Walk A Mile In My Shoes - Being Human - George/Mitchell
Title: Walk A Mile In My Shoes
Pairing: George/Mitchell
Word Count: 4885
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Written for lilachaze for the Trope Meme "Bodyswap" prompt.
Summary: Mitchell wakes up inside of George's body. He quickly comes to the conclusion that the world likes to screw with his head.
When you're a vampire that lives in a house with a ghost and a werewolf, the extraordinary becomes commonplace.
Mitchell wakes up in George's bed. It's not the first time - sometimes when they talk at night he is too lazy to move through to his own bedroom, and on the days after a full moon he knows that George gets lonely. They never say anything about it; they never have to. It's not as if waking up in George's bed is a new experience for him.
This time, though, something is different. He rolls over and finds that George isn't there with him, snuggled up beside his body, but while that is unusual it isn't what he was thinking of. He frowns up at the ceiling as he tries to figure it out. It's something big, that much he is sure of.
Big...
With an uncertain expression, he flexes his fingers and then wiggles his feet. Big, yeah, that's definitely it, he realises with a foreboding sense of unease in his stomach. Everything feels bigger: he feels bigger. His feet are further away than they should be.
He sits up slowly and looks down, peering beneath the messy duvet of George's bed. What he sees there confirms it for him: this isn't him.
It's not his body that he's inside of.
"Jesus Christ," he says. Even his voice feels different. Same accent, but the words come out at a different tone. He's unused to this mouth, these vocal chords. It's all new.
He climbs out of George's bed, messy and clumsy in a body that isn't his own. It's like switching to driving a bus after driving a car for years. Nothing feels right at all. He accidentally bumps his shoulder into the side of the door frame as he leaves the room, and his feet feel like they are clomping hard on the ground as he rushes along the hall to his own bedroom. George can hear everything; it's all so loud. All sounds are magnified, and his vision is so clear. It's the full moon soon, isn't it? Tomorrow.
He doesn't bother to knock on his bedroom door - it's his bedroom, after all, he doesn't need to knock - and he charges straight inside instead. His footsteps stall when he looks down at the body that is curled up on his bed. Black curls, pale skin, skinny body, it's all him. He's not used to seeing it from the outside.
"George?" he says, shoving at his own shoulder with a couple of fingers. He doesn't really want to have to touch it in case he makes the universe explode. It's too weird. "George, wake up. You need to start panicking now."
Having George flailing around in a mess isn't going to help matters, but he's always found that if George gets himself into a state it's easier for himself to stay calm. George does the panicking for him, and that leaves Mitchell with a clear mind. They work together, like that. It clicks.
"What's going on?" George asks sleepily, head under the covers. He sounds as if he is going to ignore Mitchell entirely and drift off again if the answer is not important enough for his liking. "Is there a fire?"
They've never had a fire in the house. Mitchell's cooking isn't that bad. "I'm in your body," Mitchell says.
George rolls over grumpily. "Stop being a perv," he mumbles, voice muffled by the covers.
"I'm being serious," Mitchell says. "I'm even being literal."
He goes for drastic action and pulls the sheets off of the bed, leaving George-in-his-body shivering on the mattress.
When George opens his eyes to glare at him, the truth of the situation sinks in.
The shrieking rambling that follows, however, leaves Mitchell rather wishing he'd left George to sleep for a little while longer.
*
An hour later, the three of them have gathered around the kitchen table for a house meeting. No one has spoken yet. Silence, coming from George, is always alarming, but Mitchell is too busy staring at himself in the shiny reflection of the toaster to pay too much attention. Seeing George's face under his control is a very strange feeling indeed. He can't decide whether or not he likes it.
"I don't understand how you put up with this hair, Mitchell," George says eventually. He pulls at one of Mitchell's curls, which is beginning to look fuzzy already. "It's always in your face."
"I like it," Mitchell says. "Doesn't your head get cold?"
He wants to start wearing a hat. He feels far too on show with so little hair covering his head. It isn't proper, not at all.
"I'm hungry," George confesses with a whining sigh. He looks around the kitchen in quiet desperation. "I'm starving, actually. Don't you ever eat?"
He eats a lot, actually, far more than most people would guess from what looks like a lanky frame: Mitchell can evaluate it from the outside. He might get his hair cut just a little once they get this sorted out. "You're not hungry for food," he tells George, very quietly; he wishes that George didn't have to feel it, didn't have to know the thirst that rushes through his body on a regular basis.
"It's- oh. This is... This is a vampire thing?"
His eyes have widened to dramatic proportions, and he sticks his hand into his mouth as if checking for fangs.
Sitting between them, holding a mug of tea that she won't drink, Annie frowns. "Wait, is George a vampire now?" she asks.
Mitchell shrugs. It's not as if he's ever been in a situation like this before. It's all a bit new to him too; he has to make it up as he goes along, making vague guesses based on past experiences. Everyone expects him to know everything because he's the oldest, but he's just as lost as they are - constantly.
"I guess so. Our minds transferred. The bodies are the same."
"Does that mean you're a werewolf, then?" Annie asks.
George looks up at him expectantly, in quiet shock. Mitchell sinks down further into his chair. His legs feel as if they are taking up too much space.
Mitchell looks down at the table. He doesn't want to have to see George's reaction when he says, "I can feel it. The wolf." It's a more familiar presence than he would have expected, but it's restless: it makes him restless and uncertain. He thinks it must know that he isn't George. It's not happy about it, not one bit.
"Oh," George breathes, barely making a sound at all. Mitchell feels as if he ought to apologise, but he doesn't know what for. He holds his tongue, and George clears his throat. "Well, how do we change back?"
