Prompt: Bodyswap
Notes: This went a little longer than expected (which is one of the reasons I didn't finish it in February like I wanted to ;-;), so I'm only posting the first section here with a link to where I've posted the full fic on AO3. I still wanted to show it here because this was written for a prompt challenge I found on here.
Full fic can be found here!
Grim snarled and paced back and forth around the bedroom. Every few steps resulted in him slapping his cheeks to make sure he was awake. The slight sting said that, yes, he was indeed awake and not experiencing a nightmare.
The smoothness of his cheeks was also causing his rising panic. “I can’t believe this is happening! This is all Ace’s fault! I can’t believe he threw that whatchamacallit into our cauldron yesterday.”
A light huff came from the bed. “That whatchamacallit was a bundle of dandelions, and it did absolutely nothing but cause enough smoke to earn us a five-page essay from Professor Crewel on the importance of lab safety. Which is due today.”
Grim spun on his heel to face his minion. He didn’t account for his new gangly limbs and noodley torso, which nearly sent him spiraling into the wardrobe. He snarled and batted at the piece of furniture like it had purposefully leapt into his path. Once he had effectively put the wardrobe in its place, he spun to face his minion.
Except it wasn’t his minion he saw, but himself. At least, a doppelgänger of himself. He’d never known his own face could contort into the same deadpan expression his human usually wore when she was tired of tiptoeing around the sensibilities of every boy on campus. She walked a small circle in the center of the bed like a fawn finding its legs for the first time. She wobbled just enough to make Grim offended. “How do you explain all this then? Last I checked, I was still in my own body when I went to bed last night!”
It was weird hearing Yuu’s voice when he spoke. Almost as weird as his own voice, from his own body, but definitely not him speaking. “That’s an even stronger argument for why it wasn’t the botched potion. Some potions can be slow acting, particularly ones distributed in a gaseous state, but in order for that to be the cause of our current dilemma, we would have had to be repeatedly exposed to—.”
Grim threw up his hands to cover his ears. His paws—fingers—found soft tufts of hair. Right, human ears were on the sides of their heads. His hands slipped down his head until they found the fleshy lobes. “I don’t wanna listen to your science talk this early in the morning! I’m having a crisis!”
Yuu sighed. She edged closer to the side of the bed and glanced down at the floor. She backtracked to the center of the mattress. “My point is, this isn’t Ace’s fault. This is your fault.”
Grim sputtered. “My fault? How’s this my fault?”
“Who was the one reading spells he didn’t understand before bed last night?” Yuu snapped back. The blue fire of her ears wavered when her ears flattened against the top of her head. Her head? His head! This was becoming so confusing. “I told you to wait until your next tutor session with Riddle, but did you want to listen? No. Because the Great Grim can do no wrong. Now we’re stuck in each other's bodies for Seven knows how long!”
It was Grim’s turn to flatten his ears against his head. At least, he would if he didn’t have these already flat ears! “I knew what I was doing!”
“You couldn’t even pronounce the words on the page!” Yuu stomped around the mattress until she reached the nightstand sitting beside the bed. She awkwardly stretched across the small gap between the two pieces of furniture and pawed the worn book closer to her. Her tiny grunts of effort were almost insulting. “How do you manage to hold a pen in your paws? I can’t even grip the edge of this book!”
Her efforts made him snicker now. “Do you understand my greatness now? I’ve mastered living amongst humans in ways you’ll never understand!”
“If you wanna brag about holding a pen, then go right ahead.” Grim sputtered at Yuu’s lack of awe. She balanced on the tiptoes of her back paws while she flipped through the book. She smacked a paw against one page. “This is the spell you used! Mark this page so we can show it to the headmage.”
“Crowley?” Grim questioned, but he moved across the room to do as he was told. He still felt a bit wobbly, but he became surer in his stride with each step. Maybe being human wasn’t so bad. “Why we gotta show him? Wouldn’t it be easier to take it to Crewel?”
“Professor Crewel specializes in potions and alchemy,” Yuu argued. She jumped back into the center of the mattress as soon as he marked the page. Grim tucked the book under his arm and waited for Yuu to jump down from the bed. “As irresponsible as the headmage acts, no one on campus is going to argue he’s not a powerful mage. If anyone can break whatever spell you did, he would be our best bet.”
Grim grudgingly agreed and continued to wait for Yuu to jump down. She did the odd circling again, coming close enough to the edge to peek over before jerking back to the center of the mattress. After the third or fourth time of her doing the same thing, Grim finally snapped, “Would you quit wasting time and just jump down already?”
