Chapter Text
The number of times in one’s life that they have awoken to an unfamiliar ceiling can often be indicative of the sort of life they have led up until that moment. Perhaps they have little control over their life and are forced to travel frequently. Perhaps they have a serious drinking problem and often don’t remember how, when, or where they went to sleep.
Cale Henituse sat largely in the latter category.
It wouldn’t be totally accurate to call the man a drunkard or an alcoholic, however it would be completely inaccurate to discount those terms towards him. For a sixteen year old, he had an impressive ability to get himself into all sorts of trouble. Still, even in the worst dredges of his inebriated shenanigans, he’d never woken up to a ceiling quite like this.
Normally he would awaken uncomfortable, smelly of something vile, perhaps into the sky framed by the top of an alleyway, a cheap inn, a tavern's ceiling, or maybe even some part of the Henituse property where he’d decided to call it a night. On one memorable occasion, he woke up to the muck in the stables. Apparently he’d thought that the squishy softness was comfortable the evening prior.
It was an unfortunate occasion for the poor bastard.
However, at this moment he was looking up into a ceiling that portrayed aged luxury. A ceiling as rich as any in the Henituse estate but with the unfortunate note of disrepair that struck him as a bit eerie. His body, contrary to what hangovers had led him to expect, only felt a bit sore. As though he had been training too heavily the day before or something akin to that. And while the mattress beneath him was quite comfortable, it was also completely unfamiliar to him.
All in all, Cale felt odd. Odd and twisted up inside. There was something about his body that was uncanny. He couldn’t put his finger on it and there was a growing fear inside of him to move and find out exactly what it was.
Staring up at the ceiling as the drowsiness and panic slowly departed, Cale finally decided he understood the feeling.
He didn’t feel like himself . He didn’t know what defined himself as a feeling but his current circumstances were completely contrary to those expectations. Cale sat up gingerly in bed and found that the rest of the room was similar to the ceiling.
Grandiose in a way that was familiar and untidy in a way that made him feel as though the place was abandoned or uncared for.
As though it was a muscle memory, his gut churned with the thought that the room was a reflection of his own circumstances. Uncared for.
It was a strange intrusive thought. Cale certainly had his issues with his family but he’d never felt truly uncared for, he knew that they cared about him, only sometimes care wasn’t enough to bridge certain gaps in love.
Cale swallowed thickly and the action caused his tongue to graze against his teeth.
He froze.
Those weren’t his teeth.
Again, it was eerie. It wasn’t that there wasn’t anything strange or unusual about the teeth he felt inside of his mouth. They just weren’t his . He never knew that he had memorized the feel of his own teeth until this moment.
“...fuck.”
Ha. Why was he even slightly surprised that it wasn't his voice? Cale closed ‘his’ eyes and breathed in deeply.
“Son of a bitch.” The voice was smooth and deep and sounded so strange against his ears.
He sighed.
For all that he wanted to panic and allow for his agitation to overcome his sensibilities, Cale wasn’t quite as hot-headed as he liked to appear in the eyes of others.
It was a knack. Cale had, ever since a young age, been skilled in assessing the circumstances around him with a critical eye before making a decision on how to act. Of course, his critical flaw was that normally the decisions he made were deeply flawed in some way or another. Normally, in a way that offered him no true benefit other than the protection of those he cared about.
That was when the panic set in.
If he was in the wrong body right now, who was in his body? Where were they? Did they pose any danger to his family?
Cale didn’t waste anymore time in standing up and caught his reflection in a window.
Blond hair and blue eyes. A bare chest with a strange necklace adorned upon his throat, pajama pants that were quite comfortable but also quite worn out.
Cale stared at the sight.
Blond hair and blue eyes.
A neglected but doubtlessly luxurious room.
And beyond his reflection in the window, he could see the familiar cityscape of the capital.
“ Mother fucker .” He cursed meaningfully.
The first prince of the Rowoon Kingdom.
The one who had lost favor with the king.
The one who was rumored to be favored among the nobles in the capital to become the crown prince.
The one who was currently in between two more politically significant heirs to the throne and their birthright.
Oh, Cale didn’t have the words to express his current agitation. He really and truly didn’t. He had grown up as nobility as well and while there was no fight for succession in his family, that wasn’t for lack of corrupted relatives who were willing to do anything to children in order to gain wealth and power within the family.
Hell, his whole motivation for becoming a lousy drunk was because of those damn bastards and to protect his siblings from being their tools.
“ Fuck .”
He turned away from his reflection and ran a shaky hand through his hair.
He didn’t know anything about Alver Crossman other than his claim to the throne and rumored kindness. Cale knew better than to trust rumors though. Those who pretended to be kind often hid cruelty behind their smiles.
His stomach sank at the idea of such a two-faced bastard being anywhere near his family. Completely ignoring the hypocrisy of calling another person two-faced.
“Okay, if I wanna fucking live through this, I need to figure out what the fuck this stupid bastard is up to.”
Whether it was Alver’s allies or foes, Cale would need to learn how to become a believable Alver Crossman. If anyone were to learn of the switch, they would surely attempt to use that information to their advantage both against the stupid royal family and his own family as well. What could be more useful than a tool who wore the skin of another?
Cale could curse his own disinterest in the royal family. He knew enough to protect his own family but he never wanted to get involved with them and certainly never cared to learn anything about the first prince.
In an almost unconscious act of curiosity, Cale’s hands grazed the necklace around his neck. There was something about it that felt strange. Possibly it was the fact that he rarely wore jewelry. He’d been considering indulging in it lately, becoming a lush spender in order to further sully his reputation as heir, but there was just something… heavy about the necklace.
There was a knock on the door that disrupted his thoughts and filled him with a brand new panic. Who would it be? How would Alver Crossman answer? Shit. He wasn’t ready for this.
Oh well, when wasn’t he playing a part in his life?
With the confidence and determination that he normally maintained when playing a lout, Cale found his voice to play a prince.