Bodyswapping Only Looks Fun On TV 3/4: Taste for Trouble (PG)
Bodyswapping Only Looks Fun On TV (Taste for Trouble) (3/4)
A Blood Ties story
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: Whatever fantasies Vicki had about waking up in Henry's bed, none of them including waking up as Henry...
Disclaimer: None of these characters or shows belong to me. The Blood Ties series started with Tanya Huff and slipped sideways into Lifetime. If you haven't read the books, go out and buy them for this holiday season!
Rating: Overall, R (to be on the safe side) for swearing, adult content, some sort-of-slash, nakedness. This part is PG.
Spoilers: Up to "The Devil You Know".
Words: 4,370
Note: I started this before the interesting events in "Wrapped", and so we won't be dealing with those issues in this story. Which is too bad, because seriously. I also take a couple of tidbits from the Blood books, because they can fit so well here :) Lastly, about one-third of the way in, I started getting confused with the gender pronouns for Henry and Vicki. I think I fixed everything now. Let me know if things get confused.
Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four
The street was empty, surprising for a winter's Saturday night in Toronto. Vicki shoved her hands deep in the pockets of Henry's coat as she trudged towards her office. Henry had told her that vampires didn't feel cold the way humans did, but she was willing to bet that standing in a cold shower for twenty minutes would put a chill into even the undead.
I can't believe this is happening, Vicki thought for the thousandth time. How was she going to look Henry in the eye after this? Sure, there was the possibility that he had been a perfect gentleman and hadn't taken any liberties in the shower with his borrowed body, but...
But this was Henry Fitzroy. He was the vampire for whom the phrase "taking liberties" was invented.
I'll just pretend that I never thought of it, Vicki told herself as she slipped in the door of her office building. That Henry didn't spend the night in bed with me and didn't spend time in a warm shower with my body--
She stopped her line of thought abruptly. This wasn't helping. Under her breath, she went over her list of appetite-suppressants as she mounted the stairs. "Homer Simpson, Joan Rivers, Richard Simmons, pretty much everyone who ever appeared on the Jerry Springer show..." It worked, after a fashion, but she felt as if she needed another shower.
The door to Vicki Nelson Investigations was closed, but Vicki could hear voices through the glass. Two murmuring voices, two heartbeats, both beating a little faster than normal. Vicki stopped with her hand on the doorknob. Please God, let them be fighting. An arguing Henry and Mike, she could deal with. But if their heart rates were raised for any other reason...
She opened the door.
Henry was seated at her desk, papers spread out on the wooden surface. Mike sat on one of the client chairs, tilted back onto two legs. He let the chair fall with a thump when Vicki walked in.
Henry glanced up. "Hello, Henry," he said with subdued sarcasm. "How are you this evening?"
"Oh, I feel fine," Vicki said, unable to keep a smirk from flashing over her face. To her satisfaction, a flush rose to Henry's cheeks. Serves you right for showering with my body. She glanced at Mike. "Detective."
"Fitzroy," Mike said in a tone of voice usually reserved for men named 'Newman'.
Vicki rocked back on her heels as an awkward silence filled the room. "So here we are," she finally said.
Henry rolled his eyes. "Here are the files we were talking about last night," he said. He pushed a stack of files in Vicki's direction. "I've narrowed it down to the top two and sent Coreen--"
"You sent Coreen out on her own?" Vicki demanded, hand stopping halfway to the files. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Henry sat up straight, his Prince of Man expression haughty and strangely fitting on Vicki Nelson's face. "It's an antique show opening," he said scathingly. "She is with friends. I told her it was a follow-up to the Milano case."
"You should have gone with her," Vicki responded tartly. Her hands balled up in her pockets. "If she gets into trouble--"
"She won't!"
"Because you're the expert on trouble-free private investigation?"
"Excuse me," Mike interrupted. "Anyone want to tell me what the hell you two are going on about?"
"No," Henry and Vicki said in unison. Vicki shot Henry a glare, which he ignored.
"There's something about my past cases that has been bugging me," Henry lied, glancing at Mike. "I wanted to go over it with Henry, and as the antique show opened tonight and I couldn't be in two places at once..."
Mike looked at Henry with an indecipherable expression. "You hate letting anyone else do your footwork."
Henry's expression never changed. "Coreen's not a stupid girl, if there's anything there to find, she will."
Mike shifted his gaze to Vicki. "I guess a lot of things have changed since you left the force."
Growing irritation shifted darker, swirling about in Vicki's belly. "Vicki would never let Coreen walk into a dangerous situation, Mi-- Detective," she said. To cover the shaking in her limbs, she picked up a folder from the pile on her desk. "You were her partner for years, you think she's changed that much?"
Mike's eyes went back to Henry. "A lot of things have changed since she met you, Fitzroy, and I can't help but wonder how much of that was her and how much was you."
Henry leaned forward, a slightly feral smile on his lips. In the light, his teeth looked a little sharp. "I'm sitting right here, and if you think that talking about me as if I am absent or incompetent, or beguiled by Henry's native charms, is going to endear you to me, you are sadly mistaken. Am I clear?"
Mike sat forward, elbows on his knees. "Loud and clear," he said, expression still indecipherable. "So what is Coreen looking for?"
"Looking for?" Henry echoed. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, what is she looking for?" Mike said again. "I've been hanging around in the past few weeks, maybe I can help with whatever case is bugging you. Like that time with the Percy Horton case, you remember."
What the fuck is Mike talking about? Vicki searched her memory for any case she had worked, alone or with Mike, for a person named Percy Horton, but came up blank.
However, Henry nodded. "Yeah, that time. This is different, it's just a feeling I have. Nothing concrete."
The corner of Mike's eye twitched. "Still."
