[Duncan/Theresa] - Discomfort

[inchesofevil]

Who:
Duncan
Theresa
When: Tuesday, 8/30
Where: Theresa's apartment
Before/After: N/A
Warnings: Bodyswappin'! There's a little bit of allusion to gender dysphoria, mild nudity, and SUDDENLY PTSD WHOOPS



It was still strange having Duncan overnight. It implied more than a superficial relationship, as it required some level of trust, not so much because of herself but because of Gunnar. She didn't have any complaints, however, as she saw less and less of him now that he was Vahishta. Not that she would have complained anyway, but it seemed something she could write down were she to make a list.

She'd fallen asleep on the left side of the bed, a habit of hers, asleep in one position and awake in the same, so it was disorienting to be awake on the right side and most definitely not in the same position she'd fallen asleep in, on her side with her arm off the edge of the bed instead of on her back.

Headachey, she took a moment to stare at the wall (instead of the ceiling) in groggy confusion before she pulled herself up, shifting and sitting up. She reached up and rubbed her nose.

...hm. Her nose seemed- higher? Sinus infection, maybe? She felt fine besides from the headache, though. She was more confused about being on the other side of the bed. She looked over to Duncan.

...

Did her hair always look that scraggly in the morning?


It was precisely because they saw less and less of each other that Duncan was making the time to spend the night. It was an easy way to see her for at least a few hours, without neglecting any of his guild leader duties to do so.

Theresa woke earlier than he did, but the shifting of her weight beside him roused him into a half-waking awareness. Usually he would fall back asleep after waking just long enough to make note of her leaving.

Usually, anyway. This time he was struck by the feeling that something was off. It wasn't his sleeping position--he rarely woke up in the same position he'd gone to sleep in, anyway.

He snapped awake with a catch of breath when he realized what it was. He couldn't feel his center anymore. The warmth inside his chest had been a constant presence ever since the day he'd been made a cleric and become the Vahishta. He'd gotten used to it over the past two weeks--enough so that not being able to feel it was immediately worrisome.

He shoved himself up, groggy but already feeling a growing panic, too distracted to notice the extra weight of Theresa's hair or any other signs of what was amiss. He laid a hand over his chest, as though he might be able to feel his center from the outside.

...That...was not...what his chest was supposed to feel like.

He squinted down at it. Number one, those were not his pajamas. Number two... He slid his hand lower. ...Yup, those were definitely boobs.

"Uhh..." And that was...not...what his voice was supposed to sound like...


She continued to stare at... herself... as someone else woke up in her body. And touched her chest. "Watch your hands," she told whoever with a bit of a frown.

...that was definitely not her accent. Though it was still an accent, a familiar one though not often heard, sleepy and southern.

She glanced aside, looking down her arms to the shirt she wore and the pajama pants she had on. Very much what Duncan'd had on the night before. And by very much she meant exactly.

She poked her arm. Yup, she felt that. For the moment, at least, it was her arm. She frowned again and looked back to, er, herself. "...please tell me you're Duncan," she said flatly. Well, that didn't sound too different from his norm, at least...


His head snapped up, his hand automatically pulling away from his chest. He held both hands up near his shoulders, as if to show he wasn't going to try anything.

...That was him. His jaw dropped, eyes wide, shock that grew quickly into incredulity. That should've been indication enough of who he was.

He was stunned into silence for a long moment, staring at...himself...

"Nope," he declared suddenly, throwing himself back down on the bed, grabbing the pillow to bury his head under it. "Nope, not fucking happening, I'm still asleep, good-fucking-night."


She sighed, which also sounded a lot like nothing had happened. "I do need to go shopping later, you know," she told the pillow, but let it be after that. The sigh had alerted her to the sensation in her chest, and she paused a moment before she pressed her hand there, feeling Duncan's heartbeat chug along steadily.

The warmth there was, momentarily, a concern, but it was gentle and had the impression of being a patient thing, waiting for something, and so she let it be, still wondering what it was.

"Don't you have things to do today, too?" she asked, standing. Ah, she felt terrible. Not her usual terrible, either. She ought to shower.

"...do you mind if I shower?" she asked, looking over her (his) shoulder to the bed.


"Go for it," he muttered, muffled under the pillow. It wasn't like he cared if she saw him naked, and he trusted that she would use his body responsibly.

Fuck, he did have things to do today. The magic tutoring lessons, nope, was not going to be able to do those. He was supposed to be meeting some big shot from a western-Everea division of the church, too. And history lessons, and more orientation on the church's daily function. "Uuuugh," came out as a frustrated growl.