“It’s too high!” Grim gaped at the whiny pitch escaping his body. He’d never made that sound before! And he didn’t go around stomping like a big baby either! “How do you do this everyday? I could break an ankle jumping from this height!”
“It’s not high at all!” Grim argued. He gestured between the top of the bed and the top of his—Yuu's—hips. He knew of Yuu’s extreme fear of heights, but this was ridiculous! “It’s barely taller than half your body size.”
“Which is twice the size of you!” Yuu hopped away from the center of the mattress and closer to him. Grim sputtered when she lifted her arms up to him. “Put me on the floor.”
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not about to treat my body like it’s a baby!”
“I’m not asking you to burp me. Just put me on the floor!”
“Just jump!”
“That’s like telling me to jump from the highest tower on campus!”
They went back and forth just long enough to attract the attention of the curious dust bunnies living in Ramshackle Dorm. In the end, Grim grudgingly lifted Yuu off the bed and placed her feet on the floor. His efforts were rewarded when he watched her tackle the staircase, the ghosts of Ramshackle joining in on his snickering as they watched Yuu slowly crawl backwards down the stairs.
He completely ignored her snickering at him when he tripped halfway down the staircase because of her weak ankles.
Some allurance soulmate aus for all your (my) allurance needs:
-Soulmate au where you have a counter on your arm that counts down to the moment your soulmate dies. As soon as Allura’s hits 0 during omega shield, she knows.
-Au where you dream of your soulmate before you meet. Childhood friend-ify them. As kids, Allura keeps having dreams of this strange boy with round hideous ears, and Lance has dreams of an elf princess cosplayer. Who he eventually realises is an alien. From space. They form a fast friendship in this dreamscape, chatting out about anything and everything. In the waking world, Allura will look up this planet ‘Earth’ but no records of an ‘Earth’ exist. Strange. Was it just a normal dream after all? Except they meet again and again.
“Where is this ‘Earth’?”
“It’s in the Milky Way.”
“The Milky Way?” Allura’s never heard of such a place.
Lance starts explaining the plots of his favourite sci-fis to her, and asks if she knows any aliens like that. She tells him she doesn’t know what a Jedi is, has never heard of aliens who can travel through time, though this E.T he speaks of reminds her vaguely of a species she has met. Allura teaches Lance some Altean songs she knows that he’ll later try and recreate on his guitar. Allura talks often about her family, her father especially, and the royal advisor, Coran, who unintentionally taught her the word ‘quiznack’ after stubbing his toe (Lance will start using this word in the waking world and no one knows where it came from). And Lance follows up with stories about his family, his sister mainly, and how they’re not to be trusted if they’re being far too suspiciously nice. Allura laughs, and wonders what it would be like to have that many siblings.
Eventually, Allura’s stuffy events she has to attend involve suitors, and Lance is moving into the garrison, just like his hero Shiro. Allura likes the way his eyes light up as Lance talks about flying.
“Maybe one day I’ll be able to fly to space. And see you,” he says.
“Perhaps,” says Allura.
Maybe Earth is hidden from star maps, yet to be discovered by the Alteans, as wide spread as their data is. Allura has spent her free time searching these maps for so long, but maybe it’ll be easier for him to come to her.
Lance starts talking about his new friend Hunk, and how he wishes Hunk could meet her, and about this annoying guy with a mullet.
“Why don’t you like Keith?”
“Why would I like Keith?”
Allura’s there for him as Lance learns he’s been listed as a cargo pilot.
“I’m sorry, Lance. I know it wasn’t what you were hoping for.”
Lance’s disheartened face steels itself. “… It isn’t over yet. I won’t stop until I reach fighter pilot class. I’ll just have to do better. I’ll be the best cargo pilot they’ve ever seen! So good they’ll have no choice but to move me up!”
Allura starts expressing her unease over Zarkon.
“He’s… strange these days. Father and him have been arguing. I’m worried something terrible is coming.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure.”
Then Allura goes radio silent, and Lance is uneasy, and suddenly Pidge is talking about this being named Voltron. And.
“Voltron’s a robot,” Lance says.
Pidge gives him this strange look, trying to get a read on him. “How do you know?”
“My soulmate’s father built it.”
Hunk’s eyes widen. “Dream girl?”
Lance nods. “Dream girl.”
It continues mostly the same, but. But.
