Three dollars and some change

Bodyswapping Only Looks Fun On TV (It Must Be Friday) (1/4)
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. Read and watch, yo.
Rating: R (to be on the safe side) for swearing, nudity, adult content.
Spoilers: Up to "The Devil You Know"
Words: 4,800 this part
Note: I know this starts a little like Switchback, but it's not like that at all. For one thing, it has an ending.

Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four




Vicki came back to consciousness with a start, drawing breath painfully into her lungs. The air caught in her throat and she started coughing. She couldn't remember when she'd fallen asleep, or been knocked out, or what the hell had happened, and it scared her.

Finally managing to breathe normally, Vicki pushed her hair out of her eyes.

And froze.

She was in Henry's bedroom.

In Henry's bed.

She was in Henry's bed and from the feel of the sheet over her legs, she was naked.

Forget fear. She was barreling right towards anger.

She sat up, pulling the sheet to cover her chest. "Henry, where--"

Her question, where are you and what the hell is going on?, died as she heard the voice that came out of her mouth.

"Oh no."

Vicki looked down at the hands holding the sheet against her chest. Long fingers, short trimmed nails, square palms. Masculine hands. In perfectly clear focus.

Her vision was clear and focus-perfect. She could see, just like she once had, before the growing blindness had changed her life. And what she could see did not look at all familiar.

"Oh, hell no!"

She dropped the sheet to her lap.

The chest she was looking down at most certainly did not belong to Vicki Nelson. The washboard abs, the sculpted pecs, all very male.

She wasn't ready to move the sheet away from her lap to see what was below her waist.

Vicki pulled the cloth around her as she stood. The vantage point seemed familiar, so she was probably the same height as before. So... what? Had she somehow transformed to a man?

That would fulfill dear old Dad's longing for a son, Vicki thought in disgust. Although, on reflection, that would not explain why she'd woken up in Henry's bed.

Which would be worse? Doing the whole Victor/Victoria thing, or waking up in the body of the vampiric bastard son of Henry the Eighth?

There was only one way to find out. Moving carefully to avoid dislodging the sheet, she made her way to the bathroom and its wall-to-wall mirror.

Henry Fitzroy's reflection stared back at her, and he looked pissed.

"Fuck!"

~~~

A quick search of the otherwise empty apartment failed to turn up any clues. It had, however, revealed that Henry had a clothes fetish and a DVD collection populated with movies produced by Disney.

"I don't care if he draws cartoons for a living, that's just wrong," Vicki muttered, wincing at the low register of Henry's voice. She closed the DVD cabinet and turned back to scan the apartment. Something was wrong, but she couldn't figure out what.

Besides the fact that she was in Henry's body.

She had to get out of here, to figure out what was going on, and she couldn't do that naked. Steeling herself, Vicki walked to the closet and scanned Henry's clothing collection. He liked to hoard clothes, even if Vicki usually saw him in a simple shirt and jeans.

"This will answer the question of boxers or briefs," she said to herself as she began opening drawers at random. The first drawer yielded a collection of studded leather straps. Vicki slammed that one and went on to the next before she could figure out what she had just seen.

Luckily, vampires really did wear underwear, and it seemed as if the vampire in question preferred boxers. Vicki gingerly pulled a pair of plain blue boxers from the drawer. To put them on, she was going to have to drop the sheet. And if she dropped the sheet...

Of all the fantasies she'd had about seeing Henry naked, actually being Henry had never factored in.

Stop being squeamish! Vicki told herself. Get dressed and get moving!

She dropped the sheet.

She tried not to look, really she did, but being male apparently required a bit of 'adjustment' when donning boxers and she had no choice.

Right. So they really didn't circumcise Christian males five hundred years ago. Focusing on that, and not letting herself think of anything else, Vicki got everything tucked away and went back to sorting through Henry's monochromatic pants collection.

Hysteria was bubbling up in Vicki's chest, but she refused to lose control. She had more important things to do. First, she had to find herself and figure out if she and Henry had swapped bodies, or if something more sinister had taken up residence in Vicki Nelson.

Then she had to figure out how to put things back to the way they were.

Sunrise was in fourteen hours, a quick glance at the clock told her. She could do all of that in fourteen hours.

Right?

Finding a grey long-sleeve shirt in the closet was easy, although Henry's collection of Grateful Dead t-shirts raised more questions than Vicki had time to deal with. Luckily, Henry kept his wallet and his keys on the table by the door, so she didn't have to search for those.

She paused as she picked up Henry's cell phone. Four new voicemail messages that she wouldn't be able check. As much as she didn't want to think of Henry inhabiting her body, doing God-knew-what with her human form (and wasn't that a place her mind didn't want to go), the idea was preferable to the thought that someone or something else had evicted her soul to take up residence.

She slid the phone, unused, into her pocket. Just in case the answer lay behind door number two, she wouldn't give it any warning.

Hand on the door, Vicki steeled herself to face the world as Henry Fitzroy.

"Here we go."

She opened the door and was promptly blinded by the lights in the hallway.

"Jesus Christ!" Vicki exclaimed as she blinked hard, eyes watering. Thankfully the hallway was empty, so no one was witness to her less-than-glamorous stagger to the elevator.

That was what had been wrong in the apartment, Vicki realized. She hadn't turned on a single light, and still she had been able to see perfectly. This must have been what Henry meant when he had talked about seeing the night in Technicolor. What other vampiric tricks-of-the-trade would she have to deal with?

"I am going to kill whatever did this," Vicki muttered as she hit the elevator call button. "I'm going to kill it really hard."

