I'll Know My Name As It's Called Again

10.1K 112 24
                                    

From: http://archiveofourown.org/works/1090340

~~~~~~

weird and it makes me a little bit sad but that's how love works sometimes i dunno

~~~~~~

Rating: Explicit

Warnings/tags: bodyswap, tour fic, barebacking, porn with feelings

Word count: 9102

Summary: Louis wakes up in Harry's body. This is a problem for several reasons.

-

His first instinct, when he realizes what’s happened, is to scream.

He’s in his own bed. Or, not his own, but at least the one he’d gone to sleep in, at the back of the bus, wrapped in a blanket he’d filched from Niall’s bunk, his laptop left open and shoved to the side of the mattress. The same sight he’s seen most nights for the last month, the same place he wakes up more often than not.

That’s the only thing that seems to be as it should be, though. It’s barely half a minute between when he wakes, feeling inexplicably disoriented -- a bit like he’s woken up in a different set of clothes than the ones he’d gone to sleep in -- and the moment when he raises his hand to rub at his mouth, jolting back suddenly when his vision clear enough to see it.

Not his hand. Not his stupid silver rings. Definitely not his tattoo at the juncture where his thumb meets his index finger. Or not his thumb and index finger, as it were.

So, yeah, his instinct is to scream.

He doesn’t, though. He bites down on the wave of panic instead, hard enough that his teeth clack together with an almost metallic twinge. Distantly, he thinks he deserves some credit for his restraint -- or at least he would if he could think of anyone to tell that would believe him.

So he bites down on the shriek before it bubbles out of him, and can’t even count it as a success, because nothing here, not one single thing, can be made into something good. Not when they aren’t his own teeth snapping together.

“What the fuck,” he whispers quietly after a long moment. He waves his hand, like maybe he can shake this away, like a bad case of pins and needles, but nothing happens. His hand isn’t going back to normal. The misplaced feeling in his legs and his chest isn’t dissipating. “What the fuck,” he tries again, going for something louder. It barely comes out at all, only a rasp in the stillness around him.

He jerks out of bed with a sudden frantic momentum, knocking his laptop off as he nearly topples over. His limbs are suddenly too long, and he trips over his stolen blanket as he stumbles towards the front of the bus with his pulse swimming madly in his ears.

The rest of the bus is quiet, which strikes Louis as almost absurd, given how loud the rush of blood in his head is getting to be. This is a dream, he tells himself, drawing in a rattling breath. This is a dream and you’re going to wake up now.

He doesn’t wake up. His stumbles into the toilet, locking the door behind him as he braces his hands on the cramped edge of the sink, trying to force himself to look up at the mirror.

It won’t be what you think, he tells himself. Just look up and it’ll all be normal.

It takes several minutes before he works up to it, and when he does, his knees nearly give out.

For an instant, the worst, most dizzying part is how familiar Harry’s face is looking back at him, sleep-soft around the edges even as his eyes go wide and panicked. That part’s new, because Harry does a lot of things, but panicking -- outwardly, at least -- is rarely one of them. But it’s still Harry’s face all the same, despite the way it’s twisting into something foreign, the same rumpled hair and pale eyes, bitten lips red and slack. It’s very nearly impossible to believe that he’s looking at a mirror, rather than Harry himself. Maybe this is -- maybe it’s a weird prank, and they’ve somehow replaced the mirror with clear glass? Maybe Harry’s standing on the other side with the rest of the lads, ready to laugh at Louis for being such a gullible prat. He’s not sure how that would even work, because it’s just the hotel car park and empty air on the other side of the wall, but there must be a way, if…

You're a whole new level of charm. (Larry One Shots - book 6)Where stories live. Discover now