It's a surprise, Mitchell has to admit, that George wants to swap so readily. He would have thought that he would jump at the chance to escape the wolf, even if it's just for a few days. "I don't know," he admits. It's not something that he likes having to say.
It's not something that Annie and Mitchell like having to hear either, judging from the sounds that he hears in response. George's tell-tale splutter, coming from Mitchell's mouth, sounds less adorable than usual. Mitchell thinks that it proves that only George is able to get away with that level of neuroticness. From anyone else, it sounds absurd.
"Can't we just slam your heads together or something?" Annie suggests. "How did it even happen in the first place?"
"How does anything happen around here?" George mutters gloomily. "The universe hates us, that's how it happened."
"Don't be so melodramatic, Mitchell," Annie says, before she frowns and corrects herself. "George. There must be a reason."
They haven't angered any witches or tasted any bizarre potions, so Mitchell is a little at a loss as to how to explain it himself. Maybe George is right. Maybe the world really is just screwing with them.
"We can wait a couple of days," Mitchell suggests.
"It's the full moon tomorrow," George says. "You'll change."
"That's fine." Mitchell shakes his head, trying to reassure George. He's seen him do it often enough that he knows what happens: he knows what it's going to be like. He's heard the screams and he's listened to the monster rage. It's okay. Maybe it'll be good for him to experience what George goes through on a monthly basis. This could be good for them, right? Seeing things from the opposite side of the coin...
And, hell, getting away from himself and those dark cravings for a while, that's nothing he's going to complain about.
"It'll be fine, George," Mitchell repeats. George still doesn't look entirely convinced. He's not surprised.
Annie sighs and places her cold mug of tea onto the kitchen table. "I think it's cool," she says. "How come I didn't get switched? I would've liked to have a real body for a while."
"You can have mine," George sighs. "Or, Mitchell's I mean. I'm hungry and it's not fair."
"It's going to get worse," Mitchell says. He wishes that he could promise George something more positive than that, but there's nothing. The hunger is there, always there, and there's no escaping from it. George might be able to resist it for now, but that won't work forever. He's as dangerous as a new vampire, now. Maybe that cage would be better off with George inside it than the wolf.
"Okay," George says. He looks alarmed - he always looks alarmed, and seeing that alarm on his own face instead of George's is too strange for words - but he nods. "That's okay. I can deal with that. Definitely. You do it."
Mitchell has had decades of starts and stops before he managed to gain control of that desperate thirst for blood; George is being thrown in right at the deep end.
He'll be fine, he promises himself. George has the pair of them to watch out for him. Mitchell looks down at the table top, at the way George's hands are so much larger than the ones he is used to, and he tries not to worry. Everything will work out fine in the end: they just need to try and survive.
*
They don't leave the house for the rest of the day. They call into work and say that they're sick, and they lock the front door, just in case. George had laughed at the time and said that it was fine, that he was fine.
By the time that night has fallen, he seems to have changed his mind.
He's hiding in his bedroom, his head hidden in his hands. They're mostly leaving him to it, the door closed, but Mitchell brings a cup of tea up to him after a couple of hours. He manages to make it up the stairs without tripping over: he thinks that he's going to count that an absolute success.
"How are you feeling?" he asks.
He already knows. He's been through it far too many times himself to live in denial any more. Trying not to feed, it's like hell - even with years of experience, it's almost impossible to make it through the day.
"How do you do it?" George asks, a broken whisper. He stays sitting on the bed; Mitchell thinks that his hands are shaking. "It's too much."
"You can do it, George. I trust you." He places the cup of tea on the floor near the head of the bed and blindly hopes that neither of them will knock it over. "You're stronger than me, you know that. If I can stay dry, you can too."
"It hurts," George admits, small words that make Mitchell want to switch back immediately. George is his best friend; he shouldn't have to go through this. Mitchell wishes he could protect him from his darkness. "I can hear your heart beating. It's so loud in my ears and I want to..."
He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't have to.
"What would it taste like?" he asks. He's panting. "Mitchell? What would it taste like to drink from me? A werewolf, I mean."
Mitchell shakes his head, mute. He won't talk about how many times he's thought about it: he won't say how many times he has tried to reason to himself that it wouldn't really count. A werewolf isn't human. It's not really like falling off the wagon, not at all. It's different from that. Better.
The reasoning of an addict is always ingenious. He's always managed to hold himself back, so far.
"Don't think about it," he advises. He knows that's never going to happen. When you're a vampire, the blood is all that you can think about, most of the time. It's the only thing that your mind will allow.
George looks up, and in his own eyes Mitchell can see the blackness of hunger. There is no light. It has been decades since he's got to look at himself, and he's never known what he looks like when he needs the blood this badly: it's frightening, he'll admit that much. He doesn't look human at all, as far removed and as evil as George looks when he is the wolf.
"It's my body," George says, his voice low and heavy. It's not like him at all. "I should get a say, shouldn't I?"
"You're not thinking like yourself," Mitchell says. He takes a step backward; he knows he should leave the room and remove temptation, but he can't. He can't make himself leave when George is in this state. The need to look after him, to help, it's too much.
"Mitchell, please," George begs. "Please, you have to help me. I can't do this - I'm not like you."
He's too good for it, that's the truth. He's too good to be a vampire, too sweet to have to deal with this hunger. He's weak in his own way, and Mitchell thinks he should be glad for that. George has never been in a situation where he has had to fight his own nature to quite that degree.
He should keep his distance, but George looks so crumpled and George-like, even in Mitchell's body, that he has to come forward to try and help. He sits on the side of the bed and tugs George against him, squishing him against his chest.
"Ow," George mutters. "Careful."