~~~

Any apprehension she may have had about driving Henry's car, the first time she'd intentionally been behind the wheel since her failing eyesight forced her off the road a year before, vanished as she slid into the BMW's driver seat. She smiled as she started the car, sharp hearing picking up the soft purr of the engine.

"Trust the king's son to settle for only the best," she said as she adjusted the rearview mirror. Henry's reflection grinned back at her. "Let's go find ourselves, shall we?"

Vicki had been driving stick since she was twelve years old and had snuck her mother's car out onto the then-deserted roads around Kingston. The car's gears shifted smoothly under her hand as she drove carefully out of the parking garage. Driving had always been a joy to her, be it a boxy squad car or her old beater or Mike's Volvo. Now, being able to drive after a year in taxis and subways was a gift.

Her enjoyment of driving dimmed slightly as she thought of Mike. How was she going to explain this one to Mike Celluci? Of all the people whose bodies she could have been stuck in, she'd ended up in Mike's least favorite person.

Vicki took a deep breath. She'd solve this and get her body back and she and Mike would get back to...

To what?

Vicki eased the car to a stop at a red light. Around her, Toronto teemed with life; pedestrians and cars and buses. The glass and metal shell of the car blocked some of the sound, but Vicki had never been so aware of her surroundings. She could have fallen into it so easily.

With an iron will, Vicki pulled her attention back to the street light. The red glow shifted to streamers of green and blue, and Vicki stepped gently on the gas.

She had a job to do. Find herself and fix this mess.

