Chapter Text
When Giuliano awoke, he didn’t immediately realize that something had gone terribly, horribly wrong. He was in a room he didn't recognize, sure, but waking up in strange rooms wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary for him— especially after going on a bender like the one he had apparently pulled the night before.
So! It was completely reasonable and not at all pathetic that he didn’t realize that he wasn’t standing at his normal height. Or that his teeth felt a little strange. Or that his whole body felt familiar but... off. Some part of him definitely acknowledged all of these things, they just didn't register as important at the moment. And hey- who could judge him for not realizing! Who had ever gotten into a situation like the one he was in?
But of course, Giuliano did eventually figure it out. He’d be the first to admit that he could have handled it better, but in his defense the revelation had been quite a shock.
So: after finally rolling out of an unfamiliar bed, he realized that he needed to find something to wear. Whichever woman he had gone home with the night before was nowhere to be seen, and neither were his clothes. He couldn’t very well travel the streets of Florence in a nightgown, so he scanned the room he was in for anything to throw on.
The first thing he noticed was that the room was spotless. It was immaculately clean, and sparse— especially considering the decoration on the walls and ceiling. The Mystery Woman he had gone home with was rich. Never let it be said that a Medici couldn't identify wealth when he saw it. Strange then, that the room was so... absent of things.
Somewhat intrigued by the mystery, Giuliano got up and decided to snoop. Was it polite? No, but neither was taking a man’s clothes from him while he slept. And who had changed him into a nightgown? As drunk as he most certainly got last night, putting on a nightgown in someone else's house was not something he thought he'd do.
His eyes darted to a closet, and he decided to head over there. Perhaps the dresses inside would clue him into whoever he scored last night. Frankly he was a bit bothered, he liked to mess around sure, but he wasn’t the sort of man who led a girl on and then forgot her name. So the fact that he couldn’t even remember the face of the girl he went home with was making Giuliano rather uncomfortable.
Perhaps as he walked, he might have noticed that the angles of everything felt a bit off. But he didn’t notice, and he was in an unfamiliar room anyways. Perhaps the pitch of the grunt he made as he stretched his back would have given it away had he been paying attention, but no. Who paid attention to the pitch of their own voice? And so, it was not his body that gave away the fact that he wasn’t in his own. It was the contents of the unassuming wooden closet he wanted to snoop in.
When he opened the closet and started looking through it, the very first thing he noticed was that everything in the thing was hung and folded very, very neatly. The second thing? There was not a single woman’s garment in the whole closet. It was all men’s clothes. And not just ANY man’s clothes.
What the fuck?
His eyes widened and he scanned every article of clothing, growing more concerned as he went. Eventually, he pulled out a vest he knew he recognized from the Signori: it was a distinct shade of green and it sure wasn’t his. It was Francesco de’ Pazzi’s vest.
Hold on. Hold on just a minute here.
What.
...And it was at that exact moment that everything started piecing itself together: the strange shape of his hands, the aches from bruises that were not his own, even the weight of the hair on his head!
He needed to find a mirror.
He dashed over to the lonely dresser in the corner of the room and grabbed the small, polished-bronze mirror propped against the wall. His hair was dark and stringy and falling in his face, his eyes were brown and wide open, and his jawline, which had always been strong, was now lethal.
He dropped the mirror and stumbled backwards. This could not be happening, it made no sense. And yet, it was true. The night previous, Giuliano de' Medici went to sleep in his own bed (as he highly doubted he went out on the town like he previously assumed), and that morning, he woke up in the body of Francesco de’ Pazzi.
Giuliano felt like screaming.
—-—
When Francesco awoke, he realized immediately that something was horribly, terribly wrong. The very first give away had been the ceiling. He opened his eyes, and knew immediately that he wasn’t in a room he recognized. It put him immediately on edge.
The second thing he noticed was the lack of pain in his side and shoulders. He had aches in other places, but he had been bowled over in a joust two days ago, and that sort of bruising didn’t heal itself overnight. So, it was very easy for him to conclude that something strange had happened to him.
He stood up from his bed (another oddity: it was far to comfortable) and decided to look around. The quicker he could figure out where he was, the quicker he could resolve whatever situation he had gotten himself into.
The mystery room was, in Francesco’s humble opinion, a bit of a disaster. Not in the sense that clothes were strewn across the floor, or that dirt had been tracked in. No, the room was messy in the sense that so much STUFF had been accumulated inside. It was quite frankly, overwhelming.
He turned and looked at some of the stuff, trying to get a sense of wherever it was he had found himself. Bits and baubles were stacked on shelves, a book or two leaned precariously on a desk. A jousting lance— somewhat familiar to him— was leaned against a lightly frescoed wall.
Ok. Ok he definitely recognized that jousting lance from somewhere (who kept a jousting lance in their room?).
He approached it cautiously and as he moved he felt... off. Something about his steps— his gait?— felt strange. So strange, that he abandoned his scrutiny of the lance and looked over to his own body and—
Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
This was NOT his body. He did not recognize this body. The skin was a slightly different shade than his own, and the hair was— his hands went to his head and he frantically brought a bang down to his face. Blond. He was blond. Francesco de’ Pazzi was CERTAINLY not a blond.
Ok so maybe he was freaking out a bit.
He needed more answers, he needed to understand what was going on. He closed his eyes and took a breath. Ok. He needed to keep his head about this, he needed to find something identifying— the window. Perhaps he’d recognize the street and then be able to extrapolate his position from there.
He strode to the window and looked out. The street was busy and loud. He craned his neck out and looked at the building itself. It was familiar, so so familiar. Familiar in the same way the jousting lance had been, but even more so. He knew this building, if only he could just remember—
Wait.
Wait...
This couldn't be happening.
Francesco stumbled back from the window and felt his breath shorten. No, no he couldn’t be. It was impossible. This whole situation was already impossible, but where he was? WHO he suspected that he was? That wasn’t- it didn't make sense! He was losing it, he had to be, but his senses— his memories— weren't lying.
He turned and looked around again. The lance, he knew it now. The way the room stunk of wealth— that made sense. The location of the building on the street? That was the lynchpin of this whole situation. Because he definitely knew where he was now. Francesco de’ Pazzi had gone to bed in his Uncle's home, but somehow woke up in the Palazzo de Medici. But it was so much worse than that, because there was only one blond who would have a room in the Medici family home. Somehow, he was in the body of Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano. A man he had gotten beaten in the streets not three months prior.
He would have screamed if he didn’t think it’d bring visitors and attention he 100% did not want.