He reluctantly slid the pillow off his head and pushed himself up again, sitting up. He moved to fold his legs and froze with a slight wince at the stiffness in his right hip, more out of surprise than because it honestly hurt. He opted to just leave the right leg bent and fold the left underneath it. "Not sure it's a good idea to try getting that shit done like this," he said, pushing Theresa's unkempt hair out of his face.


She tried to ignore the headache and took a moment to stretch. It was an interesting sensation in another person's body- some aches and pains, but not the same aches and pains, none quite the same as her own.

"Anything I could do?" she asked, turning back to look at him before away again. Where had he left his change of clothes? "Any notes I could take? Or shall we just send a letter to Doukas?"


His change of clothes was neatly packed in his backpack, set aside near her dresser. It was the usual jeans-and-a-T-shirt selection.

He let out a frustrated groan while he thought about it, but he couldn't come up with a scenario where sending Theresa into that mess wouldn't be a disaster one way or another. Pretending to be each other for the day was unwise with potential consequences on the Vahishta's scale. "I'll send Doukas a letter," he muttered. "I can at least sit through the history lessons like this." But the meeting would have to be postponed and the training sessions too--

His face (Theresa's face) twisted with wariness and confusion. He looked to her, saw himself, and looked at the wall instead. "Are we just blithely accepting that this happened and assuming it will go away on its own?"


It took a moment for her to catch on as to where his clothes were packed, and she went over to his backpack. She relished the lack of pain in crouching down and zipped it open, digging through for the clean stuff and pulling it all out.

Strange to have no hair, though. Or, not as much as she had. She stood up again and reached up to fluff it. Then kept fluffing it.

"Hm?" she asked, having been only half listening before. The question had her tilting his head slightly. "Hm, well... I suppose so. I can't think of anything that set it off." She made some kind of hand motion. "It's nothing you could heal, is it?"


It was a weird feeling to be jealous of yourself. Don't fluff his hair while he's not there to enjoy it Theresa, god.

The head-tilt was very familiar on her, not so much on himself. It was distressingly surreal to watch his girlfriend move around in his body. He tried to avoid watching her, but kept looking back out of some morbid curiosity.

"Uhhh... I have no idea." Curses were generally within the realm of cleric healing magic, and he'd learned a little bit so far, but not knowing what had caused this made it hard to say whether he could fix it.

Then he realized he couldn't fix it anyway. He glanced away with a grimace. "Preeeetty sure I couldn't cast anything right now if I tried." His eyes slid back to her, hopeful but wary. "Can you feel my center?"

If she said no... Fuck.


"Your center?"

She seemed to slip into his Texan accent easily, as though uncomfortable speaking with a more neutral American one. She frowned a little, though it seemed to be one of confusion more than denial. Center?... ah, cleric talk. She hesitated. "Ah- is that the... the warm feeling?" she asked, shifting his clothes to one arm over her shoulder.

...she needed a haircut, now that she looked at herself. Her expression turned thoughtful. When was the last time she'd gotten one?...


He winced slightly at the sound of his own accent reflected back at him. How had she inherited that too?! Muscle memory or something? God, it was like nails on a chalkboard, he'd grown to hate it since he'd forcibly trained himself away from it.

"Yeah," he said, coming out as a breath of relief. "Alright, so you have my powers then I guess." They hadn't been lost somewhere in the exchange.

...Ah, that meant she had the heart, too. Which meant she would know how to resurrect. Trying to remember now, he couldn't even wrap his head around the idea. It was actually a little frightening. That wasn't an ability he wanted to lose, and it wasn't a responsibility he wanted her to have to shoulder.

"Let's just...assume it's temporary for now." Saying that was mostly for his own benefit, so he had a game-plan to delay a perfectly understandable panic. "If it hasn't resolved in a couple days, then we'll start worrying."


She gave a small hum, hand pressing to his chest again. This was what it felt like to be a cleric?... or the Vahishta, at least. Ah, that was an odd realization. He was the Vahishta. She was the Vahishta, so long as she was in his body.

It seemed a very tenuous, fragile sort of connection...

She looked back up, clearly having been lost in thought, blinking at him with another small headtilt. "Ah? Yes, of course. I wonder what prompted it," she said, clearly not that perturbed yet, possibly still half-asleep. "We can check the forums, maybe, and see if anyone else has heard of anything happening. Ah, you can, if you like, while I shower. If there's nothing to go on I suppose we can just go to the market."