Vicki's stomach sank. That son of a bitch! she thought, not really sure which man she was thinking about. "Don't you have to go, Detective? All that very important police work to do?"
"I'm good," Mike replied. "After all, if you need to send Coreen out to pound the pavement, you probably need all the help you can get." He inclined his head in Vicki's direction. "Actual help, I mean."
The jibe was aimed at 'Henry', but the swirling uncertainty roiled in Vicki's stomach. It made her angry. It made her want to hit something.
It made her hungry.
"I need some air," Vicki announced, dropping the folder to the desk. "Back in a few."
She had barely cleared the door when Henry started in on Mike, the thick wood muffling his words. It was probably for the best. All Vicki could think about was anger and hunger and wanting to smack that stupid expression right off Mike's face.
Her feet moved of their own accord towards the door at the end of the hall marked Roof Access Only. The door was supposed to be locked, but the landlord usually kept it open so he could go up and smoke during the day. Sure enough, the door was unlocked now, and Vicki soundlessly eased through the door and up the stairs to the roof.
The lights of Toronto sparkled against the black velvet of the night. Vicki stopped by the edge of the roof, staring out at the glow of the lights, and above them, the sharp remote glow of the stars filling the night sky. Now that she was alone, the anger in her chest tampered down, letting Vicki feel another emotion that probably been there all along, but had been hidden but the confusion of the body swap, and the anger at Mike.
Loneliness.
Cold fingers picked at the metal railing on the roof's edge, aged paint no match for a vampire's fingernails.
Since the day Vicki had met Mike Celluci, he'd had her back. They had been partners on the force, lovers, and friends. The RP had taken the first two away from them, but they had always remained friends.
The bare metal of the railing scrapped at Vicki's fingernails, sending a shudder up her spine. She needed to stop lying to herself. The RP hadn't taken Mike away from Vicki. She had done that, pushing him out of her bed after she realized that she couldn't be a cop any longer. She hadn't wanted him to see her as less than she had been.
And now, to have him look at her with unmasked dislike... Intellectually, she knew that it was because she was Henry, but every time Mike looked at her, he saw someone he hated.
And there is a very real chance I will never be me again.
The sharp lights of the night blurred as the loneliness dug its claws into her heart. It wasn't just Mike she'd be losing. It was everyone. Her mother, everyone she ever knew...
Everyone she'd driven away.
There was still Henry, Vicki tried to tell herself. Somehow, the idea of exchanging her entire life, for one person bound to her thought a metaphysical accident, seemed to her a hollow trade.
"It's going to be okay."
Vicki nearly jumped out of her skin. "Fuck, Henry!" She swung around, wiping freezing tears from her cheeks. "You of all people should know about sneaking up on vampires!"
Henry smiled faintly. "Are you okay?" he asked, hands held out in front of him as he came closer.
"I'm fine," Vicki mumbled. Every instinct in her wanted to assist Henry, who had to have been almost blind on the rooftop. But she wouldn't have welcomed the help, and neither would Henry. "How did you know I was up here?"
"Instinct," Henry said. His seeking hands found the railing beside Vicki, and he gave an almost inaudible sigh of relief. "I find I do-- I did the same thing. Find the high ground at night so I can think."
The lights from the street below highlighted the curve of Henry's cheek, the delicate line of his throat and the faint flutter of the pulse below the skin. The stirrings of hunger pushed at Vicki's head, but she swallowed the urge to satiate that need.
"So," Vicki said carefully. "Did Mike leave?"
Henry wrinkled his nose. "I do not care. The man is just--"
"Trying to help?"
"I was going to say irritating." Henry turned his head. "Coreen will be fine."
It took Vicki a moment to make the mental transition to think about her assistant. "Probably," she admitted. "But we really don't know what's up with what happened between us, and putting Coreen in the potential line of fire--"
"She is with friends, and I gave her strict instructions to be careful and only look," Henry retorted. He stared blindly at the street. "She will be safe."
"Since when does Coreen follow instructions?" Vicki asked, edging closer to Henry. He was so warm, and while Vicki wasn't actually cold anymore, the warmth was captivating.
"I used to be able to make her," Henry said softly. He closed his eyes when Vicki's hip bumped his. "Now she just nods her head and gives me that smile and I have no idea what she's up to."
"Welcome to the wonderful world of being me." Vicki ran her hand over Henry's long hair, feeling the silky strands soft against her fingers. "Some days, dealing with Coreen is like herding cats."
Henry smiled. "Headache-inducing?" He turned to face her and suddenly he was too close. Vicki wanted... something she couldn't name. Something she wasn't willing to name. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Henry put his hands on Vicki's shoulders, holding her still. "It occurred to me this morning, that if we are to be like this for long, then we need to discuss several matters of importance."
"Whatever happened to finding whatever did this and killing it?" Vicki asked softly, distracted by Henry's closeness and his warmth. All she'd need to do would be to lean in and kiss him, move her lips lower and sink teeth through the soft skin over a vein--
"That's very high on the list," Henry said, either not aware of Vicki's distraction or ignoring it. "But we should have a contingency plan. Just in case."
The still-functioning part of Vicki's brain wondered how a full-body embrace could constitute as a contingency plan, but baser needs won out. She put her hands carefully around Henry's waist, distantly startled at how very slender the body in her arms was, and lowered her head.
Henry's lips were soft and warm under hers, responding to Vicki's kiss with enthusiasm. He clutched at her shoulders, trying to pull her even closer as he deepened the kiss.
Perhaps it was the confusion of the past day, or maybe the months of unresolved sexual tension, but Vicki didn't even bother trying to stop. Henry felt so alive in her arms, that she wanted more.
More.
What more might have been was abruptly brought to a halt as an angry male voice crackled through the air, "What the hell is going on up here?"
