Focus by glacis (Blood Ties (TV’verse), Mike/Henry, NC17). Henry fixes Vicki’s effect on Mike’s life. Mike is distracted, but an apologetic monster sets him straight… or not, as the case may be. Spoilers: series, specifically ‘Heart of Fire’ and ‘Deep Dark.’ Follows series finale. Originally written for the Small Fandom Fest 06, Jan. 2010.

Vicki tuned out her mom’s vaguely accusatory ramblings, staring at her scuffed boots, propped up on her desk. Henry wasn’t returning calls… admittedly, he’d been dead all day, but after he’d left… she’d driven him from… his apartment, she’d unlocked Coreen, taken her home, then gone right back to talk to him.

He wouldn’t answer the door.

For the first time in the two years she’d known him, the door was locked.

When she’d pounded on the wood and refused to go away until he listened, Greg the doorman called the police. She’d left, and started phoning him.

Eleven voicemail messages later his inbox was full and he still wasn’t returning her calls.

So she’d tried again as soon as the sun set this evening. She kept trying until Coreen threatened to take away her phone. That made her think, and she did something she didn’t usually do.

She wrote a letter.

It was simple and straightforward, blunt to the point of rudeness, and laid her heart wide open.

“Dear Henry,

This is your home. Please don’t leave it for me.

You’ve tried to pull back, and I keep pulling you in, just like Mike. I’ve nearly ruined both your lives, and I was wrong. I’m sorry.

I will back off. You are my friend. I want you to be happy. I don’t want you to leave.

Please.

Vicki”

Finally, she called a cab and went over to see him again. She’d had to wait until Greg was distracted to sneak past him, and when she got up to Henry’s floor, she had all her arguments marshaled and loaded to fire.

Then Mike came out of Henry’s apartment looking like the demons of hell were on his ass (a scary prospect considering very recent events with demons from hell), and Vicki was once more torn between going to Henry and following Mike.

Mike took the decision out of her hands. As he drew level with her he swept her up in an arm and carried her along in his wake back into the elevator.

“Mike?” she asked, wanting to be irritated but still feeling a little fragile around him. Not an emotion she was used to feeling, which also irritated her, but that was her fault, not his, and she wasn’t going to take it out on him this time.

“You don’t want to go in there,” he informed her briskly, still a little wild-eyed.

She took this to mean Henry was eating, and she didn’t want to intrude on his meal. Especially if he was fucking his food, like he usually did when he brought them home. Vicki shrugged Mike’s hand off gently, and sighed.

“Okay, but I need to leave him a message.”

He watched silently as she went to the door and pushed an envelope underneath it. She paused for a moment, her hand on the wood, before straightening her back and marching back to the elevator. Mike was staring at her strangely.

She’d tried to make amends to one man she’d hurt tonight. Now it was time to see if she could do the same with the other. As the elevator headed for the ground floor, she cleared her voice and asked, “Should I talk to Crowley for you? Is there anything I can do to help?”

He gave her a rueful look. “Don’t worry about it.” He pushed his coat back and she saw the badge on his belt. “Henry took care of it.”

“That’s… good, right?” She wasn’t too sure, from the weird way Mike was acting.

He took a deep breath, and gave her a sharp look. “Vicki, please don’t try to help. Stay away from the station. I’ve got my job back, and I don’t want to lose it again so soon.”

She bit her lip and watched as he walked away. She could read the subtext as well as anyone, and better than most. Stay away. From him.

Just like Henry.

She’d managed to fuck them both up, and she wasn’t going to do it again. Ignoring Greg’s disgruntled voice behind her, shouting something about ‘not allowed’ and ‘Mr. Fitzroy’s orders,’ she went back to her office.

She had a bag to punch.

~~

(ten hours earlier)

Crowley handed back his badge and gun and gestured abruptly toward his desk. Kate looked confused and hopeful, Dave looked confused and skeptical, and Mike was just confused.