"Vepha," he said with a shrug, in an offhand, joking kind of way. It was only after he said it that he realized it was actually a feasible explanation at this point. That was an uncomfortable thought.

He put it aside. "Yeah, I'll write Doukas and then see if anyone knows what's up. Go on."

She made this all sound so normal! Truth be told, he kind of envied her ability to look at the weirdest, most surreal situations and just press on like it was the new normal. Without that, he would be freaking out so hard right now, but since she was calmly accepting it as no big deal, he was easier able to hold that at bay.


Vepha? She looked at him blankly at that, not recognizing the name right off the bat, but she assumed it meant something ridiculous, given the circumstances.

And to someone that had been turned part fish, switching bodies somehow didn't seem that much stranger. It seemed one of the more benign happenings of the past few months. "At least it doesn't involve sea monsters."

She nodded a little, unaware of his desire to freak out over the current circumstances. "Dragon stamps are in the desk, left hand drawer," she said, then pausing, added, "I'll go tell Gunnar. If he's even Gunnar at the moment."

That seemed to concern her a little, but she turned and left the bedroom, clothes in hand, leaving him to his own devices.


Well. There was that. At least there were no sea monsters involved.

He nodded his assent and went about scrounging up some stationery and stamps as she left. He winced again at the stiffness in her hip and wondered if maybe he should've asked if there were any morning stretches she had to do to placate that. Oh well. He'd hope for now that being in motion would loosen it up and ask when she got out of the shower.

He wrote a quick letter to Doukas explaining the situation, along with the guess that Vepha might've been involved somehow, and sent it off. Then he dug out his phone and browsed the internet just long enough to figure out that, yeah, this had been happening to quite a few people all over Zenderael. At least it seemed to be temporary, though. Most of the personal experiences being shared mentioned it had reversed itself within a day. That was a relief. He was now free to not worry about it.

He flopped down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling until his eyes unfocused.

...He was going to have to dress out of Theresa's wardrobe. Woooow that was...an uncomfortable prospect. He'd have to ask if she had any clothes closer to the sort he was used to...


"No, I don't own any t-shirts," she said once she'd gotten out of the shower, hair covered by the towel still. If he'd checked the drawers and the closet, the closest he'd find would be a thin sweater and a pair of slacks. No jeans, not much in the way of casual. Business casual at best.

"Need me to help find something?" she asked, moving aside to open the closet. Should she ask him to shower, too?... it'd been hot lately, after all.


There was just the slightest pout at the T-shirt answer. He could do button-down shirts just fine, he was more concerned with having to wear a skirt, and he felt a little bit indignant that she'd assumed the wrong issue out of the question.

He'd moved only to send a reply back to Doukas's response, and was laying on his back again now, hands resting over his stomach. "Yeah. You don't wear jeans either, do you?"


"No," she answered, hesitating before she came back over to sit on the edge of the bed. It was a definitely feminine pose she struck, completely unaware of it in his body, a hand down to prop herself up on and her legs crossed primly at the knee.

"I believe my wool slacks are in the closet. It's a bit warm for them, though... the others are still drying."

She continued to watch him a moment, before leaning in a little, interested in how she looked from outside of herself.


Wow that was disconcerting to see. He knew a lot about gender presentation and the discourse surrounding it just because of the research he'd had to do for Marlene, but none of that reading could define the issue quite so simply as watching how his girlfriend moved in his body.

He gave a low groan in frustration, reaching up to rub his face. "Do you mind if I take a shower?" Maybe the lighter slacks would be done drying by the time he got out.

He paused to rub the bridge of his nose, noting how not perfectly straight it felt. He wasn't liking much else about this, but that was nice.


She tilted her head again at the groan, wondering what the issue was, though the question didn't quite seem to cover it. She seemed to hesitate a moment. "...no," she answered after a brief consideration. There were a few things in the way but in the end she trusted him. Whether it be about her body or him in her body.

She looked away. She may or may not have spent more time than necessary in the shower. "Just don't make the water hot."


"Right." She had mentioned heat sensitivity before. He was kind of feeling it now. He was pretty sure today wasn't any hotter than the past few had been, but he felt it much more acutely than he had yesterday morning.

He pushed himself up and rose from the bed. "Just lay out some clothes for me, I guess." It was one day. He could deal.

He grabbed a towel and ducked into the bathroom, pausing in front of the bathroom mirror to examine Theresa's reflection staring back at him. He couldn't decide if he was disturbed or fascinated. Curiosity started to edge in after he got out of her clothes, but...no, that was a really uncomfortable prospect. He was just going to get in the shower and get out, quick and simple.