Vicki jerked back, Henry's gasp sharp in her ears as familiar blood coated her tongue. Henry stumbled back, eyes wide and hand rising to his lips, but not before Vicki saw the blood running down his chin.
Mike appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed Vicki's jacket with both hands and hauled her away from Henry. "What the fuck are you doing to her?" Mike shouted, his fist already on the downswing. He caught Vicki hard against the jaw. She fell to the ground. The world coalesced to the mild pain in her jaw, the blood on her tongue, and the man standing over her, closing in for another attack.
A growl burst from Vicki's throat as she leapt at Mike.
Henry dove between them at the last second and spun Vicki away, deflecting the angle of her attack. "Vicki, stop this!" Henry shouted, pushing her away from Mike. Vicki's feet tangled in Henry's and they toppled to the ground. Henry straddled Vicki's waist to stop her from going at Mike again.
The blood on Vicki's tongue suddenly tasted foul.
"Stop this!" Henry commanded as he pushed at Vicki's shoulders. "You can't let the anger take you; you'll never find your way back!"
Vicki sat up as if Henry weighed nothing, stood with Henry in her arms. One she was on her feet, she dumped Henry unceremoniously to the ground, not really caring if he landed on his feet or not.
Across the roof, Mike stood frozen. The faint light from the street below was enough to gleam off the gun bare in Mike's hand; the gun pointed at Vicki's chest.
Vicki took a step back, then another, then fell to her knees and spat blood on the freezing ground.
Footsteps sounded on the gravel. Henry knelt beside Vicki, his heart still racing. "Are you okay?" he asked as he laid his hand on her shoulder.
Still nauseous, Vicki managed to nod. "Your mouth..."
"You bit my lip, that's all," Henry told her. "I'm fine."
Fine. Nobody's fine, nobody's ever going to be fine ever again, Vicki thought bitterly. In her mind's eye, all she could see was Mike's gun pointed at her.
"Shh," Henry urged as he patted her shoulder. "It's over."
Heavier footsteps stopped beside Henry and Vicki. "The hell it's over," Mike said. Vicki could hardly hear his words over the pounding of his heart and his rapid breathing. "What the fuck is going on?"
"None of this concerns you, Detective Celluci," Henry said. His hand stilled on Vicki's shoulder. "You have done enough damage for one night, so why don't you leave?"
Vicki lifted her head. Mike's gun was still in his hand, but he had the thing pointed at the ground and Vicki could see that the safety was on. Her eyes went higher. Mike stared as if he had never seen either of them before in his life.
"Go away, Celluci!" Henry exclaimed.
Mike put his gun up. "What's going on?" Mike asked. He seemed to be ignoring Henry all together, staring directly at Vicki.
Mouth dry, Vicki had to swallow twice to be able to speak. "I let my temper get the better of me," she said, hoping to hell she sounded like Henry.
"Bullshit," Mike retorted. "Why did Vicki call you 'Vicki' just now?"
Henry let out a little groan. "That, he heard," he muttered.
Vicki eased out from under Henry's hand and rose to his feet. "Do you really want to know, Mike?" she asked.
"No, he does not!" Henry snapped, popping up. "I said... I said, 'it's Vicki, stop this', not anything else!"
Mike shook his head. "The hell you did. And you two have been acting pretty fucking weird for the last few days--"
"This only happened yesterday!" Vicki said indignantly.
"What only happened yesterday?" Mike demanded.
Ignoring Henry's attempt to shut her up, Vicki crossed her arms over her chest. "Henry and I swapped bodies. We're trying to figure out what did it so we can put things back the way they were."
Mike blinked at her. "You... what?"
"Swapped bodies," Vicki repeated as Henry threw up his hands and stalked away across the rooftop. "Like on Freaky Friday. I'm Vicki and that," she pointed, "is Henry."
Mike shook his head again, harder this time. "No fucking way. This is like a big joke, right? Coreen's going to jump out from behind the boiler stack and say I've been punked, right?"
At least he wasn't laughing. "What do you want me to say, Mike?" Vicki asked. "It's the truth."
"No--"
"Oh god, Mike? You want me to prove it?" Vicki's temper, already frayed from the most recent round with Mike, got the better of her. "The office Christmas party, the month after I made detective, you and me were dancing to something intolerable except for the fifty-percent blood alcohol we were dealing with, and you ended up nailing me in the ladies can and I had to stagger back in there the next morning, all hung over, and scratch out the 'Mike Celluci is a sex god' I'd written the night before. Satisfied?"
She probably could have picked a better example of something she wouldn't have told Henry, but it was too late. Mike stared at her, his face blank.
"Anyway," Vicki continued uncomfortably. "What was with the Percy Horton crap, anyway? Did you think something was up with me?"
"Vicki was all spacey at lunch yesterday-- I mean, I thought it was Vicki, and I thought that Fitzroy was messing with her memory or something..." Mike's face went as white as a sheet. "If you're Vicki and that's Fitzroy, then yesterday in the car..."
"I'm about as thrilled with the recollection as you are, Detective," Henry snapped, wandering back across the rooftop. "Let's just both pretend it never happened and get on with the urgent matter of changing us back!" He gave Vicki a dark look. "Without telling anyone else what has befallen us."
Vicki took a deep breath. "Just a tip, Henry, I never use words like 'befallen', so cut the Scrabble vocabulary and maybe you won't be the one to give us away, okay?"
Henry turned away. "If it's all the same to you, I am going back to work. Do whatever you want." He stalked off in the direction of the door.
"Stop!" Vicki called. Henry obeyed a little too quickly. Vicki let out a breath and tried to speak normally. "There's a low pipe in front of you."
Growling low in his throat, Henry sidestepped the pipe and continued on his way back to the door.