It's hard to be careful when he has George's freakishly too-big body to take care of, but he tries his best. Near the full moon, George is more wolf-like than when he's not; everything is stronger, muscles as well as senses. The wolf is ready to roam.
George rests against him, head upon his shoulder, and even if he is trembling slightly he seems to be managing to hold himself back. "I couldn't do this every day," he admits in a whisper. "You're sort of amazing, you know."
Mitchell would laugh if he felt like he could, but it's impossible. Nothing about this is funny, not any more. He holds onto George instead and breathes in deeply: the scent fills his lungs, but it isn't as comforting as it should be.
"You don't smell like yourself," he complains.
"I smell like you," George says. "If you don't like it, it's not my fault."
"I prefer how you smell." Mitchell pauses as if reconsidering that and then says, "Most of the time, anyway. You're pretty ripe after a full moon."
"Let's see how good you smell after the full moon," George says.
The full moon is tomorrow night and Mitchell tries hard not to worry about it. George does this once a month; he can handle one night. He keeps his arms around George's shoulders, holding onto him as if a tight hug might be all it would take to transfer them into the right bodies.
"You might want to leave soon," George says after a while of comfortable silence. "I really want to drink your blood right now."
"Ah," Mitchell says. On reflection, hugging a hungry vampire isn't the smartest of possible ideas. Keeping his distance would be kinder on George. "Sure. Come and get me in the night if you have to, alright? I won't mind. We need to help each other now."
George nods. They are dealing with each other's conditions now, on unsteady ground that they have only ever observed from the outside before. It's difficult on both of them.
"Thank you, Mitchell," George says, pulling back from him and snuggling further into the bed like a hedgehog hiding away for winter. Mitchell thinks that if George was in his own body he'd find the sight completely adorable: seeing it from the outside with George looking like him, it looks a little bit weird and a big bit pathetic.
He stands up and watches for a moment, head tilted to the side in curiosity. He has to get some rest now, he know. Tomorrow is going to be a hard night on him, locked away in that strong cage. He'll need to be as prepared and well-rested as possible. "Good night," he says, reluctant to leave all the same. He doesn't want to be alone tonight, even if it isn't safe to be here with Mitchell.
"Good night," George answers, his voice stiff in his attempts to control himself.
It's time to leave. Mitchell knows that.
He just wishes it wasn't so difficult.
*
They wake up the next morning and the world still hasn't righted itself. Mitchell remains in a body several sizes too big for him and George stays desperately hungry for the entire day.
Inside his mind, Mitchell can feel the wolf roaming - and he can tell that it isn't happy. It's pacing, angry and vicious, as if it can tell that he has taken George away from it. It isn't happy with the swap any more than the pair of them are.
Mitchell grows angrier as the day slips by, and his senses sharpen to a degree that makes everything so crystal clear. He's never seen the world like this; it's almost as if he is on drugs. He stares at the material of his jeans (George's jeans, actually) for far too long, looking at every strand of perfectly-defined fabric in awe.
But the wolf paces and his head aches: it only fades whenever George is right there beside him, filling every sense and talking. He's whining, really, but hearing his voice seems to soothe the wolf inside. "It misses you," Mitchell tells George, both of them sitting in misery on their couch.
"I miss it too," George admits miserably. Things must be really bad if he is willing to admit to something like that.
When the change is due at any second, George comes upstairs to his bedroom. Mitchell knows the routine as well as George does, by this point - but he still feels shy in his own way when he has to strip down in front of George. It's mad, isn't it? It isn't even his own body, yet being naked in front of his best friend makes him wish that he has more than bars to hide behind.
It's hard not to look down. He's been avoiding mirrors as much as he can and he hasn't allowed his hands to linger where they shouldn't for the entire day: this isn't his body. He can't treat it as such.
George stands awkwardly in the bedroom after he's locked the cage and slipped the key into his pocket. "It'll be fine," he says. He doesn't sound convinced. "I'll come back in the morning to let you out; you won't even remember it."
"Wait," Mitchell says. George hasn't taken a step towards the door, not yet, and Mitchell finds that he doesn't want him to. He doesn't want to be left alone for this. "Can you stay?"
"What?"
"The wolf likes having you around. If you're not here, I think it'll find a way out of the cage to find you."
He doubts it, really. George went to a lot of effort and expense to make this cage as impossible to escape as was humanly possible. Even the Hulk wouldn't have stood a chance against these bars.
George looks around uncomfortably, his gaze lingering upon the door for a moment, before he nods. "Yes. Okay. I suppose I should meet him, after all." He gives Mitchell a smile that looks absolutely terrified. "This will probably be the only time that we'll both be conscious at once."
Mitchell smiles back: he's scared too, for both of them now. This has to go well. He tries to tell the wolf to play nice, but he doesn't think that it is listening. It is restless, so ready to break free now.
He sticks his hand out of the bars, holding it open for George. George steps closer and their hands slide together. In Mitchell's body, George's hand is much smaller. Mitchell can feel his own slender, thin fingers, uncovered by the fingerless gloves that he usually wears when he's in control of that body. "Is it weird that I'm scared?" he asks George, their fingers tangling.
George shakes his head. "I think it's normal. As normal as we ever get, anyway."
"Which isn't normal at all." They are so far away from normal that a new word ought to be invented. "I don't know how we're going to change back."
"We'll work out a way. We usually do. If nothing else, we can let Annie bash our heads together and see if that works." George smiles again, and it is nothing like one of Mitchell's smiles at all. It makes Mitchell want to hug him again, even through the bars, and holding onto George's hand he tugs him a little bit closer.
