take care of yourself against humans. You’re strong and super fast, and you’ve got that smell thing going on for you, and, you know, hearing, so it’d be tough for someone to sneak up on you. So if it wasn’t human, then it must have been . . . .”
“Supernatural.”
“Yeah.”
Henry took the book out of Coreen’s hand. “Demons, Fairies and Other Monsters. Sounds interesting.”
“Oh, it is! It’s my favorite.” Coreen patted Henry’s hand. “You start with that one, I’ll get another one.”
They each skimmed two books, and by the time she finally closed her second one Coreen was losing some of her perk. Even the time she’d come across a demon that stole your memories and left you a vegetable, and she’d jumped out of her chair screaming, only to have Henry remind her that he wasn’t a vegetable, didn’t deliver enough adrenaline to keep her going.
“I need coffee.”
“I think there’s still some in the pot,” Henry said. He was looking through the pile of books on Coreen’s desk that they still had to search.
Coreen made a face. “Oh, no, not that stuff. The good stuff at the coffee shop down the block.”
“That’s not the good stuff?”
“No, it’s terr-.” Coreen broke off at the expression on Henry’s face.
“Let me get this straight, the coffee that you offered me last night is not only not the good stuff, you know it’s terrible?”
“I was just being polite! I didn’t think you’d say yes, you never say yes.”
“I couldn’t remember that!”
“I wasn’t thinking! Look, I’ll make it up to you by buying you a really big cup of the good stuff. You can get all kinds of flavors.”
“Really? But what if someone sees us?”
“Sees us buying coffee? Did you used to live in a world where coffee was, like, illegal or something? Because it’s not anymore.”
“No, but I’m now living in a world where I can’t remember who stole my memories!”
“Oh, yeah, that. Were you scared when you came over here with Mike?”
“No, I wasn’t scared.”
“But you’ll be scared if we go down the block for coffee?”
“I will not be scared. But you don’t have a gun.”
“No, but I’ve got this.” Coreen opened the bottom drawer of her desk, pulled out her bag.
“A purse?”
“A taser,” Coreen said, brandishing the taser.
“I feel better already.”
“Don’t make fun. Besides, you’re super strong, and you’ve got great senses of hearing and smell, so no one can sneak up on us.” Coreen gave Henry her best look of encouragement, but it didn’t seem to be working. “Okay, look, you stay here and I’ll go alone.”
“You can’t go alone! What if someone grabs you to get to me?”
“Okay, you’re really starting to freak me out here.”
“Finally.”
“But I really need some coffee. Good coffee,” she clarified when Henry pointed towards the coffee maker.
Coreen set the phone so it went straight to voice mail and they headed out. They were back fifteen minutes later with two flavored coffees and a bag of cookies, and no one had followed them, attacked them, or even looked at them funny.
They set up camp on the couch in Vicki’s office. Coreen carried in the tray of coffees and the bag of cookies while Henry grabbed a couple more books off the desk. Coreen passed out the coffees and Henry handed over one of the books. The coffee and cookies were gone before they’d finished looking through their respective books, so when Coreen came to the end of hers she picked up their trash and carried it out with her when she went to switch books.
When Coreen went back in to Vicki’s office, Henry was just looking off into space, the open book propped up on his knees. “Hey, you all right?”
Henry’s smile was forced. “Yeah, fine.”
Coreen sat on the couch, curled her legs up under her and set the book on her knees. “We could talk.”
“Do we often talk?”
“Well, no. I mean, you’re more action guy than research guy, so you go off with Vicki usually. But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk now. You look, I don’t know, sad.”
“I just, I don’t know who I am, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to act, and it’s . . . frustrating.”
Coreen couldn’t bear the uncertainty in Henry’s voice. She leaned over and placed her hand on his arm. “However you act is the right way, because it’s how you feel, right?”
“Except, I’m not really me right now. I mean, I would never have made a, uh, pass at Mike, would I, before?”