Mike watched Henry go. "Before she... I mean you, met Fitzroy, life used to be so simple."
Vicki looked over her shoulder at nighttime Toronto, sparkling and clear. "No, it really wasn't."
Mike snorted. "Pretend it was, okay?" He paused. "I'm sorry about the jaw thing."
"I'll live," Vicki said, which seemed like a better thing to say than It didn't actually hurt that much.
"But you get why I did it, right?" He glanced at Vicki out of the corner of his eye. "I see Fitzroy chomping down on... you, in the dark. That's not right."
Vicki whirled on him. "You know what? Even if it had been me, I can take care of myself. If this ever happens again, you don't get to hit anyone, human or vampire or fucking rabid squirrel, that kisses me!"
Mike shook his head. "You never change, you know that, Vicki?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
~~~
Henry was buried in a book when Vicki and Mike made it back downstairs. He looked deceptively calm, except for the trickle of blood dried on his chin.
"What did you do?" Vicki demanded, stopping halfway across the room.
"I did nothing."
"Henry..."
Henry snapped the book shut. "Fine. Your mother called while you were upstairs."
"Mom? Is she all right?" Vicki asked, glancing at the clock. Her mother normally called on Sunday nights, not Saturdays. "Did something happen?"
"She wanted to invite you to go shopping next weekend," Henry said. His lips were pressed together tightly. "For household goods."
"Hey, we may not get along, but she's my mother so get the disdain out of your voice, got it, Your Highness?" Vicki snapped.
She wouldn't have thought that Henry would have such a reaction to an accusation of bad manners. He sat bolt upright, eyes blazing.
"I do apologize, Victoria, for my words." His teeth were fairly grinding in his head. "Now, shall we work on dealing with the issue at hand so you can keep your shopping date with the renowned Mrs. Nelson?"
Vicki didn't move. "Did you say anything else that I'm going to have to deal with when I see her?"
"No." Henry went back to the files on the desk. "But she will probably ask when you can get the reception in your office phone improved."
"I never thought about that one," Mike said as he dropped onto the couch. "Pretending I don't know my mom's calling because of the reception."
"Why is he still here?" Henry asked.
"He's going to help us solve this." Vicki pulled a bottle of water out of the mini fridge and set it on the desk next to the tissue box. "You should clean that blood off your face."
Luckily, Vicki caught herself before she offered to lick it off. Fate had been tempted quite enough as it was.
As Henry mopped away at his face, ignoring Mike's incredulous stare, the phone rang. Vicki picked it up without thinking. "Vicki Nelson Investigations."
"Hi Henry, it's Coreen," the girl said excitedly. "When did you get there?"
"You know me, Coreen, it's like I never get to leave," Vicki replied. "You want to talk to the boss?"
"No, I can tell you. The show was pretty dull, about what you'd expect from a bunch of old things. No offence."
Vicki couldn't help smiling. Coreen could be so tactless, it was almost cute. "None taken."
"So I looked for everything that you were hired to ensure made it through in transport from Montreal. The whole list. Everything was on display tonight, and while a lot of it was boring furniture crap, there were some interesting things." She paused. "Are you writing this down?"
"Yes. Along with a note to take all that boring furniture crap off your Christmas list."
Coreen let out an exasperated sigh. "Fine, be like that. I'm just trying to help--"
"Coreen, I'm writing it down. Pen in hand, paper in front of me. Now go."
"Okay. So, like, there were two pieces at the show that were almost interesting. One was a really cool glass urn thing from Persia. The owner guy was apoplectic because apparently someone in this place dropped the jar when they were moving it from out back and there's like a tiny chip in it."
"And what was the other piece?" Vicki asked as she wrote CHIPPED GLASS JAR across a takeout menu.
"Now this is where it gets cool. It was a Roman statue of Janus."
"Okay..." Vicki said slowly. "That's supposed to be important?"
"Of course it is!" Coreen said. "Janus is the two faced god, originally represented the sun and the moon. He's used to symbolize the transition from one state of being to another."
"Thanks, Coreen. I'll tell Vicki and we'll get on this." She twirled the pen between her fingers. "Are you heading home now?"
"Sort of," Coreen said, as laughter broke out in the background. "Me and Kelly met up with some friends at this coffee shop--"
"Say no more. Have a good night." Far away from danger, Vicki added silently.
"Bye!"
"That girl is fifty percent caffeine," Vicki muttered as she hung up the phone. "Henry, do you remember that Milano case?"
Henry brandished a folder at her. "You mean this case? The one I've been staring at for hours? No, doesn't ring a bell."
"Wow, vampires really do suck at sarcasm," Mike said with an insincere smile.
Henry's head snapped around. "If you really want to talk about sucking, detective--"
"Ladies?" Vicki interrupted. "Thank you. Coreen said that there were two interesting pieces at the show. One was a Persian glass jar that was cracked a few days ago. The other was a statue of Janus."
"Janus, the two-faced god?" Henry asked. He closed the folder. "Maybe that's it."
"You know about Roman mythology?" Mike asked.
For some reason, Henry looked away. "Not exactly."
"So how do you know about Janus? You two old drinking buddies?" Vicki asked.
Henry took a deep breath. "It was on a Buffy episode once," he said with the utmost reluctance.
Mike choked. "You watch Buffy?"
Henry glared. "Yes, I watch Buffy. The plot serialization is magnificent and Joss Whedon's storytelling is just this side of genius. It helps with my work, if that is all right with you!"
Mike held up his hands in surrender, although from the expression on his face, he'd be bringing this up again at some point soon.
"Now..." Henry's voice trailed off. "What are you staring at?"
"You watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer?" Vicki asked. "Seriously? Isn't that against vampire union rules?"
