#but also they’re my little meow meows and i want to scream myself hoarse about it

[domifucker]

i need to find someone irl who i can be insufferable about the leafies with

[quixotic-writer]

Switch it Up (Sal’s POV)

request: @birdgirl1772

summary: For some mysterious reason, Q and Sal wake up in the other’s body. After a quick pep talk they both agree that they’ll pretend to be each other for the day and hope they’re back to normal the next day. As Sal does some cleaning around Q’s place, he stumbles upon a journal and can’t help but give in to curiosity and dive into what’s between the lines of Q’s rambles.

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“meow!” Was all I heard as I feel something small and warm curl up against my face. I feel myself slowly rising from my sleepy state and it’s quickly replaced with confusion. The moment I manage to open my eyes, a black cat was mere inches from my face staring down at me with beady green eyes.

“AAAH!” I let out a scream and fall out of bed in attempts to distance myself away from the cat. When I screamed though, it didn’t sound anything like my voice at all, it had a low bass to it and felt as though I spoke with an accent. My hand shoots to cover my mouth and my eyes are wide and I can hear my heartbeat in my ears.

As I look at everything that surrounds me, I am now quickly noticing a list of things: this isn’t my room, there’s — not one but— THREE cats surrounding me, and my voice isn’t mine, nor is this body. I look at the tattoos on the arms but my vision feels so blurred that I can only make out the shapes of them. I quickly pick my now sore body up off the floor and rush into the bathroom.

“Q?!” I spat to the reflection in the mirror with a sense of shock and awe. I stare at each and every detail of the body I now reside in, familiar with it because it was my best friends, but it all felt dysmorphic at the same time because his body is built entirely different from mine. I knew this body wasn’t supposed to be mine, but I was still the one controlling it and there’s no escaping that it seemed. I bring my hand to my face and rub it across feeling the stubble of the beard tickle my palms and finger tips insuring that this wasn’t a dream.

As I continue to play around in the mirror and marvel at the sticky situation i’ve found myself in, I feel the cats begin to brush up against my legs and mewl. I jolt at the sensation and feel the anxiety of my feline phobia well up in my stomach, but there isn’t much I can do since they seem to think i’m Q.

“I guess I should feed you guys, huh?” I speak down to the cats who chatter in response. I step out of the bathroom to head downstairs but I suddenly jump at the sound of a phone ringing. Looking to the nightstand I see Q’s phone ringing with my contact ID lit up on it. ‘Sally Boy♡” it read, a very effeminate name for me. It didn’t bother me, it was actually kind of cute.

“Hello?”

“Sal! Thank god you picked up. What the hell is going on?!” Judging by the sheer panic and the speech pattern and also the blatantly obvious answer: it was definitely Q on the other end of the line. Is that really what my voice sounds like to other people?

“I guess we switched bodies or something. You don’t have anything important to do today that would need me to be you... right?”

“No, I don’t have anything. Do you have anything I have to do for you?” I pry into my memory to think of the seemingly endless list of things I usually have to do, but to my surprise nothing really comes to mind.

“Pretty sure I got lunch with Gatto today, nothing else I can think of. But check my calendar in my phone just in case, and for the love of god DO NOT destroy my house.” The line goes dead and I know Q doesn’t wanna hear it. He’s the complete opposite of me as far as cleanliness goes, if even one thing is out of place if I ever get back to my own body, he’ll never hear the end of it.

I turn on my heels and go to feed the cats as I had initially planned, carefully tip toeing around them so I don’t touch them or stomp on them on accident. As soon as their breakfast is made and served, I retreat upstairs to get myself cleaned up. It’s still a shock every time I walk past any reflective surfaces and see the i’m not actually me.

I brush my teeth, comb my hair, wash my face; the normal things anyone does when they wake up. As I go to spray some cologne, I get a quick whiff of it and just soak in the scent. Q always did smell hypnotically good to me, every time he walked past a gust of it would hit my nose and I would just stop what I was doing to take it in.

“That sounds kinda creepy.” I say out loud to myself and my thoughts come to a halt. I step out of the bathroom and take a look at all the details of Q’s room. It’s a mess to say the least. Clothing everywhere, it looks like he hasn’t dusted in here in ages, his work desk in the corner of his room is riddled with piles upon piles of paper and is completely disheveled. I know this isn’t a matter of a “system” going on, I just know he has a hard time keeping up with things sometimes especially when his depression weighs down on him a little harder on certain days.

I step over to his desk first to try and make sense of the clutter and piles and try to organize them so that he’ll know where they are and why they’re arranged so specifically.

“Notes from a meeting. Notes from another meeting. Paid bill. Fan mail. Contract.” I shuffle through and assign them a pile until I reach a composition book at the pit of all the papers. The front has nothing written on it so I saw no harm in peeking inside and turning to the first page and reading it.

My therapist suggested I started keeping a journal/diary since I tend to lose track of time and have a hard time remembering certain things. It seems stupid but why not give it a shot.

