Which makes it really fucking jarring when he wakes up somewhere else.

He's on a bed, in jeans and a t-shirt, with a pen in his hand which has plausibly just written 'Hello' in a strange notebook resting on his lap.  It's not very good handwriting and a line that might have started as a comma trails across the page.

Also it's a bit hard to concentrate; everything feels kind of fuzzy and warm and not real.

And there's a cat, white and stripey brown, curled up against his shin.

He looks between the Hello and the pen, squinting. He's pretty sure that he didn't write that, but that raises more questions than it answers.

He looks down at - his? - body. These aren't clothes that he owns, and his hand looks wrong, but also his head feels like it's full of egg whites so who's to say what any of this means.

There's a cat. A familiar, maybe? Definitely not his, but - whatever.

"Wha… wha's goin' on?"

He purses his lips. His voice sounds wrong too.

The cat yawns real big and turns to look at him.

Okay, that's a regular cat, so even if it does know what's going on, it certainly won't be able to tell him.

He can still try to be nice to it though. Reach out a hand, smile cautiously.

"Hey there."

Scritch the kitty?

Hmm sniff sniff sniff.

She doesn't lean into the scritches but lets them happen with only a questioning Mrr? in protest.

Hee hee. He's never had a cat before, but they're clearly the best animals ever.

"You're a sweet little kitty, yes you are! You prob'ly don't have any idea how I got here, do you?"

At that she fluffs up and tries to slink out of his reach.

Shit! He pulls his hand away.

"Oh no, did I hurt you?"

She lets out a long series of accusatory meows on her way to sit on the far corner of the bed and stare at him.

He almost meows back but catches himself at the last second.

"Well, I'm sorry for whatever I did wrong."

He's not pouting you're pouting.

This is a very vocal cat.  She has a lot to say to him.

God that's cute. He finds himself liking this cat quite a bit even if it apparently isn't reciprocated.

He looks around the room, since his head is starting to clear up. Is there anything else at all indicative of - well, he's not totally sure, that's the problem, but something akin to the Hello paper?

Well, the bed he's lying on the right half of has its head against a wall.  There's a pair of matching nightstands and lamps to either side, and a bookshelf over there, and a window with the curtains and blinds drawn.  (The cat is still talking at him.)  The notebook is a rectangle bound on its longer edge with the preprinted lines running the long way across the paper.

On further inspection the Hello isn't the first thing written in it!  If he goes up a few pages, in the same messy writing:

rec jared kestrel to jck pitons ropes + ledges
marianne roush died, ian should visit

Similarly incomprehensible notes can be found all the way back to the beginning.

He really doesn't like the signs that whoever's body he's in (and he's definitely not in his own, going off the skin color and the hair texture and the voice - and the vision, now that he thinks of it) lives with a partner! He's definitely not going to be able to fake it to them! And he has no idea how much time he has before whoever it is gets home.

That means he should probably just come clean right away. Which sounds horrifying, but less so than trying to impersonate someone's lover.

Whatever! He can deal with that when it happens. Right now he should really focus. He flips through the notes. Jared Kestrel, Marianne Roush, Ian… yeah, he has no idea who these people are, except apparently Marianne Roush is dead and Ian will be visiting her grave?

He wonders if whoever-this-is is in his body. The thought makes his stomach go ice-cold, enough that he actually sits up all the way. Maybe instead of trying to impersonate this guy he should be looking for himself?

Yeah, that idea cheers him up considerably. He's got some spells he can use to look for things; he'll just target Sylas or his mom and -

Okay new plan. Is there a fucking map in this room.

Nope!  The cat moves to the door and demands to be let out when he gets up to look for one.

Yeah, that's fair. He dismisses his first paranoid thought of oh shit it's gonna tell everyone on me and opens the door for the kitty.

Okay, there doesn't seem to be a map. Which is fair; he's pretty sure that he doesn't have anything like that in his bedroom. Is there… mail, maybe? Something with this guy's address (and, hopefully, name) on it?

No, and also the cat immediately slips out to tell someone on him.  Specifically a hoodied teenager lumping on a couch.  Meow meow mmmrow meow.

"Jordan?" said teenager calls over the back of the sofa.

God fucking damn it he should have totally trusted his instincts even though they sounded stupid at the time.

Well.

Now he has a choice to make. He isn't sure if whoever is asking after him is - the other person who sleeps in this bed, or a sibling, or god forbid a child that Jordan (?) had with their partner, or someone else entirely.