"I'm glad you're here," he admits. Having George there makes this a lot less frightening than it would otherwise be.
"You're my best mate," George says. "Where else would I be?"
It's true enough that it makes Mitchell's heart ache, and through the bars their foreheads rest together. The metal pressed against his skin is freezing cold to his heightened senses, but it isn't enough to make him want to flinch away. He closes his eyes and feels the wolf starting to rage. "I'd kiss you if it wouldn't be weird," he admits. The words come out of their own accord without his invitation at all. He wishes he could swallow them up once they were out there.
George gives a startled laugh, dry and barely-there at all. "It wouldn't be weird," he says. "Not at all."
George is saying he can kiss him. They are standing with a cage separating them, Mitchell is naked, they are in the wrong bodies, and George is saying that kissing is acceptable. Mitchell thinks this could be one of the best moments of his very long life.
"You look like me. That's a bit weird. You might fancy yourself, but..." Before he can finish teasing George as much as he ought to, he feels a shifting that begins in his stomach. His hand drops George's abruptly and he takes a messy step backwards. "It's starting."
His heart pounds: it's startling, it's finally here, and he can feel it as his body begins to morph and shift, stretch and shrink and bend.
The pain, it's unreal. Humans couldn't survive it.
He doesn't remember falling to the ground but he finds himself on his hands and knees. George is still there, too close to the cage; there's no breath to tell him to step back. There's no breathing, no heart beats, nothing but the pain, nothing but blind agony, nothing but the change -
And then everything goes black, and there is nothing but sleep.
*
He wakes up fully dressed on the bed in George's room. It's a well-known position to him by now, and he feels much better rested than he had expected to do after the night of the full moon. Groggily with sleep, he rolls over and stretches out like a sleepy, space-hogging cat.
It's around about then that he realises that his limbs are all the exact size that they ought to be.
"George!" he says, scrambling out of bed in a happy hurry. "George, we're back! We're fixed!"
He nearly runs straight into the bars of the cage but he manages to stop himself just in time. George is nude on the ground, lying on his side as he sleeps off the night's rampage. Mitchell doesn't remember a moment of what happened after the change, but no one seems to have been mauled so he is content to consider the night a complete success.
George says something that sounds a bit like, "Mrrph?" as he wakes up. Mitchell pulls the key to the cage out of his pocket and unlocks the door.
"Look, we're back in our own bodies," he points out. He didn't think it would ever feel so good to have that craving in the back of his mind again. The wolf no longer paces in the back of his thoughts, angry and accusing. Being a vampire feels good compared to being a werewolf, as far as he is concerned.
"We're back?" George says. He sits up and pats down his own body as if he is trying to make sure that everything is exactly as he left it. "We're really back?"
"Looks like. I guess it wore off."
"I guess fate stopped screwing with us."
"What happened last night?"
George shrugs as if is nothing significant. "I saw the wolf," he says. "That's all."
"Uh-huh?" Mitchell had hoped for something bigger than that; an explosion, a spell, a blast of magic to put everything back in order. Instead, life has carried on. This is nothing but another supernatural bump in the road of their lives. "How do you feel?"
"I think my head is about to explode," George answers. "Other than that, it's good to be back in my own body again. You're really short, Mitchell."
"I'm the short one? You're huge," Mitchell complains. "You're a giant, not a werewolf. I should have found you up a beanstalk." He grins as he says it, stepping inside the cage with George. He sits down beside him cross-legged, looking at his face: he's missed seeing it. Staring at his own body from the outside hadn't been half as fun as watching George is now.
"I am not a 'giant'," George protests delicately.
"Is that not the PC term for it?" Mitchell asks as innocently as he is able to get away with.
George looks as if he might be about to unleash some werewolf-flavoured wrath upon him. Mitchell has been inside that head now and he knows what the wolf feels like; he has no desire to get on its bad side.
"Listen," he says, the smile on his face wavering as if it's not sure whether or not it wants to stick around. "Last night, before I changed, we were talking about something..."
"Kissing, I believe," George confirms. He manages to sound prim, and he stares at the cage bars for a moment or two before he looks back at Mitchell. "I remember."
Mitchell isn't surprised. He doesn't think that he is ever going to forget a single second of what it had felt like to walk in George's skin like that. It's important that he remembers.
"Can I do it now?" he asks. "We're in the right bodies this time."
He hates the butterflies in his stomach and the clawing of nerves at his throat. He hates that he isn't as able to be as confident about this as he should be: he knows that they love each other. That's never been a secret. Morphing it from platonic to anything more, that's the part that terrifies him.
"I could do with a shower first," George mumbles unexpectedly. He looks down at his naked body in distaste. "I seem to remember you saying that I smell 'ripe' after a full moon."
"I can put up with it," Mitchell says. He can and he will. He's grinning now, wide and delighted. This is better than anything he could have imagined. "Please?"
George holds his gaze and takes a moment before he nods, uncertain as if he is terrified that this is all about to go wrong. It won't. They won't let it.
Mitchell is the one to bend in towards him, their lips pressing together like clumsy bumper cars. George's breath shivers out against Mitchell's mouth and that's enough to encourage him to shift closer, to press a hand against the back of his head and take the plunge that is needed to push this further. George tastes like the wolf, something wild and dangerous and animal. Mitchell's always thought that kissing him would taste like tea and chocolate, but this is just as good. The wolf is as much a part of George as the neurotic human is too. Mitchell gets that now, after living in his head for a couple of days.
George sighs happily and they sit in the cage together, one nude and one not, kissing until their mouths start to ache. The swap has been something of a nightmare for both of them - but if it's brought them to this point, the sweet start of something new, Mitchell can't bring himself to curse fate for playing such a practical joke upon them.