I stop reading immediately and my eyes go wide and pause on the last word I read on the page. This is his DIARY, I can’t be reading this. I flip the pages and see almost half the book is filled with endless scrabbles of words of what’s going on in his head. I’ve never been good at reading Q’s mind quite like he can with mine, he’s always so closed off about his emotions and curiosity is enticing me to read every word on these pages.

“This is so wrong.” I say holding the notebook closed with my forefinger creating an open gap of temptation between the pages. I look around quickly and look back down at the notebook and slowly open it back up. “Maybe... skimming things wouldn’t hurt. Right?” And with that, I was nose deep in the notebook.

Today at set we filmed Sal’s punishment, it was payback for the time the boys thought it would be funny to put tarantulas all over me. I went in early to play with the little cats and kittens that were brought in for the day and I had never felt happier. Nothing brings me more joy than to just be around animals. That joy was quickly taken away though. It was funny at first seeing the little kittens all over him. It was all just mild discomfort it seemed, it wasn’t SCARY since they were small and harmless to him. But when we brought in the actual cats, that’s when I really started feeling bad. He was drenched in sweat, his throat seemed hoarse from the sheer panic and stress to the point where he could barely get anything out, his body looked like it was ready to concave on itself because of the situation. I was laughing with Joe and Murr, but deep inside, I felt guilty because it was all my idea. I caused him pain. I know it’s a part of the game we play, but something about it just didn’t sit right. I just wanted to go and help him and hug him until he felt better. I wanted to say sorry over and over but I knew it would kind of raise some suspicions. So instead I kept quiet and played along... At least at the end of it I helped ease the tension and brought out Big Benjamin Cat. Sal seemed fine after that, and I think that’s the only reason it won’t really bother me for a while is because he was okay after it all. I hate seeing him hurt.

He felt bad about my punishment? This was truly news to me. The way he talked about it too, it seemed so endearing and despondent about the whole situation. Now i’m intrigued and enraptured by what’s within this book, all inhibitions have been thrown out the window and I quickly flip through a few pages and land on another page.

After today’s therapy session, i’ve noticed myself talking a lot about Sal. I love Gatto and I love Murr, let me preface all this with that. But I feel this magnetic connection to Sal that I don’t think i’ve ever really felt with anyone. He gets me even though I don’t tell him a lot, he’s just there for me. When I do tell him stuff, he handles it like it’s glass; He gives it a lot of care and attention. There’s no one else who makes me feel the way I do. It feels like this growing thing for a long time and I really don’t know what to make of it. I’ve tried sorting out all of these thoughts and emotions that go through my head with him, but I really just don’t know. I’m a grown man still confused and I think that’s what makes it hard. It’s also kind of scary because for so long i’ve just been seen as your standard single and sleeps around kind of guy and i’m kind of growing tired of that image but I can’t just wipe it away when its been stained on me for so long. I just hope one day I can sort this shit out and be honest with myself.

With each page that I devoured, I felt as though I was peeling away the layers of an onion and was slowly getting to the heart of it all. With each sentence it felt like I was suffering from whiplash because I kept doing double takes to all the seemingly outlandish remarks. What caught me incredibly off guard was the endless ramblings of me, his infatuation with the idea of me. The image of the mental ideas of Brian Quinn was slowly being pieced together like a puzzle with this journal. Without realizing how much time had passed or how much I had read, I had finally reached the last and most recent entry, the one that sent my heart into an inferno.

I think now is a good a time as any to finally come clean with myself. It’s time i’m honest with myself and I stop holding myself back, no more lying to myself, no more blind blatant ignorance, none of that. I’m Brian Quinn, and I admit it: I have fallen in love with my life long best friend Sal. Wow. It feels oddly invigorating to finally get that out of my system. Maybe my therapist was right about this journal thing. Yes, I love my best friend but I don’t know what to do about it. He’s honest with me and said he wouldn’t mind being with a guy and that gave me a small spark of hope, but I just don’t know if i’m a guy he’d be into or not. It could be an unrequited love situation for me and it would hurt a lot to have my heart crushed like that. But honestly, I don’t care if he doesn’t love me back, I just don’t ever want him to disappear out of my life. That’s what’s stopping me from just spouting it out and telling him the truth. I don’t want to scare him away, I don’t want him to feel awkward around me, I don’t want things to change for the worse. I just want Sal, in the sense of his presence, his companionship, his friendship. That’s all. Maybe one day i’ll have the confidence to tell him, but for now i’m just happy that i’m confident enough to tell myself the truth.

I sat there for an unknown period of time. I leaned back in the chair with my mouth slightly agape and brushing a hand through my hair, unsure of how to process everything that I just read. It felt like a guilty pleasure to finally know all of this about someone I thought I had pegged pretty well.

There’s one big detail that stood out loud and boldly to me: Q, my best friend, has fallen for me. It’s so crazy to read what’s on his mind and watching him figure this out and realize what the emotions were page by page.

I close the notebook and place it with all his other books neatly in the little nook of the desk and finish tidying things up. After another hour, his room was back in livable shape. I smile and beam with pride at my handiwork and hope this helps him feel a little more at peace in his own living space.