Except for the part where the hot water ran out halfway through and doused him with a sudden wash of cold.

There was a yelp, an instinctive, unconscious, urgent retreat from the source of the cold, and a crash that followed. That would be him hitting the floor along with the shower curtains and curtain rod.


She had exited once more to the living room to speak with Gunnar, mainly on the issue of body switching and that he should inform her right away should it happen, when the cry from the bathroom erupted. Startled, because that was her voice (and she was perfectly fine- unless she wasn't?) she moved and then looked back to Gunnar.

"I'm sure it's fine," she said, though she wasn't actually all that sure.

She abandoned him for the bathroom, knocking, pausing, opening the door. Water still on, pooling on the floor as it ran over the shower curtain on the floor, over her own semi-prone body. She stared a moment and then turned, shutting the door and then moving to the taps to turn the water off.

"Are you okay?" she asked, eyes wide, glancing around and crouching down (ah- so easy to do, so painless!) to take the curtain and rod off. "What happened??" Carefully she reached out, taking his (her) arms to try and help Duncan up off of the floor.


THAT. HURT. That hurt a lot. The pain sank in slowly, aches making themselves known as the adrenaline rush of panic wore down. The air in the bathroom was warm and muggy, warding off the cold, allowing him to come back to his senses.

There was another burst of panic when he heard the door open, but that was the much more reasonable panic of embarrassment. He struggled to cover himself up with the curtain he was already tangled in, only realizing seconds after seeing...himself...that it was pointless to try. This was Theresa's body. Modesty wasn't really a factor there.

He couldn't really say her help was welcome--it was still pretty embarrassing, but he could say it was not unwelcome. "I'm fine," he was quick to say, as she helped him to his feet. "...I think." It was hard to tell what was normal pain for Theresa and what was the result of the fall. Nothing felt broken, at least.

Once he was steady on his feet, he grabbed his towel and wrapped it around his waist, just to feel a little bit less vulnerable. It was habit; he completely failed to consider the difference--and the reason for it--between how men and women wore their towels. "It just turned cold all of a sudden and I freaked out, I guess. Sorry."


"Why would you freak out?" she asked, frowning in confusion and concern and maybe a little bit more confusion as he looped the towel around his (her?) waist. She paused a moment, then reached out and took the towel and drew it up.

Ah, that was going to hurt in the morning, she was certain. "Sit down a moment. I don't want you passing out in my body." Would he? She didn't take well to physical shocks normally. "I understand the hot, but why the cold?" she asked, pulling down the handtowel on the back of the door and halfheartedly attempting to mop up the water on the floor that way, what the bathmat hadn't caught.


"Wh--" Oh. There might have been a slight flush of embarrassment as he reaffixed the towel at chest level.

He didn't think he was going to pass out, but he complied with the request nonetheless, checking that the toilet lid was down and sitting there. Except that was colder than he'd expected too, and he shot back up, adjusted the towel, and sat again, this time closer to the edge so the towel would be between his legs and the porcelain. His posture practically begged her to ignore what had just happened.

"I don't know," he mumbled, eyes averted, rubbing his nose (so nice and normal feeling!). "I just don't handle cold very well. It's been like that for a while."


A small frown followed as she continued to try and mop up the water off of the floor. Ugh, wet socks. She sighed and stood again, dumping the towel in the bathtub, before picking up the curtain rod and curtain to try and put them back together.

She glanced to him as she did so. "Has it?" she asked, still mostly unaware of what had happened to change this fact. "But you were fine the day it snowed....?"


He felt bad just sitting by and letting her tidy up the mess by herself, but he was still feeling a little shaken and everything still hurt, so it was probably easier for her to do it alone anyway.

When she pointed out that he'd been fine when it had snowed, something clicked. He had been fine when it had snowed. Even when she'd shoved snowe down his shirt (twice!!!), he'd gotten mad but he hadn't freaked out. He'd only started freaking out after...

...oh...

He swallowed, hard, and set his hands on his knees, staring at the floor between them. "It's...yeah, I guess it's a new thing. Since I, um."

He paused. "It's pretty cold in the Dark."


She struggled a moment, feeling almost as though she could overdo whatever she set out to in Duncan's body. She wasn't very strong, but she'd never considered herself to be unwell. Even with that lingering grogginess, she still felt better than she ever had in her own body.

Setting the rod back into place, she held it up a moment longer, looking down as his silence persisted and then broke as he felt out his answer.

The dark? She creased his brow in confusion, mouth opening for a moment, before she seemed to get some idea of what he was talking about. The Dark. Her expression shifted to something like concern instead.