Maybe it had been the stress, or the press, or just that time of the month for her. But she’d had a good point. He was distracted. Vicki, and more often lately, Henry, were distracting him from his work. The things he was fighting were distracting him from his principles, or he’d never have destroyed a victim’s corpse, much less tampered with evidence. Demons and wendigos and mad priests and new concepts of loyalty and things he couldn’t arrest were distracting him from being a cop, something he’d always thought was the core of his identity.

Vicki was always distracting.

Henry was getting too distracting for his peace of mind, or his sanity, for that matter.

He shook off his latest distraction and got back to work.

The rest of the afternoon was quiet. Everyone tiptoed around like the floor had been replaced by eggshells, but it had the useful side effect of giving Mike plenty of time to think.

The only time he’d seen such complete attitude turnarounds had been when Henry Fitzroy was involved.

At the end of his shift, he absently turned Kate down on another invitation to a drink, smiling apologetically at her. She wasn’t appeased.

“Off to tell Vicki about the reprieve?” she asked with more acid than he was used to hearing in her voice. Before she could get started on another monolog about why Vicki was the essence of evil, destroying his life, Mike held up a hand.

“No, I’ve got some questions for a guy, tying up some loose ends.” Maybe sneaking over in the middle of the day and beating him up, since that was the only chance he’d have in a fight with the damned vampire. “I called Vicki on my lunch break,” he admitted.

Kate rolled her eyes. Dave snorted, but hid his face and hurried out the door before Mike could growl at him. Mike sighed, shrugged on his overcoat, and headed off to see a man about a whammy.

Henry smirked at him in greeting. Mike frowned and shook his head.

“What did you do?”

“Woke from the dead, finished up the last drawing for the next issue, had a snack at Ringo’s, answered my door,” Henry promptly recited.

Mike wouldn’t snicker, it would only encourage him. “To Crowley.”

“Ah, yes, last evening’s activities. I met with her briefly and opened her eyes to the irreplaceable nature of the services you perform for the citizens of Toronto and the inadvisability of dispensing with them. She agreed. She was quite amenable, really,” he deadpanned.

“You vamped her.”

“Of course.”

Mike sighed again. “Why? It wasn’t your fight, and you don’t like me.”

Henry gave him an honest-to-God smile, shocking Mike into immobility. The only other one he could remember came after he defended a werecat to her father. There was no excuse for this one.

“Wrong on both counts, Constable,” Henry purred.

Mike shivered. “Huh?” was all he could muster.

Henry gently herded him toward the couch, chivvied him into a seat and joined him. “You left your assigned duties to save an innocent from Astaroth. That has been my fight for the last century. You were already in difficulties because you were aiding Victoria. That has been my fight for the past two years. You are a loyal and protective man, Michael, and such qualities are to be rewarded, not punished. Further, you willingly submitted to mental manipulation, by me, in order to solve the case and rescue the kidnapped child. You certainly should not be suspended or dismissed for doing your job well, regardless of your methodology.”

Once Mike waded through all the syllables, he blushed a little. “Hm. Thanks. I think.”

“Besides,” Henry continued blithely, “I do like you.”

Mike’s jaw dropped at that.

“If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have permitted your constant insolence. I’d have eaten you months ago.”

Mike absolutely refused to admit that statement turned him on more than it pissed him off (or scared him, which he refused to admit at all). Judging by the suddenly intent look on Henry’s face, his resolve didn’t matter much.

Going by the way Henry was sniffing him, it was a pretty good bet the guy already knew.

Discretion being the better part of valor, particularly when a cute sexy vampire was sniffing around, Mike sounded a silent retreat. He also ignored the entirety of that thought and focused on the need to escape, as he was in no way ready to admit he thought Henry was either cute or sexy.

“Thanks,” he stuttered out, “gotta go.”

Not the smoothest exit he’d made, but it worked.

~~

Henry watched the detective in full flight mode and let him go. Michael would come to him when he was ready… and if it took too long, Henry would seduce him. He smiled in anticipation at the thought.

It hadn’t been difficult to convince the captain that she had been overly hasty in suspending Celluci. He’d gone to the station as soon as he woke, and made sure no one saw him on his way into her office.

