Chapter Text
“I require the services of a Tzimisce,” Phyre announced as they slammed the head of the latest challenger onto Tolly’s desk.
“You do?” Fabien asked, but went unacknowledged.
Tolly raised an eyebrow, glanced between the head and the elder holding it, and shrugged. “I suppose you’ve earned a few oddball requests. What for?”
Phyre rolled their shoulders airily. “As you may have guessed from history books referencing me variably as man or woman, I am rarely satisfied in the same form for long. I would like a Tzimisce skilled in Vicissitude on my retainer for when the urge strikes me.”
“Aw, but sweetheart, you’re so pretty already,” Tolly teased.
Phyre leaned over the desk, well into Tolly’s space. “Unless you intend to share in the benefits of my new form, the alterations I wish to make are irrelevant to you.”
Tolly, who could be relied upon to back off when someone returned his flirtations, waved them away. “Ah, I’m out of your league and you know it. But good luck in your conquests, I’ll send you some contact information. By the way, some thin-bloods in the warehouse district have been selling their enhancers to mortals, can you take care of it?”
Phyre grunted in acknowledgment as they turned away, having already moved on to the next thought.
Fabien, however, had not. “See, I know for a fact that you aren’t planning on wooing anyone but me, and we don’t need a different body for that. What are you up to?”
Phyre snorted as they entered the elevator. “You shall see.”
—————
Phyre had been acting… weird, lately. On top of hiring a Tzimisce fleshcrafter and then never following up, they had been sneaking into hospitals to hanging out in the coma ward, collecting books used to instruct young Ventrue mages and researching vegetative states. The strangest part was that they refused to explain why, just repeating every time Fabien asked that he would see.
Fabien would not have believed that someone could so efficiently keep a secret from a person living inside their head, but Phyre continued to impress. It was nice, honestly, to have a puzzle with such low stakes. He knew he could trust Phyre, that it would at worst be a strange prank. Fabien could spend hours rotating the evidence within his mind without the pressure and anxiety that usually accompanied a case he was stuck on.
Still, it was a surprise when Phyre suddenly decided it was time for their plan to come to fruition. When they entered the hospital this time, they slunk purposefully to a room in the coma ward that they had visited once or twice before. This time, however, instead of setting up in the vents or finding a corner to lurk in, they slung the patient over their shoulder and then picked up the life support machine under the other arm.
“Um… Phyre? Generally humans don’t love those things being stolen. The machines or the patients,” Fabien pointed out, too used to Phyre’s odd behavior to bother asking why they were doing this.
Phyre, who was midway through shoving the machine out the window and onto a nearby air conditioning unit, paused long enough to say, “I need them more,” before they jumped out the window themself, unconscious man in tow.
Fabien would like it to be noted for the record that he was much more comfortable with Phyre’s building hopping when the elder had both hands free. At least they had taken to lifting the machine with telekinesis after determining that climbing a pipe with only their knees would take too long. Fabien could still do without the sensation of flipping up a fire escape with one hand while dragging an unconscious body behind him with the other.
Due to the reemergence of Fabien’s fear of falling off a building, it took him almost fifteen minutes to notice that they weren’t headed home. “Uh… Phyre? Where are we going?” Fabien tried, not particularly hopeful. Phyre seemed to want him to figure it out himself.
“Lizzie’s place,” Phyre grunted, executing another dizzying flip in an attempt at gaining upward momentum.
“The Tzimisce fleshsculptor? That Lizzie?” Fabien said in confusion, clues rearranging themselves in his mind. “You’re duplicating someone. The fleshsculptor was never for you at all!”
“Yes, well, I somehow doubt Tolly would sanction this. Or if he did, he would be utterly insufferable about it.” Despite what appeared to be both of their best efforts, Phyre and Tolly seemed to continuously rub each other the wrong way. Their conversations were one of the few times Fabien truly regretted being inside Phyre’s head; it got insufferably warm in there when they were irritated, and watching two friends argue without a way to interject was not Fabien’s idea of a good time.
“That sounds like Tolly,” he said, because it wasn’t like Tolly himself would hear about it. “So, who’s the lucky gent you’re going to all this trouble over?”
Phyre’s thoughts took on a distinctly unimpressed tone. “I have faith in your ability to solve the case, detective.”
“…are you duplicating Tolly?” Fabien asked hesitantly. It didn’t really make sense, but he was the only person Phyre really saw regularly. Even Niko they only visited for Fabien’s sake, to let him check in on his old friend even if Niko couldn’t know he was there.
Phyre almost dropped the body, and had to scramble to hoist it back over their shoulder. “What? Why would I want more Tollys? I want fewer Tollys!”
“Yourself?” Fabien guessed.
Phyre rolled their eyes. “I suppose it shall remain a surprise.”
Fabien would take that as a no.
They landed lightly on a windowsill and knocked on the pane. A woman with a truly unusual number of piercings across her cheekbones unlatched the window and Phyre slid in.
“Lizzie. I have acquired a suitable body. I trust you have reviewed the photographs I mailed you?” Phyre’s tone remained cool and professional, despite the fact that they were visibly struggling to fit the life support machine through the window. “I want you to sculpt this vessel into a replica of the man from the photographs.”