Pairing: George/Mitchell
Word Count: 4885
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Written for lilachaze for the Trope Meme "Bodyswap" prompt.
Summary: Mitchell wakes up inside of George's body. He quickly comes to the conclusion that the world likes to screw with his head.
When you're a vampire that lives in a house with a ghost and a werewolf, the extraordinary becomes commonplace.
Mitchell wakes up in George's bed. It's not the first time - sometimes when they talk at night he is too lazy to move through to his own bedroom, and on the days after a full moon he knows that George gets lonely. They never say anything about it; they never have to. It's not as if waking up in George's bed is a new experience for him.
This time, though, something is different. He rolls over and finds that George isn't there with him, snuggled up beside his body, but while that is unusual it isn't what he was thinking of. He frowns up at the ceiling as he tries to figure it out. It's something big, that much he is sure of.
Big...
With an uncertain expression, he flexes his fingers and then wiggles his feet. Big, yeah, that's definitely it, he realises with a foreboding sense of unease in his stomach. Everything feels bigger: he feels bigger. His feet are further away than they should be.
He sits up slowly and looks down, peering beneath the messy duvet of George's bed. What he sees there confirms it for him: this isn't him.
It's not his body that he's inside of.
"Jesus Christ," he says. Even his voice feels different. Same accent, but the words come out at a different tone. He's unused to this mouth, these vocal chords. It's all new.
He climbs out of George's bed, messy and clumsy in a body that isn't his own. It's like switching to driving a bus after driving a car for years. Nothing feels right at all. He accidentally bumps his shoulder into the side of the door frame as he leaves the room, and his feet feel like they are clomping hard on the ground as he rushes along the hall to his own bedroom. George can hear everything; it's all so loud. All sounds are magnified, and his vision is so clear. It's the full moon soon, isn't it? Tomorrow.
He doesn't bother to knock on his bedroom door - it's his bedroom, after all, he doesn't need to knock - and he charges straight inside instead. His footsteps stall when he looks down at the body that is curled up on his bed. Black curls, pale skin, skinny body, it's all him. He's not used to seeing it from the outside.
"George?" he says, shoving at his own shoulder with a couple of fingers. He doesn't really want to have to touch it in case he makes the universe explode. It's too weird. "George, wake up. You need to start panicking now."
Having George flailing around in a mess isn't going to help matters, but he's always found that if George gets himself into a state it's easier for himself to stay calm. George does the panicking for him, and that leaves Mitchell with a clear mind. They work together, like that. It clicks.
"What's going on?" George asks sleepily, head under the covers. He sounds as if he is going to ignore Mitchell entirely and drift off again if the answer is not important enough for his liking. "Is there a fire?"
They've never had a fire in the house. Mitchell's cooking isn't that bad. "I'm in your body," Mitchell says.
George rolls over grumpily. "Stop being a perv," he mumbles, voice muffled by the covers.
"I'm being serious," Mitchell says. "I'm even being literal."
He goes for drastic action and pulls the sheets off of the bed, leaving George-in-his-body shivering on the mattress.
When George opens his eyes to glare at him, the truth of the situation sinks in.
The shrieking rambling that follows, however, leaves Mitchell rather wishing he'd left George to sleep for a little while longer.
*
An hour later, the three of them have gathered around the kitchen table for a house meeting. No one has spoken yet. Silence, coming from George, is always alarming, but Mitchell is too busy staring at himself in the shiny reflection of the toaster to pay too much attention. Seeing George's face under his control is a very strange feeling indeed. He can't decide whether or not he likes it.
"I don't understand how you put up with this hair, Mitchell," George says eventually. He pulls at one of Mitchell's curls, which is beginning to look fuzzy already. "It's always in your face."
"I like it," Mitchell says. "Doesn't your head get cold?"
He wants to start wearing a hat. He feels far too on show with so little hair covering his head. It isn't proper, not at all.
"I'm hungry," George confesses with a whining sigh. He looks around the kitchen in quiet desperation. "I'm starving, actually. Don't you ever eat?"
He eats a lot, actually, far more than most people would guess from what looks like a lanky frame: Mitchell can evaluate it from the outside. He might get his hair cut just a little once they get this sorted out. "You're not hungry for food," he tells George, very quietly; he wishes that George didn't have to feel it, didn't have to know the thirst that rushes through his body on a regular basis.
"It's- oh. This is... This is a vampire thing?"
His eyes have widened to dramatic proportions, and he sticks his hand into his mouth as if checking for fangs.
Sitting between them, holding a mug of tea that she won't drink, Annie frowns. "Wait, is George a vampire now?" she asks.
Mitchell shrugs. It's not as if he's ever been in a situation like this before. It's all a bit new to him too; he has to make it up as he goes along, making vague guesses based on past experiences. Everyone expects him to know everything because he's the oldest, but he's just as lost as they are - constantly.
"I guess so. Our minds transferred. The bodies are the same."
"Does that mean you're a werewolf, then?" Annie asks.
George looks up at him expectantly, in quiet shock. Mitchell sinks down further into his chair. His legs feel as if they are taking up too much space.
Mitchell looks down at the table. He doesn't want to have to see George's reaction when he says, "I can feel it. The wolf." It's a more familiar presence than he would have expected, but it's restless: it makes him restless and uncertain. He thinks it must know that he isn't George. It's not happy about it, not one bit.
"Oh," George breathes, barely making a sound at all. Mitchell feels as if he ought to apologise, but he doesn't know what for. He holds his tongue, and George clears his throat. "Well, how do we change back?"