She’d looked much too pleased with herself. She’d obviously been wanting to cut Michael loose and this most recent incident was all the excuse she’d needed. He supposed, if he tried, he could see it from her perspective. Celluci had ducked out of a task force briefing on a high-profile kidnapping.

Of course, with Henry’s help and Astaroth’s temptation, Michael had also solved the case and pointed the rescuers to the child before she could be further harmed.

In addition, Henry didn’t want to see it from Crowley’s perspective. He found the woman irritating, narrow-minded, and beset by a mental tunnel vision that made Vicki’s medical condition seem tame by comparison.

Shaking off idle thoughts of blind seers and the deliberately-oblivious sighted, he’d sped up behind the captain. She was still looking at the papers rustling on her desk when he leaned down and whispered words of power in her ear.

“You will revoke Mike Celluci’s suspension. You were wrong in confronting him. His sources led him to break the case and rescue the little girl. You will cease any attempt to suspend or dismiss him. You believe in him. You trust him. You will defend and protect him. You will not remember this conversation.”

She shuddered as his breath caressed her skin. Then she shook, all over, like a wet dog, and muttered, “Why the hell did I let him get away?” She reached out for paperwork with Celluci’s name written across the top and shoved them in the shredder next to her desk. Reaching for the telephone, she punched in a number, waited until Henry heard Mike’s voicemail telling her to leave a message, and barked, “Celluci. Suspension’s over. Get your butt in here. You’ve got work to do.”

The scent rising from her was intriguing. Henry grinned, a feral expression. So that’s why she was constantly on Michael’s ass. She wanted him, and she didn’t want to want him. He leaned down again, eyes turning black and voice gaining resonance.

“Your lust is now admiration for his skills as a detective. You will cease taking your frustration out on him.” A wicked idea came to him. “You want Kate Lam. She’s interested. You will pursue her. You will not remember this.”

As he sped from her office, then wandered along the dark Toronto streets on his way back to his condo, he wondered how long it would take before Captain Crowley was busted for sexual harassment. He was still snickering an hour later when Michael came to his door.

~~

Work was weird for Mike after that, and considering what his work had entailed over the last couple years, that was saying something.

Perhaps in an attempt to keep Mike from getting suspended again, Vicki had maintained her distance. Coreen was calling regularly, but she hadn’t asked for help, and Mike wondered if Vicki was okay, or if she was just as exhausted as he was.

A couple weeks later, Mike was returning from a call, Dave still poking at the corpse, when a creature from his nightmares attacked. It tackled him, got some nasty slime on his coat, dragged him into an alley and pinned him to the wall. He was fighting to get to his gun, or his phone, kind of hoping Henry was in the area and might give him a hand, or the creature was part of one of Vicki’s investigations so she could back him up, when the row of nostrils spread across the hawkish face twitched.

“What? Don’t like my aftershave?” Mike snarked, then wondered when sarcasm in the face of supernatural doom had become routine.

The inch long shark-like teeth a hair’s breadth away from tearing his throat out clicked, and the monster suddenly backpedalled.

“Wrong. Nightwalkers. Tell your master,” it gargled, sounding like it was choking on broken glass, “no insult meant.”

Then with a lurch and a disgusting slurping sound, it disappeared. Literally. It oozed into the pavement and was gone, leaving nothing but the raindrops on the cement, and some slimy goop on his coat.

Okay.

Normally, if normal had any say in this, he’d head to Vicki’s, tell her about it, have Coreen do some research, then Henry and Vicki would find it and kill it while he flanked it with a tire iron or silver bullets or whatever. Given the current situation with Vicki, and the ambivalence in his latest meeting with Henry, his options were limited.

He chose the lesser of two evils, the vampire.

The doorman gave him a funny look when he passed the desk, muttering something about hot chicks and strange tastes, but Mike ignored him. He was still half-heartedly swiping at the monster-snot on his lapel when Henry opened the door.

