Chapter 1 - Everyone has to have a hobby

Try as he might, McGee could not fathom what he was doing sitting cross-legged on the floor in Abby's lab just before dawn. The array of candles set up in the little back room gave off an ethereal glow, not to mention a pungent odour which was threatening to send his allergies into overdrive.

He eyed the fluorescent blue liquid Abby handed him warily then took a cautious sniff. "Smells like cat's pee," he noted.

"And you'd know that because…."

"I have inconsiderate neighbours. Do we really have to drink this stuff?"

"Only as the first beams from the rising sun touch us," Abby intoned dramatically.

McGee shook his head in bewilderment. He could never work out how someone so steeped in science and logic one moment could suddenly flip to occult, voodoo and alien abductions the next. Then again, he could never work out why he went along with her.

"And what's this one supposed to do?" He had long since given up committing Abby's experiments to memory.

"Swap our brains, McGee. I'll be in your body and you'll be in mine. Wouldn't that be cool?"

McGee's eyes slid to Abby's breasts momentarily as he considered the upside. Then he shook his head: his sanity was being dragged down to the lowest common denominator. "Until when?"

"Until the sun sets."

"Great."

"Shhhh: it's nearly time."

Abby took one of his hands in hers and interlaced their fingers. A warm glow began to radiate deep within him and he remembered why he let Abby talk him into these things: there was always some touching. The room slowly brightened.

"Drink, McGee!" called Abby urgently, bringing her cup to her lips.

He squeezed his eyes shut and grimaced at the first swallow: it tasted worse than it smelt. In the aftermath, he fought a valiant battle against his stomach as it tried to evict the noxious, possibly toxic, brew. Then a wave of dizziness thumped him so hard he landed flat on his back.

When McGee opened his eyes again, Abby had put a mirror in front of his face. "Very funny," he growled.

He stopped: that wasn't his voice.

Then the face in the mirror spoke with his voice: "This is soooo cool."

"Abby?" he had never heard his own quaver in Abby's voice.

But Abby was no longer looming over him, she was jumping his body up and down in the small room yelling: "Yes, yes, yes!"

McGee clambered unsteadily to a stand on platform boots and hung on to the side of the desk. "No, no, no," he countered. "Put us back."

"Not until sunset!" Abby's gleeful tone in his own voice, accompanied by the hyperactive bouncing, made him look like an escapee from a local institution.

"Would you stop jumping my body around like that?"

Abby stopped. "You're right," she agreed. Then McGee saw Abby spread an evil smile over his face: an expression he didn't know his muscles were configured to achieve. "There's something I've always wanted to try," she said and suddenly she shot out of the back room into the lab.

McGee stumbled Abby's body after his own. "Abby," he warned, "any damage to my body can be replicated on yours."

"Which reminds me," Abby stopped McGee's body dead in its tracks. "Fresh canvas! I just don't have enough available real estate for a new tat, but you…"

"Touch one layer of dermis and I'll spend the entire day having your tats laser removed."

Abby pouted his lips in a ridiculously feminine way.

"Oh, please don't use that expression," McGee begged. "Tony's gaydar is going to go right off the scale."

"OK, I'll forget the tat," Abby finally conceded, "but I've always wanted to see you do this."

McGee watched in horror as Abby threw up his arms and cartwheeled awkwardly across the lab. The coat slipped over his body's head, blinding Abby and that, combined with his body's inexperience in the act, caused Abby to over-balance smashing against a bench at the end of the lab. He raced over to where Abby was struggling to sit up. "That's going to leave a bruise," he grumbled.

"Wow, that made me really dizzy," said Abby.

"Yeah," McGee agreed in his 'wasn't that obvious' voice.

"What are you doing McGee?"

McGee flicked Abby's head around to face Tony, managing to catch a pigtail in the eye. "I, um, gave McGee, ah, an energy drink."

Tony shot McGee a quizzical look intended for Abby. "And now he's doing cartwheels? I'll have what he's having."

McGee twisted Abby's face into a look he hoped resembled sarcasm or a sneer, or something equally appropriate.

"You OK, Abbs?" Tony asked, reaching down and offering McGee an arm. "'Cause you look constipated or something."

"Yeah, fine."

"Comon' Probie," Tony turned his attention to Abby. "We've got a case."

McGee cringed as he watched Abby light up his face.

"Cool! Do I get to use a gun?"