"...but you didn't go," she said slowly, confused. "Missie...?"


He didn't look up at her. He kept staring at the bathroom tile.

His brain was swimming now with the realization of where this new aversion had come from. He'd never even considered it before now. In fact, he'd been trying very hard not to think about the Dark or the Denizen any more than he had to. After Harriet's sleeping potion had gotten him some nice, restful sleep, something in his mind had clicked off the association between sleep, the Dark, and the Denizen, and he hadn't had trouble since then. A couple nightmares here and there, but he didn't think that was too extreme. So he'd put it all out of mind, as much as he could, and tried not to think about it.

The fact that he could sleep again, and not have nightmares about it every night, or even most nights, had led him to tell himself he was over it. He'd accepted it, moved past it. Diving into the Dark for resurrections still scared him, but he did it anyway. It was too important not to. Wasn't it healthy to be afraid of something so terrible?

This was not healthy. This was not "over it." When the shower had turned cold, he'd felt it like a thousand tiny knives driving into his back. He'd panicked--legitimately panicked, the kind that comes of blind terror.

Theresa had said something. He blinked, realizing she expected a response, but he hadn't heard what she'd asked. His eyes turned toward her--only enough to see his jeans and the wet socks. He made a guess and just elaborated on what he'd said before. "I have to go in every time I resurrect someone. The first time I did it, I...I ran into the Denizen."


She watched him quietly, not pressing but waiting all the same, sitting on the edge of the tub (once she was sure the edge was dry) to wait out his thinking.

It was strange to see that concerned look on her own face. She didn't tend to let it show very often, though, she supposed, in front of Duncan and Gunnar it was all right. She rested her hands in his lap loosely, tilting her head.

The Denizen?...

It seemed to take her a moment to follow along, but all of the things she'd studied for Ashtaroth came to the fore and she looked at him with wide eyes.

"It's there? Really?"


He nodded, eyes slightly wide, fixed in an unfocused stare. He didn't feel it needed any more explanation than that.

There was no more explanation than that.

We are.

A simple statement. A fact. A promise.

The two most terrifying words he had ever heard.


She hesitated, watching that strange disconnection on his face- her face- and recognized it, perhaps because of it. She reached out, touching his shoulder lightly.

"But It isn't... here," she said, slowly, carefully. "Just... just there." In the Dark. Could she experience that now that she was in his body? She didn't think it would be good to try. It was mostly curiousity anyway- nothing constructive.

"...Can I help?"


He startled at the touch, lifting his head to face her--face himself. The hand was warm. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, pushing away the memory of the Denizen and the Cold and the Dark.

"Yeah. I know. That's what I keep telling myself," he said, wrapping his arms around himself. There was an odd look and a brief pause as he looked down at Theresa's chest. Having breasts was seriously disconcerting. They were just...there. All in the way and shit.

At the question, he faced her again. "I don't know. I mean, what is there really to do about it?"


A small shrug. "That's up to you." She watched him a moment, hands back in her own (his own?) lap, noting when he took a glance at her breasts. She sighed a little, looking aside.

"That explains all the clothes in this heat," she mused, tapping her lips with a finger.


There was a wry, humourless smile along with a slight tilt of his head away from her. "Yeah. I guess it does." That was something he hadn't even thought about. It just never felt too warm. Maybe he'd completely lost his sense of temperature regulation on top of it.

As for it being up to him... He stared down at the floor again, contemplating. What could you do about something that had assured you it would always exist and thus there was no escaping it eventually? You could try to find a way to get rid of it, or you could try to find a way to keep yourself away from it, or you could try to find a way to close it off and seal it up so that nobody ever needed to fall into its clutches ever again.

To ensure nobody else would suffer the Denizen's realm, you would have to somehow end death. Even the Vahishta's ability for resurrection was limited there.

"Sorry," he said suddenly, looking to her, his tone indicating an obvious change of subject, "I think I'm good now. Could you grab something for me to wear?"


Her head tilted towards him as his tilted away, and she remained silent. There wasn't anything to say to that, after all, or much of anything else.

She leaned back, hands on the edge of the tub, and glanced about the bathroom while he fell into this or that thought process, not as troubled as she would be were she to know what he did.

His voice brought her eyes back to him and she nodded, shifting and standing. "Will do. If my leg starts to hurt, take two of the painkillers in the cabinet soon as you can, all right? Less to deal with later and all."

Careful to slip out, she left the bathroom and shut the door behind her again. Maybe he wouldn't mind the wool slacks, then...