“Hey,” Mike greeted him, wandering in and peeling off his coat. He could actually feel Henry rolling his eyes behind his back.

“Here, let me take that. White vinegar will take off the ectoplasm without destroying the fabric.” With that unlikely cleaning tip, Henry took Mike’s coat and trotted off to the kitchen.

Mike dropped onto the couch, admiring the soft leather as he did every time he sat on it, and a moment later Henry was back. Mike’s coat was tossed on the chair, newly goop-free, and Henry slid onto the cushion next to Mike, who wondered, not for the first time, if there was any were-cat in the vampire. With the big eyes, the teeth, and the boneless movement, he would bet there was. At least in Fitzroy’s.

“So, I’m out walking, and I get ambushed by this goo-monster with six breathing holes in his face and teeth any piranha would be proud of. It pins me up against the bricks and goes for my throat.”

Henry’s eyes going jet black and his fangs descending broke Mike’s narrative. “How did you kill it?” Henry hissed, actually hissed, and Mike added another check mark under his mental ‘cat’ list. Henry’s whole body was tensed, looking for a fight, and if he’d had fur, it would be standing on end.

Mike shrugged. “I didn’t. That’s where it gets weird.”

Henry gave him a look that plainly stated it had been weird before that point, but Mike ignored him.

“It sniffed my neck, then dropped me and backed away. It grunted something about apologizing to my master, then oozed into the sidewalk.”

At the mention of apology, much of Henry’s tension eased, although he still looked poised to jump at a moment’s notice.

“So, Henry,” Mike glared at him, “anything you want to tell me?”

Henry stared at him. He looked bemused, like he was considering something he hadn’t thought of before, but wasn’t too bothered about. Mike cleared his throat pointedly.

“Master?”

Henry grinned at him. A grin, not a smirk. It was cute. Mike shook that thought off immediately.

“I’ve fed from you, Detective.”

Mike snorted. Stating the obvious, not Henry’s usual M.O. “Yeah, well, you fed from Vicki too, and nobody’s calling you HER master.”

Both men paused to think on the ridiculousness of that scenario before they both shook their heads. Mastering Vicki. Not happening in this lifetime. Mike upped the glare at Henry to get him back on topic.

Henry’s smile widened, and turned sly. Mike refused to admit it was sexy on him. ‘The… circumstances were different.”

Now Mike was suspicious. “How so?”

Henry gave a Gallic roll of the shoulders and sort of wiggled his whole body. Mike noticed it brought them closer together on the sofa, but cut the thought off before it could get any further. “When I fed from you… it was… the circumstances were very different.”

Mike huffed. “You have a point?”

Henry rolled his eyes again. “When I fed from Vicki, it was from her arm. I drank from your throat. Feeding from her was to heal wounds, from you… to continue my existence. As for the circumstances, with Vicki, it was directly after being wounded in an altercation. With you, it was the result of being tortured, starved, and drained for nearly three days, AFTER being in an altercation that left me wounded. My feeding from Vicki was a band-aid. With you, it was more… primal.”

By the time he finished what passed for an explanation, he was sitting right next to Mike, their thighs touching. Mike noticed that, too, but was too busy processing the whole ‘primal’ idea to pay much attention. He stared incredulously at HF, more turned on that he would care to admit. Swallowing with a throat gone dry, he eventually asked, “Primal?” There was more squeak than usual in the word.

Henry’s sly smile turned predatory. “It leaves a mark.”

Mike had about a half-second to wonder how one man could have so many different versions of a smile before Henry was in his lap. Mike had known Henry was fast, but he was also heavier than he looked, all that muscle. Mike clamped down a pun about deadweight and opened his mouth to protest, ignoring how his arms had automatically come up to pull Henry against his chest.

Henry’s tongue was in his mouth before Mike could form a word. Being polite, Mike didn’t want to speak when his mouth was full, so he did the next best thing to regain control of his jaw.

He bit Henry’s tongue. Not hard enough to draw blood, just enough to reprimand him.

Bad idea.