Fabien tried to recall which photographs they were referring to, but Phyre honestly sent an absurd amount of mail and Fabien had started tuning it out. Tolly insisted that they fill out paperwork after important cases, and Phyre refused to deliver it in person. After the difficulty carrying the guy and the life support machine across the city, Fabien was starting to see why.
Lizzie took the body with ease and laid it out on a bed. Without even a warning, she began to press her fingers into his face, remolding his features. It made a deeply unpleasant squelching sound.
Fabien watched in abject horror as the man’s bones began to give under Lizzie’s thumbs. “Phyre. Phyre please. I cannot watch this. I’m gonna throw up inside your brain Phyre. We don’t have a mop in here.”
Phyre muffled an amused noise and wandered into the living room, fortunately leaving the grizzly scene behind. “I am quite sure you have seen worse, little detective,” they pointed out.
“Something about the lack of blood REALLY freaks me out,” Fabien explained. “And the bones were making wet sounds. They’re not supposed to do that!”
Phyre leaned down and plucked a tome from the lowest shelf of Lizzie’s bookcase. “No matter, you have another task to accomplish anyways.”
“I do?” Fabien asked dubiously. There wasn’t all that much he could do outside of talking to Phyre. He couldn’t even control their shared body’s blinks.
Phyre settled down on a dingy grey couch with the book, and flipped through the pages until they reached a chapter titled ‘Possession: Temporarily Transferring One’s Consciousness Into an Inferior Mortal Body.’
“Wait a minute.” Fabien said slowly.
“I was wondering when you would put it together,” Phyre teased.
“That body in there is for me?!” Fabien wasn’t sure whether to be excited or dismayed. It would be amazing to move again, to be in control, but at the same time… one of the main reasons Phyre liked him to begin with was that they shared a body. What if they stopped understanding him the moment they couldn’t hear his thought process? What if they didn’t want to spend time with him anymore? What if this was because they didn’t want to spend time anymore?
Phyre put up a hand, as though stopping an actual monologue. Oops. His thoughts must have been too loud again. “Fabien. Quell your anxieties. This will not sever our bond. You will return to my body when you tire. I have said I will not allow you to leave me. Do you think me a liar?”
“Oh.” Fabien couldn’t help but feel settled at that, like he had been wrapped in a warm blanket. Of course Phyre wasn’t trying to get rid of him. They weren’t like that. They loved him, which was still an idea Fabien boggled at some days. They just wanted to make him a body so that he could have a little freedom of movement.
“I admit to more selfish motives as well, of course,” Phyre remarked, and Fabien really needed to get his thoughts under control. “I would very much like to hold you, as a friend and as a lover.”
If vampires could blush, Fabien’s reaction to Phyre’s words would have turned their shared face the color of a tomato. “I- um. I- yes, very good.”
Phyre chuckled and Fabien was buffeted by wisps of their affection. “Additionally, if my theories are sound, you would be able to return to your old life in the Court and the police department. I am aware that Niko has been concerned by your absence.”
Fabien paused at that. He hadn’t even considered that he might be able to return to detective work. Hanging out in Phyre’s head all day wasn’t exactly boring, with all the fights, but Fabien did miss solving a good mystery. “…thank you. I can’t- thank you so much.”
“Merry Christmas,” Phyre said, sounding precisely like a cat who had just discovered an extra plate of cream.
“Oh no! I didn’t get you anything!” Curse his faulty memory! Phyre had totally looked at a calendar in the last week, there was no excuse.
“Fabien, my heart, you are lacking a few essential items that are required for buying Christmas gifts. A body, for one thing.” Phyre pressed a hand over their face, trying to hold back laughter.
Fabien rarely minded when people laughed at him. He was used to it, had been since his mortal childhood. But Phyre… he actively enjoyed it when Phyre laughed at him. The sound of their undignified and poorly muffled snorts made a fondness swell in his chest that he had never felt quite so deeply before. “I love you, Phyre.”
“Prove your love to me by reading this book, so that my efforts shall not go to waste.” Phyre held up the forgotten tome at eye level.
“On it!” Reading wasn’t exactly easy when someone else was controlling the eye movements, but they managed. Kind of.
Still, Lizzie entered the living room to inform them that she was done before they even made it halfway through, and Phyre insisted they finish the chapter before they went to see Fabien’s new body.
Standing over a copy of himself was odd, and it was odder still to do it through someone else’s eyes. Better than finding his own corpse, though. That was a solid 2/10 experience, would not try again.
“My body already knows the magic,” Phyre explained, peering at the Fabien replica critically. “The challenge is forcing it to accept that your mind is the one performing it.”
A good chunk of the strategies suggested by the book would not work. Fabien couldn’t close his eyes or measure his breathing. He couldn’t even control what they looked at, which was irritatingly noticeable when trying to concentrate.
Something soothing washed over him, and he felt the tickle of Phyre’s affection. It was grounding in a contradictory sort of way, like how a cup of coffee had settled him when he was mortal.
Come on, Fabien, focus. He stared at the body, his body, and tried to reach out the way he did when talking to Phyre. He slid along the glassy surface that separated their minds until he found its edge, then reached past and out and out and out and—