Henry closed his eyes.
Next Chapter
A Blood Ties story
by mhalachaiswords
Summary: Whatever fantasies Vicki had about waking up in Henry's bed, none of them including waking up as Henry...
Disclaimer: None of these characters or shows belong to me. The Blood Ties series started with Tanya Huff and slipped sideways into Lifetime. If you haven't read the books, go out and buy them for this holiday season!
Rating: Overall, R (to be on the safe side) for swearing, adult content, some sort-of-slash, nakedness. This part is PG.
Spoilers: Up to "The Devil You Know".
Words: 4,370
Note: I started this before the interesting events in "Wrapped", and so we won't be dealing with those issues in this story. Which is too bad, because seriously. I also take a couple of tidbits from the Blood books, because they can fit so well here :) Lastly, about one-third of the way in, I started getting confused with the gender pronouns for Henry and Vicki. I think I fixed everything now. Let me know if things get confused.
Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four
The street was empty, surprising for a winter's Saturday night in Toronto. Vicki shoved her hands deep in the pockets of Henry's coat as she trudged towards her office. Henry had told her that vampires didn't feel cold the way humans did, but she was willing to bet that standing in a cold shower for twenty minutes would put a chill into even the undead.
I can't believe this is happening, Vicki thought for the thousandth time. How was she going to look Henry in the eye after this? Sure, there was the possibility that he had been a perfect gentleman and hadn't taken any liberties in the shower with his borrowed body, but...
But this was Henry Fitzroy. He was the vampire for whom the phrase "taking liberties" was invented.
I'll just pretend that I never thought of it, Vicki told herself as she slipped in the door of her office building. That Henry didn't spend the night in bed with me and didn't spend time in a warm shower with my body--
She stopped her line of thought abruptly. This wasn't helping. Under her breath, she went over her list of appetite-suppressants as she mounted the stairs. "Homer Simpson, Joan Rivers, Richard Simmons, pretty much everyone who ever appeared on the Jerry Springer show..." It worked, after a fashion, but she felt as if she needed another shower.
The door to Vicki Nelson Investigations was closed, but Vicki could hear voices through the glass. Two murmuring voices, two heartbeats, both beating a little faster than normal. Vicki stopped with her hand on the doorknob. Please God, let them be fighting. An arguing Henry and Mike, she could deal with. But if their heart rates were raised for any other reason...
She opened the door.
Henry was seated at her desk, papers spread out on the wooden surface. Mike sat on one of the client chairs, tilted back onto two legs. He let the chair fall with a thump when Vicki walked in.
Henry glanced up. "Hello, Henry," he said with subdued sarcasm. "How are you this evening?"
"Oh, I feel fine," Vicki said, unable to keep a smirk from flashing over her face. To her satisfaction, a flush rose to Henry's cheeks. Serves you right for showering with my body. She glanced at Mike. "Detective."
"Fitzroy," Mike said in a tone of voice usually reserved for men named 'Newman'.
Vicki rocked back on her heels as an awkward silence filled the room. "So here we are," she finally said.
Henry rolled his eyes. "Here are the files we were talking about last night," he said. He pushed a stack of files in Vicki's direction. "I've narrowed it down to the top two and sent Coreen--"
"You sent Coreen out on her own?" Vicki demanded, hand stopping halfway to the files. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
Henry sat up straight, his Prince of Man expression haughty and strangely fitting on Vicki Nelson's face. "It's an antique show opening," he said scathingly. "She is with friends. I told her it was a follow-up to the Milano case."
"You should have gone with her," Vicki responded tartly. Her hands balled up in her pockets. "If she gets into trouble--"
"She won't!"
"Because you're the expert on trouble-free private investigation?"
"Excuse me," Mike interrupted. "Anyone want to tell me what the hell you two are going on about?"
"No," Henry and Vicki said in unison. Vicki shot Henry a glare, which he ignored.
"There's something about my past cases that has been bugging me," Henry lied, glancing at Mike. "I wanted to go over it with Henry, and as the antique show opened tonight and I couldn't be in two places at once..."
Mike looked at Henry with an indecipherable expression. "You hate letting anyone else do your footwork."
Henry's expression never changed. "Coreen's not a stupid girl, if there's anything there to find, she will."
Mike shifted his gaze to Vicki. "I guess a lot of things have changed since you left the force."
Growing irritation shifted darker, swirling about in Vicki's belly. "Vicki would never let Coreen walk into a dangerous situation, Mi-- Detective," she said. To cover the shaking in her limbs, she picked up a folder from the pile on her desk. "You were her partner for years, you think she's changed that much?"
Mike's eyes went back to Henry. "A lot of things have changed since she met you, Fitzroy, and I can't help but wonder how much of that was her and how much was you."
Henry leaned forward, a slightly feral smile on his lips. In the light, his teeth looked a little sharp. "I'm sitting right here, and if you think that talking about me as if I am absent or incompetent, or beguiled by Henry's native charms, is going to endear you to me, you are sadly mistaken. Am I clear?"
Mike sat forward, elbows on his knees. "Loud and clear," he said, expression still indecipherable. "So what is Coreen looking for?"
"Looking for?" Henry echoed. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, what is she looking for?" Mike said again. "I've been hanging around in the past few weeks, maybe I can help with whatever case is bugging you. Like that time with the Percy Horton case, you remember."
What the fuck is Mike talking about? Vicki searched her memory for any case she had worked, alone or with Mike, for a person named Percy Horton, but came up blank.
However, Henry nodded. "Yeah, that time. This is different, it's just a feeling I have. Nothing concrete."
The corner of Mike's eye twitched. "Still."
Vicki's stomach sank. That son of a bitch! she thought, not really sure which man she was thinking about. "Don't you have to go, Detective? All that very important police work to do?"