“It’s you,” they’ll say as they meet, Allura tumbling into his arms.
A long awaited meeting.
(Longer than they realised.)
“You’re Lance?” Coran says after initially trying to battle him. “I see Allura wasn’t exaggerating about the ears.”
“Can everyone just leave my poor ears alone?!”
-A vaguely Your Name inspired au where soulmates show themselves in a whole manner of ways. Some present themselves through soulmarks like counters, or glowing tattoos, some have visions of their soulmate, some get soulmate telepathy, some keep finding their soulmate’s lost things tucked under their pillow. It’s different from person to person.
For Lance and Allura? They’ve been bodyswapping for as long as they can remember.
It’s confusing, at first, waking up not just in a body that isn’t your own, but an entirely different world. Thankfully, because of the power of brain hijacking, they at least understand the language people around them are speaking or else this world be x10 more scary for a pair of lost kids.
Lance’s family are a little thrown by this posh speaking version of him, but once they realise this is his soulmate, they’re pretty accommodating. This is Lance’s soulmate, after all.
“Are you from England?” Luis asks her.
“No. I’m from Altea.”
Allura gets confused as to why they’re searching maps of their own planet for it.
“It’s up there,” she says, pointing skyward. Beyond the blues, where the stars twinkle and shine, her home resides out there. Somewhere.
They joke that she’s an alien. But oh. Hang on. She actually is.
“Aw, lucky! I wish mine was from space,” laments Rachel.
The siblings get incredibly excited and start showing off the ‘coolest’ parts of Earth (Allura is from an advanced civilisation. A mobile phone doesn’t fascinate her). But what interests Allura the most is the rain. It’s refreshing. Much calmer than the rocks that storm Altea’s skies. It doesn’t ‘rain’ often in Altea, luckily, and they had to develop force fields to accommodate for it.
When Lance returns to his body, he’s convinced it was all a dream for all of five minutes until he gets hounded by questions on what the alien planet was like.
Altea had been stunning. A place straight out of fantasy. They even had space elves, how cool was that? Also he was a princess who owned far more dresses than the ones his sister would play dress up with him in. The wardrobe was far bigger than even his parents’ room.
A man called Alfor visited him after he was late for etiquette class, wondering if his ‘daughter’ was okay.
“And then I got a tour of the planet!” Lance explains. His family hangs onto every word.
It’s just the first swap of many. They’re random. One day they could wake up as themselves, or the other.
Lance wishes he could meet this person his whole family have met except him.
They start writing notes for each other. Usually just so they can keep track of things that need to be done. But they’re also their only mode of communication to the other. It’s almost as if they’re pen pals.
Lance grows up knowing the paladins of old, knowing Coran (who takes an instant liking to him), and Allura’s family. Allura grows up knowing his. And his school friends (which quite a different environment compared to her homeschooling). The more she learns of Earth, the more bizarre she finds it. Do these people really believe themselves to be the only form of life within the universe?
Meanwhile, when in Altea, Lance still can never give an accurate location of Earth.
“I don’t recognise those stars,” he’ll say to Alfor.
Lance tries clambering into Blue one time. It’s how he meets Blaytz.
“Oh, who’s this sitting in my chair I wonder?” teases the man.
“I’m Lance!” he says, beaming as Allura.
“Um.”
It gets a little more difficult to manage the tag team bodyswapping as they grow up. Studying for a test could be rendered pointless if they swap on the day. Allura proposes they study for both their tests, and the other’s. Which sounds like a horrible idea to Lance. That’s double the studying. He’d rather she just call in sick. Also, Allura’s exams involve giant holograms that can beat her up (though. This body is super strong. And wait. What do you mean Alteans can camouflage?)
Allura finds it a little difficult to keep up appearances around lance’s friends (though it’s marginally easier now that she has managed to mimic his accent). This is different to polite idle chatter when they host visitors from other planets, and his naturally outgoing personality is a little difficult to match. When she returns home, she’ll find that she has new Altean friends there that she has yet to meet.
Being on Earth lets Allura unwind, she finds. She isn’t a princess here. And yet, being a princess is all she has known. It’s strange.
Lance is fun, she thinks. She wonders if she’ll ever meet him.
Lance loves meeting new people, and they’re aliens! Aliens! Though, having to involve himself in Altean diplomacy like this has him very much out of his element. They’re using forks that don’t even look like forks, and some that levitate food. (And then sporks are just this universal thing? What’s with that?)
Allura smiles fondly as she reads this note. She agrees that there are some very strange forks they have to use.