And not dent Henry's car in the process.

~~~

Finding a parking job outside of her office wasn't exactly easy, but she managed. As she locked the car door, movement and a familiar scent caught her attention.

Coreen was walking down the street, holding a cup of coffee and a book bag. Vicki stared at the girl. Not only could she see Coreen clearly, she could see so much more. Coreen was glowing. Her skin was flush with heat and life, and Vicki could see the blood pulsing under her skin.

"Hey Henry," Coreen was saying. "How's it going?"

With effort, Vicki tore her attention away from the girl's throat. "Fine," she said. "Things are fine." A lie, but an unimportant one. "Aren't you getting to work a little late?"

"No, just taking a break," Coreen said, hefting the cup. "Vicki's up there with Mike."

No. Mike was with whatever was in her body. Fear for him tasted sour, and her hands itched with the remembered feel of Mike's blood. "Oh?" Vicki managed to say as she fell in step with Coreen. "How am... I mean, how's Vicki?"

"She's fine." Coreen busied herself with digging for her keys.

"She's not acting weird?" Vicki pressed.

"No weirder than normal," Coreen said. Before Vicki could figure out if she was relieved or offended, Coreen yanked open the building's front door. "Although she may have a tapeworm or something, she's been eating all day."

Even with Coreen so close, Vicki could hear other noise in the building. As they mounted the stairs, the sounds solidified into two heartbeats, two voices. One was Mike's voice, so familiar that Vicki clenched her hands.

The other was her voice, and it sounded amused.

Vicki was anything but amused.

Still, she followed Coreen into the office. She needed to have a game plan, she couldn't just go barging in and beat the crap out of whatever was inhabiting her body, no matter how very tempting the idea was. She would...

All plans rushed out of her head as she stepped through the door. The body of Vicki Nelson was curled up in the chair behind her desk, plastic fork in one hand lifting a mouthful of Chinese food to her lips.

The body may have been that of Vicki Nelson, but the expression in those eyes was pure Henry Fitzroy.

Vicki put a hand on the wall to steady herself as the tension left her limbs. She and Henry had simply swapped bodies, no witches or demons inhabiting her body. This wasn't the end of the world. This, she could fix.

Then Vicki took in the rest of the scene. The desk was littered with takeout containers and drink cups, almost obscuring the papers beneath. And what was with the guilty expression on her, or Henry's, face?

Just how much had Henry ordered?

"Eating for two?" she ground out, noting how well Henry's voice was suited for sarcasm.

Henry dropped the fork back into the container as Mike, who had been lounging in the corner, shot to his feet with an expression of mingled anger and horror.

Oh crap.

Somehow, Henry salvaged the situation. "You try running around all day dealing with Toronto's finest," he said easily as he stood up. "You'd be hungry too."

Mike's irritation dialed back a few notches, but the man still glared angrily at Vicki.

"Mike, don't," Henry continued. "And Henry, stop baiting him."

Vicki looked at Henry. Was he actually enjoying this?

"I didn't realize it was so late," Henry added. He smiled gently in what might have been apology, but Vicki was having none of it. "I sort of got caught up."

Vicki glared, absently noting how Henry's heart started beating faster.

Outwardly calm, Henry turned to Mike. "I have some work to do," he said apologetically.

Mike was already grabbing his coat. "Don't let me stop you from your dealings with the various creatures of the night," he snapped. "I'll call you later."

The police detective glowered down at Vicki as he swept out into the hallway. The door closed pointedly behind him.

Coreen cleared her throat. "I'll be at my desk," she said, and closed the office door. The barrier of thin wood and glass did almost nothing to mask the soft sound of her heartbeat and the shuffling of papers.

Henry broke the silence. "I meant to be at my place before dark, it's just..."

"Mario's was having a half-off pizza deal?" Vicki snapped. All the confusion of the day rummaged around in her head. "What the fuck happened, Henry?"

The last part came out a little more shrill than Vicki would have liked, but Henry's voice modulated the words until they were more sulky than shrill. Not a big improvement.

Henry ducked his head for a moment, and when he looked up again, Vicki was surprised to see that his cheeks were red. "I lost track of time."

"You what?" Vicki stepped forward. "I wake up as you, having no idea what's going on or how I got to your place, I come over here thinking that some kind of evil spirit has taken over my body, and I find you doing Chinese with Mike because you lost track of time?"