“No. But that doesn’t mean you didn’t want to.”
“But the point is, I wouldn’t have. And I wouldn’t have . . . .”
Coreen leaned forward. “Wouldn’t have what?”
“Nothing.”
“Come on, you can tell me!”
“No, I can’t. You’d tell Vicki.”
Coreen was insulted. “No I wouldn’t!”
“You would so! She’d give you that steely-eyed glare and you’d cave.”
“Well, maybe, but only if she had to know. If it was important that she not know I wouldn’t tell her.”
Knowing Henry, he only gave in because he really needed to talk to someone about this. “I wouldn’t have bitten Mike.”
“But you didn’t know what you were doing! Vicki said you were mad with hunger and pain . . . .”
“Not then. Earlier tonight.”
Coreen felt her eyes go wide. “You bit Mike!”
Henry fell back onto the couch. “I couldn’t help myself. He smelled really good. I mean, really good.”
Instead of feeling jealous, like she sometimes did in comparison with Vicki, Coreen found herself grinning. “So, was it good for you?”
Henry rolled his head against the back of the sofa so that he was facing her. He stared at her, and then his lips twitched. “Very.”
“And?” Coreen said eagerly, enjoying dishing with Henry.
“And what?”
“What about Mike?”
Henry shrugged. “I think he enjoyed it, too. More than he wanted to, anyway. And that’s the part you can never, ever tell Vicki. Ever. I’m serious. That’s just between us girls.”
“I won’t,” Coreen promised. She held up her hand, all fingers but one curled in. “Pinky swear.”
Henry stared at her hand as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it, then held up his own, pinky sticking out. Coreen grinned as she wrapped her pinky around Henry’s, and swore to herself that she would never tell anyone what Henry had told her, no matter what threats or bribes they used against her.
“Okay,” Coreen said, her pinky still wrapped around Henry’s, “tell me more.”
“There’s not much more to tell. Mike wouldn’t let me . . . .”
“Finish him off?” Coreen covered her mouth and squealed. “I can’t believe I just said that!” She laughed nervously and pointed at Henry. “You can’t tell anyone!”
Henry smiled. “I won’t, if you won’t.”
“I won’t, I promise!”
“Then we’re good.”
“Yeah. Hey, Henry?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I give you a hug?”
Henry raised his eyebrows.
“I mean, you look like you could use a hug, and later, when you get your memory back, you’ll be all stoic and you wouldn’t admit you needed a hug if they held hot irons to your feet, so . . . .” She shrugged.
“All right.”
Coreen stood up on her knees, not even caring that the book slid off onto the floor, and hugged Henry. “We’re going to figure this out.”
“And I’ll go back to being all stoic, and pretending I’m not attracted to Mike, and we’ll never talk like this again.”
“Well, yeah, probably, but, hey, at least you’ll remember who you are. That’s good, right?”
“Yeah. Tell me, what was I like?”
“You mean before you lost your memory?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you’re confident, and smart, and you care about people even if you don’t like to admit it.”
“So, an arrogant know it all with intimacy issues?”
That startled a laugh out of her and Coreen slapped Henry’s arm. “That’s not what I said! And certainly not what I meant.”
They sat in silence for a while, and before it could get too awkward, Coreen suggested they get back to research. Henry agreed, then asked for paper and a pencil. Coreen brought him a lined pad of paper, then a handful of copy paper when he asked for something without lines. Coreen sat down with her book while Henry curled up in the corner of the couch with the paper, using the pad for support.
“Have I ever drawn you?” Henry asked as the pencil danced over the paper.
“No. Are you drawing me now?”
His lips curled in a half smile, Henry glanced up at her, then back down at the paper. Coreen squirmed in pleasure, and felt blood heating her face. She’d remember this night forever, even if Henry didn’t. And she’d never do anything to make him sorry that he’d confided in her.
Continued in Part Two