They’re still swapping when Lance is in the garrison. Allura likes being able to get pilot training out of this, though the technology is quite the back step compared to Altean tech, and she does feel like she’s overstepping on Lance’s dream.
Lance gets close enough to Hunk to explain this who swapping thing to him.
“You know, this does explain some things. Sometimes it’s like you’re…”
“A whole other person?”
“Yeah. And you forget things sometimes. And the other day, when you spoke to Jenny—”
“—Wait?!?! Jenny???? I spoke to Jenny?”
You know how the story goes. How Shiro falls to Earth, and everything falls in motion.
But this time Lance recognises the word ‘Voltron’ and so too does he recognise the Blue lion.
She roars upon recognition.
“You’ve been here before?” Keith asks.
“No. I last saw her on Altea. What is she doing here?”
“Same as she always has. Waiting. Are you sure you saw the same lion?”
“There’s only one Blue.”
Lance also recognises the castle of lions.
But this isn’t Altea. That he knows.
Why is it here?
Allura tumbles into his arms.
“Father?” she asks, then her eyes widen in recognition. “Lance?!”
It’s clear everything has changed since they last time they swapped.
It’s not until after Coran awakens (and Coran!!! This is the first time Lance meets him as himself) that they realise they’ve been travelling 10,000 years apart.
(“If I had known. Then maybe this war…” starts Allura.
“You couldn’t have known,” Lance assures, though guilt eats at him too. What was all of this for if not to save lives? “We… couldn’t have known.”)
Whilst they wish the circumstances of meeting each other could have been better, it’s nice to finally be able to talk face to face.
Knowing Allura before was like piecing together a puzzle, small snippets of a person. Now he has the whole picture.
Lance falls. Bad.
He hears her laugh, not his laugh as her, but her laugh as her. And it just hits him. That this is the person that’s been interwoven in his life since he was a kid. She’s incredible.
(What did he do to get her as a soulmate?)
This time Allura has a much better understanding of Earth, and has a closer connection with the paladins earlier on from having connected with them as Lance. She doesn’t feel quite as isolated.
And Lance basically grew up on Altea. It wasn’t his world, not at first. But grew into a second home. Maybe he wasn’t ‘himself’ but he has so many fond memories there, and all of the people. It’s hard to imagine that was 10,000 years ago. He wasn’t even born then.
Allura does get someone else to reminisce about Altea with.
The swaps don’t stop, however. Not even after they meet.
Which is a bit of a problem when they need ‘Allura’ to operate the castle’s teleduv whilst simultaneously having a blue paladin.
Allura first pilots the blue lion when stuck in Lance’s body.
“I know I’m not him. But. Please. We have no other option.”
Maybe the swaps stop eventually through some means. Maybe they don’t.
Just. Bodyswap shenanigans. These two meeting before they meet
-That one roleswap soulmate au I started working on years ago wherein they’re called ‘quintessence mates’ and everyone’s born with pretty pattens adorning their skin. One day. One day I shall return to you.
i am currently visiting the rockies rn and having a time admiring crystal aqua water features and big ass mountains and thinking of steve and tony(nat stark) negotiating consent and sleeping together when bodyswapped and how there has to be avengers charter codification of bodily consent policy pursuant to bodyswapping bc it must happen so goddamn much. there has gotta be PAPERWORK and knowledge base articles and FORMS and boring dna clauses. and also how if tony is in steve's body does tony(nat stark) now like nipple play because steve's body likes it?
is it the mind that lusts, is it the body, is it the unique blending of the two, when they go back to their bodies - are they changed like a water glass poured into a pond and then scooped back out? will they never ever be the same arrangement of molecules? will they always be a bit of each other? how do you know what you like and what someone else likes and how do you define 'your body' in the liking?
how does one begin to explain the intimacy of fitting your entire self inside someone else's body? what's the soul version of fisting?
but also
if u sent me an ask: i see them, i love you, you are a beautiful pear tart to me. i will respond soon when i am not getting lost on 10km hiking trails ty for your patience asgsgfhhfh
Wow there’s really no bodyswap stuff for pathologic ever huh. That seems like it could be hilarious considering the way the healers are™️. THE FACT THERES TWO OF CLARA-I want to see that absolute chaos unfold. I would watch their sitcom.
Also the idea of SOMEONE ELSE running around in your body :). Like there’s already the heavy existentialism of not being fully in control of yourself. It just seems like an neat idea.