Coreen's shuffling of papers stopped.

Anger gone as quickly as it had come, Vicki dropped onto the hard wooden client chair and buried her face in her hands. Even that felt strange; cheekbones too wide, the faintest hint of stubble rough against her fingers. Someone else's face.

She couldn't fucking deal with this.

Henry crossed the office and opened the door. "Hey, why don't you take an early night?" he said to Coreen. "I have to head out in a few minutes and I don't think I'll get back tonight."

"Is everything all right?" Coreen asked in what she probably thought was a quiet voice.

"Just some stuff," Henry said in a self-deprecating tone. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"Oh. Okay, then." A pause. "Tell Henry if there's anything I can do--"

"I will."

Vicki had never heard that level of compassion in her own voice before, and it irritated her that it was probably just a carefully crafted lie by Henry.

Vicki lifted her head when Henry came back into the office. "You know, I actually pay Coreen for a reason," she said. "You can't go giving her the day off like that."

Henry slumped on the couch, curling up into a ball. Seeing her body like this made Vicki uncomfortable. She'd never thought of herself as fragile, but...

But in this light, with the soft glow and thrum of life under the skin, her body looked as if it was made of living glass.

Was this how everyone saw her?

She was moving over to the couch before she could really figure out why. Warmth was emanating off her body and it was distracting. She shook her head. Concentrate. "Are you okay?" she asked. "You don't normally go all fetal. Come to think of it, neither do I."

Henry twisted up a corner of his mouth. "It has been over four hundred and sixty years since I was alive, Vicki. Walking in the sun, feeling a heart beating in my chest..." He gestured at the take-out boxes on the desk.

"Able to eat," Vicki finished for him. "Let me guess. Stomachache?"

"I think so." He squirmed. "Unless you have some other... complaint?"

Vicki raised her eyebrows. It took her a few seconds to work out what Henry was asking. "No, it's not that." Honestly. Wake up in a woman's body, and almost the first question was about the time of the month.

Men.

But Henry really did look uncomfortable, so Vicki got to her feet and went back to the desk. "Let's work on fixing this whole mess before you have to go through that, shall we?"

"Agreed," Henry said with feeling. He narrowed his eyes. "That drawer won't open. What are you doing?"

Vicki hooked her fingers through the handle. "It's not locked, it just sticks. You need to give it a bit of a jerk." Suiting actions to words, she yanked on the drawer much as she did every day. The drawer flew open, momentum carrying it through the air and impacting with the far wall with a crunch. Bottles and pens skittered over the floor.

Vicki looked at the broken drawer in her hand. "Don't say it."

Across the room, Henry gave her wide eyes. "I didn't say anything."

"Yeah, but you were thinking it." Vicki disentangled her fingers from the mangled handle and dropped the remains of the drawer on the chair. "Loudly."

"Contrary to popular myth, vampires can't read minds."

"Yes, but I know you and you always have something to say." She dropped to her knees to wrestle the Tums bottle from behind the filing cabinet. "Something about me not being used to the strength in this body and having to be careful to avoid being noticed?"

The scowl on Henry's face grew more pronounced. "If you know me so very well, then you'll have no problems masquerading as me until we find a way to fix this!"

"Hey, don't get mad at me! I didn't do this!" Vicki exclaimed.

"Don't you have any idea how dangerous this is?" Henry demanded. He uncurled enough to cross his arms over his chest, then just as quickly uncross them. Score one for the B-cup, Vicki thought maliciously. "It's one thing for Vicki Nelson, half-blind private investigator to start acting strange, but if a vampire starts acting up, it is much more dangerous!"

Vicki carefully set the bottle down on the desk. "I am not half-blind," she said slowly. "Nor am I stupid! I'm not going to draw attention to the fact that you're a vampire--"

"You have no idea what it means to be a vampire!"

The shrill edge to Henry's voice grated on Vicki's sensitive ears. "Try shouting a little louder, I don't think they heard you in Mississauga," Vicki suggested. She tossed the bottle onto the couch next to Henry. "Chew on two of those, they'll make your stomach feel better. And next time, don't treat indigestion with King Pao Chicken."

Henry didn't move.