"I'm good," Mike replied. "After all, if you need to send Coreen out to pound the pavement, you probably need all the help you can get." He inclined his head in Vicki's direction. "Actual help, I mean."
The jibe was aimed at 'Henry', but the swirling uncertainty roiled in Vicki's stomach. It made her angry. It made her want to hit something.
It made her hungry.
"I need some air," Vicki announced, dropping the folder to the desk. "Back in a few."
She had barely cleared the door when Henry started in on Mike, the thick wood muffling his words. It was probably for the best. All Vicki could think about was anger and hunger and wanting to smack that stupid expression right off Mike's face.
Her feet moved of their own accord towards the door at the end of the hall marked Roof Access Only. The door was supposed to be locked, but the landlord usually kept it open so he could go up and smoke during the day. Sure enough, the door was unlocked now, and Vicki soundlessly eased through the door and up the stairs to the roof.
The lights of Toronto sparkled against the black velvet of the night. Vicki stopped by the edge of the roof, staring out at the glow of the lights, and above them, the sharp remote glow of the stars filling the night sky. Now that she was alone, the anger in her chest tampered down, letting Vicki feel another emotion that probably been there all along, but had been hidden but the confusion of the body swap, and the anger at Mike.
Loneliness.
Cold fingers picked at the metal railing on the roof's edge, aged paint no match for a vampire's fingernails.
Since the day Vicki had met Mike Celluci, he'd had her back. They had been partners on the force, lovers, and friends. The RP had taken the first two away from them, but they had always remained friends.
The bare metal of the railing scrapped at Vicki's fingernails, sending a shudder up her spine. She needed to stop lying to herself. The RP hadn't taken Mike away from Vicki. She had done that, pushing him out of her bed after she realized that she couldn't be a cop any longer. She hadn't wanted him to see her as less than she had been.
And now, to have him look at her with unmasked dislike... Intellectually, she knew that it was because she was Henry, but every time Mike looked at her, he saw someone he hated.
And there is a very real chance I will never be me again.
The sharp lights of the night blurred as the loneliness dug its claws into her heart. It wasn't just Mike she'd be losing. It was everyone. Her mother, everyone she ever knew...
Everyone she'd driven away.
There was still Henry, Vicki tried to tell herself. Somehow, the idea of exchanging her entire life, for one person bound to her thought a metaphysical accident, seemed to her a hollow trade.
"It's going to be okay."
Vicki nearly jumped out of her skin. "Fuck, Henry!" She swung around, wiping freezing tears from her cheeks. "You of all people should know about sneaking up on vampires!"
Henry smiled faintly. "Are you okay?" he asked, hands held out in front of him as he came closer.
"I'm fine," Vicki mumbled. Every instinct in her wanted to assist Henry, who had to have been almost blind on the rooftop. But she wouldn't have welcomed the help, and neither would Henry. "How did you know I was up here?"
"Instinct," Henry said. His seeking hands found the railing beside Vicki, and he gave an almost inaudible sigh of relief. "I find I do-- I did the same thing. Find the high ground at night so I can think."
The lights from the street below highlighted the curve of Henry's cheek, the delicate line of his throat and the faint flutter of the pulse below the skin. The stirrings of hunger pushed at Vicki's head, but she swallowed the urge to satiate that need.
"So," Vicki said carefully. "Did Mike leave?"
Henry wrinkled his nose. "I do not care. The man is just--"
"Trying to help?"
"I was going to say irritating." Henry turned his head. "Coreen will be fine."
It took Vicki a moment to make the mental transition to think about her assistant. "Probably," she admitted. "But we really don't know what's up with what happened between us, and putting Coreen in the potential line of fire--"
"She is with friends, and I gave her strict instructions to be careful and only look," Henry retorted. He stared blindly at the street. "She will be safe."
"Since when does Coreen follow instructions?" Vicki asked, edging closer to Henry. He was so warm, and while Vicki wasn't actually cold anymore, the warmth was captivating.
"I used to be able to make her," Henry said softly. He closed his eyes when Vicki's hip bumped his. "Now she just nods her head and gives me that smile and I have no idea what she's up to."
"Welcome to the wonderful world of being me." Vicki ran her hand over Henry's long hair, feeling the silky strands soft against her fingers. "Some days, dealing with Coreen is like herding cats."
Henry smiled. "Headache-inducing?" He turned to face her and suddenly he was too close. Vicki wanted... something she couldn't name. Something she wasn't willing to name. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
Henry put his hands on Vicki's shoulders, holding her still. "It occurred to me this morning, that if we are to be like this for long, then we need to discuss several matters of importance."
"Whatever happened to finding whatever did this and killing it?" Vicki asked softly, distracted by Henry's closeness and his warmth. All she'd need to do would be to lean in and kiss him, move her lips lower and sink teeth through the soft skin over a vein--
"That's very high on the list," Henry said, either not aware of Vicki's distraction or ignoring it. "But we should have a contingency plan. Just in case."
The still-functioning part of Vicki's brain wondered how a full-body embrace could constitute as a contingency plan, but baser needs won out. She put her hands carefully around Henry's waist, distantly startled at how very slender the body in her arms was, and lowered her head.
Henry's lips were soft and warm under hers, responding to Vicki's kiss with enthusiasm. He clutched at her shoulders, trying to pull her even closer as he deepened the kiss.
Perhaps it was the confusion of the past day, or maybe the months of unresolved sexual tension, but Vicki didn't even bother trying to stop. Henry felt so alive in her arms, that she wanted more.
More.
What more might have been was abruptly brought to a halt as an angry male voice crackled through the air, "What the hell is going on up here?"