It's a surprise, Mitchell has to admit, that George wants to swap so readily. He would have thought that he would jump at the chance to escape the wolf, even if it's just for a few days. "I don't know," he admits. It's not something that he likes having to say.
It's not something that Annie and Mitchell like having to hear either, judging from the sounds that he hears in response. George's tell-tale splutter, coming from Mitchell's mouth, sounds less adorable than usual. Mitchell thinks that it proves that only George is able to get away with that level of neuroticness. From anyone else, it sounds absurd.
"Can't we just slam your heads together or something?" Annie suggests. "How did it even happen in the first place?"
"How does anything happen around here?" George mutters gloomily. "The universe hates us, that's how it happened."
"Don't be so melodramatic, Mitchell," Annie says, before she frowns and corrects herself. "George. There must be a reason."
They haven't angered any witches or tasted any bizarre potions, so Mitchell is a little at a loss as to how to explain it himself. Maybe George is right. Maybe the world really is just screwing with them.
"We can wait a couple of days," Mitchell suggests.
"It's the full moon tomorrow," George says. "You'll change."
"That's fine." Mitchell shakes his head, trying to reassure George. He's seen him do it often enough that he knows what happens: he knows what it's going to be like. He's heard the screams and he's listened to the monster rage. It's okay. Maybe it'll be good for him to experience what George goes through on a monthly basis. This could be good for them, right? Seeing things from the opposite side of the coin...
And, hell, getting away from himself and those dark cravings for a while, that's nothing he's going to complain about.
"It'll be fine, George," Mitchell repeats. George still doesn't look entirely convinced. He's not surprised.
Annie sighs and places her cold mug of tea onto the kitchen table. "I think it's cool," she says. "How come I didn't get switched? I would've liked to have a real body for a while."
"You can have mine," George sighs. "Or, Mitchell's I mean. I'm hungry and it's not fair."
"It's going to get worse," Mitchell says. He wishes that he could promise George something more positive than that, but there's nothing. The hunger is there, always there, and there's no escaping from it. George might be able to resist it for now, but that won't work forever. He's as dangerous as a new vampire, now. Maybe that cage would be better off with George inside it than the wolf.
"Okay," George says. He looks alarmed - he always looks alarmed, and seeing that alarm on his own face instead of George's is too strange for words - but he nods. "That's okay. I can deal with that. Definitely. You do it."
Mitchell has had decades of starts and stops before he managed to gain control of that desperate thirst for blood; George is being thrown in right at the deep end.
He'll be fine, he promises himself. George has the pair of them to watch out for him. Mitchell looks down at the table top, at the way George's hands are so much larger than the ones he is used to, and he tries not to worry. Everything will work out fine in the end: they just need to try and survive.
*
They don't leave the house for the rest of the day. They call into work and say that they're sick, and they lock the front door, just in case. George had laughed at the time and said that it was fine, that he was fine.
By the time that night has fallen, he seems to have changed his mind.
He's hiding in his bedroom, his head hidden in his hands. They're mostly leaving him to it, the door closed, but Mitchell brings a cup of tea up to him after a couple of hours. He manages to make it up the stairs without tripping over: he thinks that he's going to count that an absolute success.
"How are you feeling?" he asks.
He already knows. He's been through it far too many times himself to live in denial any more. Trying not to feed, it's like hell - even with years of experience, it's almost impossible to make it through the day.
"How do you do it?" George asks, a broken whisper. He stays sitting on the bed; Mitchell thinks that his hands are shaking. "It's too much."
"You can do it, George. I trust you." He places the cup of tea on the floor near the head of the bed and blindly hopes that neither of them will knock it over. "You're stronger than me, you know that. If I can stay dry, you can too."
"It hurts," George admits, small words that make Mitchell want to switch back immediately. George is his best friend; he shouldn't have to go through this. Mitchell wishes he could protect him from his darkness. "I can hear your heart beating. It's so loud in my ears and I want to..."
He doesn't finish the sentence. He doesn't have to.
"What would it taste like?" he asks. He's panting. "Mitchell? What would it taste like to drink from me? A werewolf, I mean."
Mitchell shakes his head, mute. He won't talk about how many times he's thought about it: he won't say how many times he has tried to reason to himself that it wouldn't really count. A werewolf isn't human. It's not really like falling off the wagon, not at all. It's different from that. Better.
The reasoning of an addict is always ingenious. He's always managed to hold himself back, so far.
"Don't think about it," he advises. He knows that's never going to happen. When you're a vampire, the blood is all that you can think about, most of the time. It's the only thing that your mind will allow.
George looks up, and in his own eyes Mitchell can see the blackness of hunger. There is no light. It has been decades since he's got to look at himself, and he's never known what he looks like when he needs the blood this badly: it's frightening, he'll admit that much. He doesn't look human at all, as far removed and as evil as George looks when he is the wolf.
"It's my body," George says, his voice low and heavy. It's not like him at all. "I should get a say, shouldn't I?"
"You're not thinking like yourself," Mitchell says. He takes a step backward; he knows he should leave the room and remove temptation, but he can't. He can't make himself leave when George is in this state. The need to look after him, to help, it's too much.
"Mitchell, please," George begs. "Please, you have to help me. I can't do this - I'm not like you."
He's too good for it, that's the truth. He's too good to be a vampire, too sweet to have to deal with this hunger. He's weak in his own way, and Mitchell thinks he should be glad for that. George has never been in a situation where he has had to fight his own nature to quite that degree.
He should keep his distance, but George looks so crumpled and George-like, even in Mitchell's body, that he has to come forward to try and help. He sits on the side of the bed and tugs George against him, squishing him against his chest.
"Ow," George mutters. "Careful."