Vampires, it would appear, liked to be bitten.

Faster than the eye could follow, Mike was turned around, laid full-length on the rug next to the sofa, his shirt opened, and he had a half-naked fully-aroused vampire splayed atop him like an amorous, fanged, really strong starfish.

“You smell incredible,” Henry purred in his ear, and Mike shivered in response. “You’ve been turned on since before you came in the door, and then you… you BIT me.”

“Sorry?” Mike asked hesitantly, too busy trying to follow the movement of Henry’s hands as they mapped him. It was kind of hard to focus when his brain had fled to his cock.

“Not in the least,” Henry responded, and pushed Mike’s trousers and shorts down around his ankles. A whoosh of displaced air later, he swallowed Mike’s cock down to the root, and Mike wasn’t sorry, either.

There was much to be said for getting a blow job from a guy who didn’t have to breathe, had throat muscles that would give an anaconda envy, and a tongue Mike could only describe as prehensile.

If he could have said anything beyond ‘Guh,’ which at the moment he couldn’t.

Sadly, Henry stopped before Mike could give in to the orgasm that threatened to take his head off, and Mike burbled some sort of protest as Henry firmly grasped the base of his cock and strangled it. The burble rose to a wail, and Henry chuckled.

Bastard.

“True, if moot at the moment,” Henry rasped against the skin of Mike’s throat, cock still firmly in hand.

“Nnh?” Mike tried to ask. Something.

Henry chuckled again, and licked him.

“Fuck,” Mike got out succinctly.

“Of course,” Henry purred, then nibbled him a little.

Mike was so caught up in grumbling the whole ‘get on with the biting before I die of frustration’ motif that he almost missed Henry spreading his thighs and straddling his body.

He totally didn’t miss when Henry sat down on his cock and moaned.

The first thing Mike noticed was the absence of Henry’s strangling fingers, replaced by a tight grip all the way down his cock that made him scream. The second thing he realized was that it wasn’t hot, like he would have expected if he’d ever thought of fucking Henry, which of course he never had.

Not when he was conscious.

Okay, not when he was conscious and in control of his brain and his hormones.

It was tight and slick and cool, an incredible combination surrounding his cock that completely scrambled his brain. Then Henry was moving, and there was heat where he was not, and cool pressure where he was. Mike’s hands were leaving bruises on Henry’s thighs, and Henry was smiling at him.

Mike hadn’t seen this smile before. He was distracted trying to work out what it meant when Henry ground down on him and Mike’s eyes rolled back in his head. Then there was a rush of sensation at his throat, very different from the first time Henry bit him, but weirdly the same. Less pain, or maybe as much pain but so mixed up with pleasure Mike couldn’t tell the difference. A drawing sensation as Henry drank, but not overwhelming this time, balanced as it was by the orgasm that hit Mike like a freight train at the same time.

Kind of hard to focus on either the blood being drained from his neck or the come being drained from his cock, so all he could do was hang on and enjoy the ride.

He knew he was screaming, because the inside of his throat was sorer than the outside, but he couldn’t hear anything but Henry. Couldn’t see anything but the darkness behind his eyelids, and that darkness was Henry. Couldn’t feel anything but the connections between them, flesh and blood and sweat and come, tensed muscles and soft skin.

Then the rush passed, leaving him completely wiped out. Henry’s mouth at his throat, fangs gone, tongue gently cleaning him; Henry’s body tightening around him, slowly expelling him; this was the extent of his world.

For the first time in months, Mike was totally concentrated, not a hint of distraction to be found.

Of course, it would be Henry.

They’d fight about this ‘master’ thing later. Right then, he had curly hair to get out of his face, and a cool body to snuggle up against, and sleep needed to replenish various bodily fluids he’d lost. There would be plenty of time.

Because this wouldn’t be a one-off. Vicki was a complication, but she always had been complicated, and she might be less of one than she had been, if Mike’s suspicions were correct. And if Henry left, Mike would follow. If Henry tried to hide, well…

Mike was a cop.

He knew how to find people.

FIN