Vicki jerked back, Henry's gasp sharp in her ears as familiar blood coated her tongue. Henry stumbled back, eyes wide and hand rising to his lips, but not before Vicki saw the blood running down his chin.
Mike appeared out of nowhere. He grabbed Vicki's jacket with both hands and hauled her away from Henry. "What the fuck are you doing to her?" Mike shouted, his fist already on the downswing. He caught Vicki hard against the jaw. She fell to the ground. The world coalesced to the mild pain in her jaw, the blood on her tongue, and the man standing over her, closing in for another attack.
A growl burst from Vicki's throat as she leapt at Mike.
Henry dove between them at the last second and spun Vicki away, deflecting the angle of her attack. "Vicki, stop this!" Henry shouted, pushing her away from Mike. Vicki's feet tangled in Henry's and they toppled to the ground. Henry straddled Vicki's waist to stop her from going at Mike again.
The blood on Vicki's tongue suddenly tasted foul.
"Stop this!" Henry commanded as he pushed at Vicki's shoulders. "You can't let the anger take you; you'll never find your way back!"
Vicki sat up as if Henry weighed nothing, stood with Henry in her arms. One she was on her feet, she dumped Henry unceremoniously to the ground, not really caring if he landed on his feet or not.
Across the roof, Mike stood frozen. The faint light from the street below was enough to gleam off the gun bare in Mike's hand; the gun pointed at Vicki's chest.
Vicki took a step back, then another, then fell to her knees and spat blood on the freezing ground.
Footsteps sounded on the gravel. Henry knelt beside Vicki, his heart still racing. "Are you okay?" he asked as he laid his hand on her shoulder.
Still nauseous, Vicki managed to nod. "Your mouth..."
"You bit my lip, that's all," Henry told her. "I'm fine."
Fine. Nobody's fine, nobody's ever going to be fine ever again, Vicki thought bitterly. In her mind's eye, all she could see was Mike's gun pointed at her.
"Shh," Henry urged as he patted her shoulder. "It's over."
Heavier footsteps stopped beside Henry and Vicki. "The hell it's over," Mike said. Vicki could hardly hear his words over the pounding of his heart and his rapid breathing. "What the fuck is going on?"
"None of this concerns you, Detective Celluci," Henry said. His hand stilled on Vicki's shoulder. "You have done enough damage for one night, so why don't you leave?"
Vicki lifted her head. Mike's gun was still in his hand, but he had the thing pointed at the ground and Vicki could see that the safety was on. Her eyes went higher. Mike stared as if he had never seen either of them before in his life.
"Go away, Celluci!" Henry exclaimed.
Mike put his gun up. "What's going on?" Mike asked. He seemed to be ignoring Henry all together, staring directly at Vicki.
Mouth dry, Vicki had to swallow twice to be able to speak. "I let my temper get the better of me," she said, hoping to hell she sounded like Henry.
"Bullshit," Mike retorted. "Why did Vicki call you 'Vicki' just now?"
Henry let out a little groan. "That, he heard," he muttered.
Vicki eased out from under Henry's hand and rose to his feet. "Do you really want to know, Mike?" she asked.
"No, he does not!" Henry snapped, popping up. "I said... I said, 'it's Vicki, stop this', not anything else!"
Mike shook his head. "The hell you did. And you two have been acting pretty fucking weird for the last few days--"
"This only happened yesterday!" Vicki said indignantly.
"What only happened yesterday?" Mike demanded.
Ignoring Henry's attempt to shut her up, Vicki crossed her arms over her chest. "Henry and I swapped bodies. We're trying to figure out what did it so we can put things back the way they were."
Mike blinked at her. "You... what?"
"Swapped bodies," Vicki repeated as Henry threw up his hands and stalked away across the rooftop. "Like on Freaky Friday. I'm Vicki and that," she pointed, "is Henry."
Mike shook his head again, harder this time. "No fucking way. This is like a big joke, right? Coreen's going to jump out from behind the boiler stack and say I've been punked, right?"
At least he wasn't laughing. "What do you want me to say, Mike?" Vicki asked. "It's the truth."
"No--"
"Oh god, Mike? You want me to prove it?" Vicki's temper, already frayed from the most recent round with Mike, got the better of her. "The office Christmas party, the month after I made detective, you and me were dancing to something intolerable except for the fifty-percent blood alcohol we were dealing with, and you ended up nailing me in the ladies can and I had to stagger back in there the next morning, all hung over, and scratch out the 'Mike Celluci is a sex god' I'd written the night before. Satisfied?"
She probably could have picked a better example of something she wouldn't have told Henry, but it was too late. Mike stared at her, his face blank.
"Anyway," Vicki continued uncomfortably. "What was with the Percy Horton crap, anyway? Did you think something was up with me?"
"Vicki was all spacey at lunch yesterday-- I mean, I thought it was Vicki, and I thought that Fitzroy was messing with her memory or something..." Mike's face went as white as a sheet. "If you're Vicki and that's Fitzroy, then yesterday in the car..."
"I'm about as thrilled with the recollection as you are, Detective," Henry snapped, wandering back across the rooftop. "Let's just both pretend it never happened and get on with the urgent matter of changing us back!" He gave Vicki a dark look. "Without telling anyone else what has befallen us."
Vicki took a deep breath. "Just a tip, Henry, I never use words like 'befallen', so cut the Scrabble vocabulary and maybe you won't be the one to give us away, okay?"
Henry turned away. "If it's all the same to you, I am going back to work. Do whatever you want." He stalked off in the direction of the door.
"Stop!" Vicki called. Henry obeyed a little too quickly. Vicki let out a breath and tried to speak normally. "There's a low pipe in front of you."
Growling low in his throat, Henry sidestepped the pipe and continued on his way back to the door.