Vicki counted to five, then ten, then walked over to the couch to sit next to Henry. "We're going to fix this," she promised grudgingly. "Then you can take back your perfectly sculpted body with its perfect eyesight and get back to the whole Prince of Darkness routine, okay?"

Henry pulled off Vicki's glasses and buried his face in his hands. He still didn't speak.

Starting to get worried, Vicki took the glasses from Henry's fingers and put them on the table. "Is it just a stomachache?" she asked, brushing her fingers over Henry's forehead. "Jesus, you're burning up!"

Henry lifted his head. "No, I'm not." He took Vicki's hand in his, curling hot fingers around her palm. "This body, your body, is always this warm. It is my body that is cooler than normal."

"Are you sure?" Vicki put her free hand against Henry's forehead. He closed his eyes and leaned into her touch. "I've been looking in the mirror for thirty-two years and I recognize the patented Vicki Nelson 'I feel like crap' expression."

"Charmer," Henry muttered. He pulled away from Vicki. "Perhaps, when one is forced to live a certain way for almost five hundred years, one becomes... accustomed to the way things are." He rubbed at his eyes again. "Then to have life handed back to you in an instant... I had forgotten how uncomfortable it is to live."

At least you didn't lose any of the Fitzroy melodrama, Vicki thought, not unkindly. "Do you have a headache too?"

"If you can call it a 'headache' when something is hammering on my temples," Henry snapped. "Do you have these headaches often?"

"Sometimes." Vicki leaned over to pick up the handbag on the table. "It sounds like the combination of too much caffeine and sugar with bad light and not wearing the glasses." She unearthed the small prescription bottle and handed it to Henry. "Which is worse, the headache or the stomachache? Because it's this or the Tums. They don't play well together."

Henry took the bottle from Vicki's hand. "You never told me you have headaches."

She shrugged. "It wouldn't do any good to whine about it. I just deal."

Henry looked at her. "Everything is blurry, I have no peripheral vision, and the moment the sun set it has been harder for me to see anything. Add this to the headache, and how can you possibly call that whining?"

"Because talking about it won't fix a damned thing." Vicki took back the pill bottle, tipped two small white pills onto Henry's palm, and shoved the bottle back into the handbag. "Knock those back."

Eyeing the pills warily, Henry picked up the water bottle on the desk. Vicki stood and went to the window, staring out at the night. She had forgotten how still everything looked after the sun set, how darkness cast a ceiling on a vast world.

"A vast world of darkness," she murmured, feeling foolish.

"What did you say?" Henry asked from the couch.

"Nothing." Vicki turned around. Henry had straightened up, sitting almost normally. "Just trying to get into the whole vampire vibe."

Henry rolled his eyes. "Spare me the Dracula routine," he said. "We have a lot to figure out. For starters, what did this?"

"Don't look at me. I woke from the dead at sunset, and from the sounds of things, you've had a very busy day."

Henry's cheeks went red again as he lifted his chin defiantly. "I don't know how this happened."

Vicki felt her stomach rumble. "You know, I am absolutely adorable when I blush."

The blush deepened. "Come sit down so I can talk to you. I can't focus on you over there."

"Now you see why I like to stand near people who are talking to me?" Vicki asked as she made her way back across the room.

"And here I was, thinking you just liked my company." There was something just under the surface in Henry's words, but Vicki was finding it hard to concentrate on the soft tones of his voice. The steady thump-thump of his heart grew louder as she sat on the couch.

Not his heart, Vicki thought distantly. It's my heart and my blood. He's just borrowing, it's mine--

"Vicki!"

Vicki blinked. Henry was flat on his back across the couch, Vicki stretched out on top of him, one of her hands on his shoulder holding him flat, with her lips only inches from Henry's throat.

Teeth achingly close to the blood flowing through living veins.

"Fuck!" Vicki sprang off Henry and put as much distance between them as she could. "This is not happening!"

Henry stood slowly, pulling his disarrayed shirt back in place. "This is what I meant when I said you have no idea what it means to be a vampire," he said. His hands were out, as if he were approaching a wild animal. "The hunger for blood can't be stopped by any force of will."

"This is not going to happen!" Vicki said. Not pleading. Not yet. "We'll fix this and then you can go right back to blood-sucking, not me!"

"Vicki--"

"No!"