It's hard to be careful when he has George's freakishly too-big body to take care of, but he tries his best. Near the full moon, George is more wolf-like than when he's not; everything is stronger, muscles as well as senses. The wolf is ready to roam.
George rests against him, head upon his shoulder, and even if he is trembling slightly he seems to be managing to hold himself back. "I couldn't do this every day," he admits in a whisper. "You're sort of amazing, you know."
Mitchell would laugh if he felt like he could, but it's impossible. Nothing about this is funny, not any more. He holds onto George instead and breathes in deeply: the scent fills his lungs, but it isn't as comforting as it should be.
"You don't smell like yourself," he complains.
"I smell like you," George says. "If you don't like it, it's not my fault."
"I prefer how you smell." Mitchell pauses as if reconsidering that and then says, "Most of the time, anyway. You're pretty ripe after a full moon."
"Let's see how good you smell after the full moon," George says.
The full moon is tomorrow night and Mitchell tries hard not to worry about it. George does this once a month; he can handle one night. He keeps his arms around George's shoulders, holding onto him as if a tight hug might be all it would take to transfer them into the right bodies.
"You might want to leave soon," George says after a while of comfortable silence. "I really want to drink your blood right now."
"Ah," Mitchell says. On reflection, hugging a hungry vampire isn't the smartest of possible ideas. Keeping his distance would be kinder on George. "Sure. Come and get me in the night if you have to, alright? I won't mind. We need to help each other now."
George nods. They are dealing with each other's conditions now, on unsteady ground that they have only ever observed from the outside before. It's difficult on both of them.
"Thank you, Mitchell," George says, pulling back from him and snuggling further into the bed like a hedgehog hiding away for winter. Mitchell thinks that if George was in his own body he'd find the sight completely adorable: seeing it from the outside with George looking like him, it looks a little bit weird and a big bit pathetic.
He stands up and watches for a moment, head tilted to the side in curiosity. He has to get some rest now, he know. Tomorrow is going to be a hard night on him, locked away in that strong cage. He'll need to be as prepared and well-rested as possible. "Good night," he says, reluctant to leave all the same. He doesn't want to be alone tonight, even if it isn't safe to be here with Mitchell.
"Good night," George answers, his voice stiff in his attempts to control himself.
It's time to leave. Mitchell knows that.
He just wishes it wasn't so difficult.
*
They wake up the next morning and the world still hasn't righted itself. Mitchell remains in a body several sizes too big for him and George stays desperately hungry for the entire day.
Inside his mind, Mitchell can feel the wolf roaming - and he can tell that it isn't happy. It's pacing, angry and vicious, as if it can tell that he has taken George away from it. It isn't happy with the swap any more than the pair of them are.
Mitchell grows angrier as the day slips by, and his senses sharpen to a degree that makes everything so crystal clear. He's never seen the world like this; it's almost as if he is on drugs. He stares at the material of his jeans (George's jeans, actually) for far too long, looking at every strand of perfectly-defined fabric in awe.
But the wolf paces and his head aches: it only fades whenever George is right there beside him, filling every sense and talking. He's whining, really, but hearing his voice seems to soothe the wolf inside. "It misses you," Mitchell tells George, both of them sitting in misery on their couch.
"I miss it too," George admits miserably. Things must be really bad if he is willing to admit to something like that.
When the change is due at any second, George comes upstairs to his bedroom. Mitchell knows the routine as well as George does, by this point - but he still feels shy in his own way when he has to strip down in front of George. It's mad, isn't it? It isn't even his own body, yet being naked in front of his best friend makes him wish that he has more than bars to hide behind.
It's hard not to look down. He's been avoiding mirrors as much as he can and he hasn't allowed his hands to linger where they shouldn't for the entire day: this isn't his body. He can't treat it as such.
George stands awkwardly in the bedroom after he's locked the cage and slipped the key into his pocket. "It'll be fine," he says. He doesn't sound convinced. "I'll come back in the morning to let you out; you won't even remember it."
"Wait," Mitchell says. George hasn't taken a step towards the door, not yet, and Mitchell finds that he doesn't want him to. He doesn't want to be left alone for this. "Can you stay?"
"What?"
"The wolf likes having you around. If you're not here, I think it'll find a way out of the cage to find you."
He doubts it, really. George went to a lot of effort and expense to make this cage as impossible to escape as was humanly possible. Even the Hulk wouldn't have stood a chance against these bars.
George looks around uncomfortably, his gaze lingering upon the door for a moment, before he nods. "Yes. Okay. I suppose I should meet him, after all." He gives Mitchell a smile that looks absolutely terrified. "This will probably be the only time that we'll both be conscious at once."
Mitchell smiles back: he's scared too, for both of them now. This has to go well. He tries to tell the wolf to play nice, but he doesn't think that it is listening. It is restless, so ready to break free now.
He sticks his hand out of the bars, holding it open for George. George steps closer and their hands slide together. In Mitchell's body, George's hand is much smaller. Mitchell can feel his own slender, thin fingers, uncovered by the fingerless gloves that he usually wears when he's in control of that body. "Is it weird that I'm scared?" he asks George, their fingers tangling.
George shakes his head. "I think it's normal. As normal as we ever get, anyway."
"Which isn't normal at all." They are so far away from normal that a new word ought to be invented. "I don't know how we're going to change back."
"We'll work out a way. We usually do. If nothing else, we can let Annie bash our heads together and see if that works." George smiles again, and it is nothing like one of Mitchell's smiles at all. It makes Mitchell want to hug him again, even through the bars, and holding onto George's hand he tugs him a little bit closer.
"I'm glad you're here," he admits. Having George there makes this a lot less frightening than it would otherwise be.