Mike watched Henry go. "Before she... I mean you, met Fitzroy, life used to be so simple."
Vicki looked over her shoulder at nighttime Toronto, sparkling and clear. "No, it really wasn't."
Mike snorted. "Pretend it was, okay?" He paused. "I'm sorry about the jaw thing."
"I'll live," Vicki said, which seemed like a better thing to say than It didn't actually hurt that much.
"But you get why I did it, right?" He glanced at Vicki out of the corner of his eye. "I see Fitzroy chomping down on... you, in the dark. That's not right."
Vicki whirled on him. "You know what? Even if it had been me, I can take care of myself. If this ever happens again, you don't get to hit anyone, human or vampire or fucking rabid squirrel, that kisses me!"
Mike shook his head. "You never change, you know that, Vicki?"
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"
~~~
Henry was buried in a book when Vicki and Mike made it back downstairs. He looked deceptively calm, except for the trickle of blood dried on his chin.
"What did you do?" Vicki demanded, stopping halfway across the room.
"I did nothing."
"Henry..."
Henry snapped the book shut. "Fine. Your mother called while you were upstairs."
"Mom? Is she all right?" Vicki asked, glancing at the clock. Her mother normally called on Sunday nights, not Saturdays. "Did something happen?"
"She wanted to invite you to go shopping next weekend," Henry said. His lips were pressed together tightly. "For household goods."
"Hey, we may not get along, but she's my mother so get the disdain out of your voice, got it, Your Highness?" Vicki snapped.
She wouldn't have thought that Henry would have such a reaction to an accusation of bad manners. He sat bolt upright, eyes blazing.
"I do apologize, Victoria, for my words." His teeth were fairly grinding in his head. "Now, shall we work on dealing with the issue at hand so you can keep your shopping date with the renowned Mrs. Nelson?"
Vicki didn't move. "Did you say anything else that I'm going to have to deal with when I see her?"
"No." Henry went back to the files on the desk. "But she will probably ask when you can get the reception in your office phone improved."
"I never thought about that one," Mike said as he dropped onto the couch. "Pretending I don't know my mom's calling because of the reception."
"Why is he still here?" Henry asked.
"He's going to help us solve this." Vicki pulled a bottle of water out of the mini fridge and set it on the desk next to the tissue box. "You should clean that blood off your face."
Luckily, Vicki caught herself before she offered to lick it off. Fate had been tempted quite enough as it was.
As Henry mopped away at his face, ignoring Mike's incredulous stare, the phone rang. Vicki picked it up without thinking. "Vicki Nelson Investigations."
"Hi Henry, it's Coreen," the girl said excitedly. "When did you get there?"
"You know me, Coreen, it's like I never get to leave," Vicki replied. "You want to talk to the boss?"
"No, I can tell you. The show was pretty dull, about what you'd expect from a bunch of old things. No offence."
Vicki couldn't help smiling. Coreen could be so tactless, it was almost cute. "None taken."
"So I looked for everything that you were hired to ensure made it through in transport from Montreal. The whole list. Everything was on display tonight, and while a lot of it was boring furniture crap, there were some interesting things." She paused. "Are you writing this down?"
"Yes. Along with a note to take all that boring furniture crap off your Christmas list."
Coreen let out an exasperated sigh. "Fine, be like that. I'm just trying to help--"
"Coreen, I'm writing it down. Pen in hand, paper in front of me. Now go."
"Okay. So, like, there were two pieces at the show that were almost interesting. One was a really cool glass urn thing from Persia. The owner guy was apoplectic because apparently someone in this place dropped the jar when they were moving it from out back and there's like a tiny chip in it."
"And what was the other piece?" Vicki asked as she wrote CHIPPED GLASS JAR across a takeout menu.
"Now this is where it gets cool. It was a Roman statue of Janus."
"Okay..." Vicki said slowly. "That's supposed to be important?"
"Of course it is!" Coreen said. "Janus is the two faced god, originally represented the sun and the moon. He's used to symbolize the transition from one state of being to another."
"Thanks, Coreen. I'll tell Vicki and we'll get on this." She twirled the pen between her fingers. "Are you heading home now?"
"Sort of," Coreen said, as laughter broke out in the background. "Me and Kelly met up with some friends at this coffee shop--"
"Say no more. Have a good night." Far away from danger, Vicki added silently.
"Bye!"
"That girl is fifty percent caffeine," Vicki muttered as she hung up the phone. "Henry, do you remember that Milano case?"
Henry brandished a folder at her. "You mean this case? The one I've been staring at for hours? No, doesn't ring a bell."
"Wow, vampires really do suck at sarcasm," Mike said with an insincere smile.
Henry's head snapped around. "If you really want to talk about sucking, detective--"
"Ladies?" Vicki interrupted. "Thank you. Coreen said that there were two interesting pieces at the show. One was a Persian glass jar that was cracked a few days ago. The other was a statue of Janus."
"Janus, the two-faced god?" Henry asked. He closed the folder. "Maybe that's it."
"You know about Roman mythology?" Mike asked.
For some reason, Henry looked away. "Not exactly."
"So how do you know about Janus? You two old drinking buddies?" Vicki asked.
Henry took a deep breath. "It was on a Buffy episode once," he said with the utmost reluctance.
Mike choked. "You watch Buffy?"
Henry glared. "Yes, I watch Buffy. The plot serialization is magnificent and Joss Whedon's storytelling is just this side of genius. It helps with my work, if that is all right with you!"
Mike held up his hands in surrender, although from the expression on his face, he'd be bringing this up again at some point soon.
"Now..." Henry's voice trailed off. "What are you staring at?"
"You watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer?" Vicki asked. "Seriously? Isn't that against vampire union rules?"
Henry closed his eyes.
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