Just as he was headed downstairs, a knock on the door echoed through the quiet home. When the door opened, I was startled to see myself standing before me, forgetting for a brief moment that I wasn’t in my own body.

“Fucking hell Q, you could’ve at least texted.” I had a hand over my chest as my heart rate begins to subside from the mild scare of seeing myself standing before me. Q rolls his eyes and looks down and beams with jubilation to see the three cats prowling towards him.

“My babies!! Daddy’s home!!” He kneels down and gives a happy helping of pets and scratched to each one of them.

“So how’d lunch with Gatto go? Did he suspect anything?” Q picks up Brooklyn in his arms and cuddles her close and they both step into the house and seat themselves on the couch.

“Went fine. He did say that ‘you’ were acting strange today, he just said that i’ve been hanging out with Q too much. Little did he know that it was me!” He chuckles releasing Brooklyn from his arms and watches as she trots away. “How were things here? You seem fine with the cats since you’re not dead and none of them are missing.” I think back to the little notebook upstairs but try and play things cool as to not give anything away, he’ll talk to me when he’s ready. It’s not my place to pry at his emotions.

“Things were fine. I did tidy up your room though, just thought i’d help you out a bit. If and when we switch back, just ask if you need help finding anything.” I smile to him and he smiles back, it was a bashful smile and it made my heart melt. “Did you wanna order dinner or something?” I say into the silence of the living room.

“Well considering this technically is MY house, I say we eat my favorite pizza: a hot pepper pie from my favorite pizza joint. However, since you’re me, you’re gonna have to order.” I roll my eyes and open up my phone and see that Q has the pizza place’s number saved and on speed dial in his phone.

“Okay Q, c’mon dude you’re kidding me. Speed dial?” He gives a cheeky smile and shrugs his shoulders.

We order and eat the pizza and talk to each other about our experiences in the other’s body. Q got to experience the wonders of my sleep apnea, he told me how startled he was when he woke up with my mask on his face. I told him of how the cats wouldn’t leave me alone because they thought I was him, it got a hearty laugh out of him since he knows how uncomfortable they make me.

“Thanks for cleaning up my place Sal.” He says as we clean up our pizza mess.

“Yeah, it’s no problem. It’s hard to find time to keep things in line with our schedules, thought i’d help out a little.” He pauses for a moment and goes to play with his fingers and realizes he doesn’t have his usual ring to fidget with. He’s nervous and that was one of his tics, but I pretend not to notice and I wipe down the table.

“Sal, uuuuh... Weird question but did you clean my desk?” I know where he’s going with this.

“I did. Books in place, papers in stacks. Why?” I say innocently.

“There’s a... There’s a notebook... it’s for my therapist and stuff... sensitive info in there.” He’s sweating and his eyes are pleading that I don’t know anything. The guilt hits me harder than ever now, but I can’t do that to him, I don’t want to shatter that trust.

“I didn’t snoop around man, it’s none of my business and this is your space, I respect it even if i’m in your body.” His tensions seem to ease in that moment and his shoulders slumped to a relaxed position. I feel like crap lying to him like this, but if it means his comfort, then it’s a harmless white lie. I mentally make a promise that nothing I read would ever leave my memory, and that’s all it will ever remain to be: simple memories.

“Okay, thanks man. I’m gonna head back to your place and hope that when I wake up i’m surrounded by my cats and not a face full of apnea mask.” He jokes to me as he gathers his stuff to head back out.

“Make fun of my sleep apnea all you want, but now you know the pain I live with!” I joke with him as I let him out. We said good night to each other, and just like that I was left alone in the silence of Q’s home. It was late already so I figured I close this night out already and head to sleep.

I cleaned myself up and prepared for bed, slipping into a pair of pajama pants and brushing my teeth. I took one final look into the mirror hoping that when I woke up, I wouldn’t need a mirror to see his face. All I want tomorrow is to just give Q a hug as myself again.

I crawl into the sheet with the cats cuddled up against me. The cats have kind of grown on me today, dare I say that maybe I learned to love them a bit today. I close my eyes and shift around until I was in blissful rest.

When I woke up at last and opened my eyes, I saw as the husky rays of the sun shone through my window and the familiar hun of my sleep apnea machine filled my ears. I peel it off my face and rub off the sleepy sensation from my entire face. I lean over and grab my phone to see a text from Q waiting for me

We’re back in business baby!

Was all it read and I smiled to myself. I walked to the bathroom and was met with the delightful sight of my true reflection. It felt so good to be back in my own body, in my own house.

I head to the kitchen and fix myself up a griddled PB and J and sit at the table and eat with nothing but my thoughts to occupy me. Through that whole mess, I didn’t question the switch, I didn’t question why then. I only had one lingering question that seemed so insignificant:

What happened with Q and that lunch with Joe. I wonder if he found out some of my own sensitive information and didn’t say anything just like I had. Maybe one day I’ll be able to solve, but it just won’t be solved today.

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A/N: Just wanted to say I loved playing around with this idea so much, that soon i’m gonna write this segment from Q’s POV ♪( ´▽｀)