"Vicki." Henry stopped inches away from her, so warm and so alive and Vicki was just so hungry and this was so messed up that she didn't even know how to start to deal. "A new vampire is completely at the whims of the hunger. The fact that you managed to stop probably means that you have the benefits of my control, but even I can't go for more than two nights without feeding."

It took a few seconds to process the meaning in his words. "You didn't feed yesterday?" Vicki asked in a shaking voice. "Are you stupid?"

Henry smiled wryly. "I intended to go to a club when I awoke this evening." He reached up to cup Vicki's cheek with his hand. His touch was so warm, skin smelling so familiar, with a pulse pounding just below the dark demon mark marring the skin of her arm. "Change of plans. You need to feed before we can start to figure out how to fix our situation."

"Henry, please." The words came out as a whisper, drowned out by the rhythmic pounding of blood. My blood.

"I'll help you through this," Vicki heard Henry say, and he moved his wrist closer to her mouth.

The touch of warm skin to her lips was her undoing. Vicki opened her mouth to taste that skin, warm and faintly salty and alive, with the pulsing of the blood just under that surface. My blood.

She wanted it.

She needed it.

She was so hungry.

Her mouth felt strange for a moment, then she was scraping too-sharp teeth over soft skin. A sharp gasp reached her ears. She opened her eyes to see her own face, apprehensive and nervous, staring back at her, and she reacted without thinking.

She took the fear away.

Apprehension turned to desire, eyes suddenly wide with arousal as Vicki bit through the skin of her own wrist.

The soft moan that filled her ears was almost as sweet as the blood rushing into her mouth. She -- no, Henry collapsed against her, hips moving as Vicki caught him and lowered them both to the floor.

Swallow.

Henry closed his eyes as Vicki gathered him close, mouth still locked to his wrist.

My wrist. My blood.

Mine.

Vicki drew down another mouthful of blood, wondering how anything could possibly taste so sweet, so warm, so right. Henry gasped, pressing against Vicki. "God, don't stop," he whispered.

Don't stop.

Vicki fought to push past the overwhelming desire for more. There was something she was supposed to remember. Something important. Something...

Stop!

Vicki pulled her head back with a gasp. She had to stop.

Henry wriggling in her lap wasn't helping her concentration. Reason somehow fought itself to the front of the fray and Vicki licked at the small puncture wounds on Henry's wrist until the blood stopped flowing.

Stop.

Henry rested his head against Vicki's shoulder, breathing hard. "I'd forgotten what that could be like," he whispered sleepily.

Vicki sighed. "I thought you were supposed to keep me from killing you," she whispered back, pushing the hair off Henry's face. Her fingers lingered on the soft skin, taking in the delicate wrinkles around his eyes. Age lines that Henry should never have had.

"How was I supposed to know you'd put the whammy on me?" Henry burrowed deeper in Vicki's arms. "I knew I was good, but not that good."

Vicki frowned. "I put the what on you?"

"New vampires can't usually evoke that sort of response. They usually generate an instinctive fear response, not a sexual one. Only the older ones can incapacitate their prey with arousal." Henry sounded as if he were drifting off to sleep, which was the only reason Vicki wasn't shaking him for not mentioning this before. "It takes a while to wear off."

"You've bitten me before and I never reacted quite so strongly."

Henry exhaled softly. "I keep it toned down because it can have unintended side effects. Besides." He yawned. "Your will is too strong for me to overwhelm you with it. I think you took that with you when we swapped bodies."

"What side effects?" Vicki asked, stroking Henry's cheek to keep him awake. "Come on, stay with me." She knew she hadn't taken too much blood. The soft (post-coital, her mind named it) rosy tint covering Henry's skin told her that.

This is so incredibly fucked up.

"It can become an addiction if the vampire isn't careful."

A what? "So I may just have made myself sexually addicted to your mojo?"

Henry nodded against her shoulder, before surrendering to sleep.

"Oh, my god," Vicki grumbled. She put her arm around Henry's back to hold him more securely as he dozed. I know men usually fall asleep after, but this is ridiculous.

It was sort of nice, though, to be holding someone so close, even if that someone was really herself.

And all it took was a body swap, breaking half the furniture in my office, and potentially sexually addicting me to Henry's vampire wiles, Vicki thought. When I find what started this whole body swap, I'm going to hurt it really hard.

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