"You're my best mate," George says. "Where else would I be?"
It's true enough that it makes Mitchell's heart ache, and through the bars their foreheads rest together. The metal pressed against his skin is freezing cold to his heightened senses, but it isn't enough to make him want to flinch away. He closes his eyes and feels the wolf starting to rage. "I'd kiss you if it wouldn't be weird," he admits. The words come out of their own accord without his invitation at all. He wishes he could swallow them up once they were out there.
George gives a startled laugh, dry and barely-there at all. "It wouldn't be weird," he says. "Not at all."
George is saying he can kiss him. They are standing with a cage separating them, Mitchell is naked, they are in the wrong bodies, and George is saying that kissing is acceptable. Mitchell thinks this could be one of the best moments of his very long life.
"You look like me. That's a bit weird. You might fancy yourself, but..." Before he can finish teasing George as much as he ought to, he feels a shifting that begins in his stomach. His hand drops George's abruptly and he takes a messy step backwards. "It's starting."
His heart pounds: it's startling, it's finally here, and he can feel it as his body begins to morph and shift, stretch and shrink and bend.
The pain, it's unreal. Humans couldn't survive it.
He doesn't remember falling to the ground but he finds himself on his hands and knees. George is still there, too close to the cage; there's no breath to tell him to step back. There's no breathing, no heart beats, nothing but the pain, nothing but blind agony, nothing but the change -
And then everything goes black, and there is nothing but sleep.
*
He wakes up fully dressed on the bed in George's room. It's a well-known position to him by now, and he feels much better rested than he had expected to do after the night of the full moon. Groggily with sleep, he rolls over and stretches out like a sleepy, space-hogging cat.
It's around about then that he realises that his limbs are all the exact size that they ought to be.
"George!" he says, scrambling out of bed in a happy hurry. "George, we're back! We're fixed!"
He nearly runs straight into the bars of the cage but he manages to stop himself just in time. George is nude on the ground, lying on his side as he sleeps off the night's rampage. Mitchell doesn't remember a moment of what happened after the change, but no one seems to have been mauled so he is content to consider the night a complete success.
George says something that sounds a bit like, "Mrrph?" as he wakes up. Mitchell pulls the key to the cage out of his pocket and unlocks the door.
"Look, we're back in our own bodies," he points out. He didn't think it would ever feel so good to have that craving in the back of his mind again. The wolf no longer paces in the back of his thoughts, angry and accusing. Being a vampire feels good compared to being a werewolf, as far as he is concerned.
"We're back?" George says. He sits up and pats down his own body as if he is trying to make sure that everything is exactly as he left it. "We're really back?"
"Looks like. I guess it wore off."
"I guess fate stopped screwing with us."
"What happened last night?"
George shrugs as if is nothing significant. "I saw the wolf," he says. "That's all."
"Uh-huh?" Mitchell had hoped for something bigger than that; an explosion, a spell, a blast of magic to put everything back in order. Instead, life has carried on. This is nothing but another supernatural bump in the road of their lives. "How do you feel?"
"I think my head is about to explode," George answers. "Other than that, it's good to be back in my own body again. You're really short, Mitchell."
"I'm the short one? You're huge," Mitchell complains. "You're a giant, not a werewolf. I should have found you up a beanstalk." He grins as he says it, stepping inside the cage with George. He sits down beside him cross-legged, looking at his face: he's missed seeing it. Staring at his own body from the outside hadn't been half as fun as watching George is now.
"I am not a 'giant'," George protests delicately.
"Is that not the PC term for it?" Mitchell asks as innocently as he is able to get away with.
George looks as if he might be about to unleash some werewolf-flavoured wrath upon him. Mitchell has been inside that head now and he knows what the wolf feels like; he has no desire to get on its bad side.
"Listen," he says, the smile on his face wavering as if it's not sure whether or not it wants to stick around. "Last night, before I changed, we were talking about something..."
"Kissing, I believe," George confirms. He manages to sound prim, and he stares at the cage bars for a moment or two before he looks back at Mitchell. "I remember."
Mitchell isn't surprised. He doesn't think that he is ever going to forget a single second of what it had felt like to walk in George's skin like that. It's important that he remembers.
"Can I do it now?" he asks. "We're in the right bodies this time."
He hates the butterflies in his stomach and the clawing of nerves at his throat. He hates that he isn't as able to be as confident about this as he should be: he knows that they love each other. That's never been a secret. Morphing it from platonic to anything more, that's the part that terrifies him.
"I could do with a shower first," George mumbles unexpectedly. He looks down at his naked body in distaste. "I seem to remember you saying that I smell 'ripe' after a full moon."
"I can put up with it," Mitchell says. He can and he will. He's grinning now, wide and delighted. This is better than anything he could have imagined. "Please?"
George holds his gaze and takes a moment before he nods, uncertain as if he is terrified that this is all about to go wrong. It won't. They won't let it.
Mitchell is the one to bend in towards him, their lips pressing together like clumsy bumper cars. George's breath shivers out against Mitchell's mouth and that's enough to encourage him to shift closer, to press a hand against the back of his head and take the plunge that is needed to push this further. George tastes like the wolf, something wild and dangerous and animal. Mitchell's always thought that kissing him would taste like tea and chocolate, but this is just as good. The wolf is as much a part of George as the neurotic human is too. Mitchell gets that now, after living in his head for a couple of days.
George sighs happily and they sit in the cage together, one nude and one not, kissing until their mouths start to ache. The swap has been something of a nightmare for both of them - but if it's brought them to this point, the sweet start of something new, Mitchell can't bring himself to curse fate for playing such a practical joke upon them.