Well, he already decided that he shouldn't lie to whoever the bedfellow was, and he'd feel pretty fucking upset if something like this happened to his mom or Sylas and they tried to bullshit him. (There isn't really anyone else he feels remotely as close to - maybe the old lady, but honestly anyone who bodysnatched her would have like a 95% chance of being an upgrade, and he's well past being able to feel betrayed by anything she does.)

And he's also separately decided that he should go with what his gut says.

"… Would you believe me if I said no?"

"Hm?"

On the plus side, that's not a no.

On the minus side, that's… not a no.

He picks up the notebook and leaves the room, hunching a little on himself. He feels more anxious than he's been in years.

"So, uh. Up until, like, five or ten minutes ago I was not here. Not in this house, probably not in this country, which I don't even know what it is, and absolutely not in this body. I think that - whoever was in this body before me might have known that someone like me was coming, 'cause they started to leave a note, but I don't - have access to their memories."

- He realizes that he didn't check particularly hard about that last part. Does he, if he tries hard and believes in himself, have access to any of Jordan's memories?

There are a few things, blurry and impressionistic enough that he can't be sure they're not just dreams, his own, or his own dreams.

Rage, well-worn, and helplessness accompanying it through self-restraint - staring at a table of statistics - operating a strange sort of vehicle, going very fast, too fast, on an open country road, then gritting his teeth and choosing to slow way down - embracing someone (possibly the teen here??? it's unclear) and holding them while they cry - bristling at someone whom he doesn't like being in his house but choosing to leave the talking to someone else - petting a very small kitten, filled with melancholy -

And then the teen finally responds.  "I didn't have a good day.  I'm going to hurt you."  It doesn't sound like a threat, despite the words; in fact she sounds distraught.  And maybe even more anxious than he feels.

The memories seem like they should be suggestive, even if he doesn't have enough context to have an idea of what. Although - if the teen is the same as the one from the crying hug he's gonna feel pretty shitty!

"Wh- emotionally?"

He's pretty sure she can't take him physically; her eyes look like she's got no more magic than this body does. (Something to ask about at a less horrible time.) But he's also not sure how she'd hurt him emotionally - they don't know each other enough for that.

"I'm sorry about the bad day. If it helps, I think - if Jordan's in my body, we can find each other and figure out how to undo this?"

". . . Like your corpse?  Are you an - you're claiming to be an angel?"

What.

"Nnnnno, I'm claiming to be a regular guy who is, uh, suddenly in a different body? That is also alive?"

(He puts his hand to his neck, because it would be really awkward if he was technically dead somehow and hadn't noticed! Also he's suddenly very concerned that somehow he had a freak heart attack in his sleep and his old body is just - dead, and his mom is gonna find him in the morning - he should think about something else.)

"Do you need anything from me to be okay until Ian gets back from the grocery store.  Really, really need."

Okay, whatever he said clearly wasn't reassuring. He takes a second to think so that he can go back to the room and this poor kid can have some time to herself.

"If that's gonna be within the next hour, nah, I can leave you alone until then and ask him the questions. But, ah…"

Purposeful breath. This is so fucking awkward and potentially extremely sad!!

"… Is Ian the - the person Jordan shares a room with, and - are they -"

. . . She doesn't say anything.

Yeah, he’s not gonna press.

"I’m sorry about – this."

He wants to say something like please make yourself something nice or I’m gonna fix this or even I have no idea how it happened but feels that more of his input is the last thing she needs. Hopefully Ian will be… more emotionally equipped to deal with the situation?

He slinks back off to the bedroom and flops onto the bed.

The girl re-lumps on the couch and can occasionally be heard sniffling.  The cat sits on her, chirping from time to time, and eventually pads over to come stare at him some more.

After about two minutes of flophood he rolls onto his back and looks back at the cat.

"I really hope nothing else fucked up happens," he says, knowing that something else fucked up is almost certainly going to happen.

The cat meows at him pensively.

Fuck it, he meows back. (Just the once.)

Mrr-ah-aht?

Mew!

"Princess?" calls the teen in a small voice, and the cat looks back and forth between the two of them before returning to her with a parting mrrp.

Yeah that's fair. Bye Princess! At least she… seems to hate him less now?

Okay, now that he's properly alone he has about 30 seconds that he can not do anything before he starts to feel painfully bored. Once those 30 seconds are up, he sits up and huffs to himself. He still needs to get his bearings, but he suddenly feels weird and invasive about trying to do anything like find and read Jordan's diary. Maybe there's… a book he can read? Until Ian gets back?

In addition to the bookcase there's a short stack on Jordan's nightstand comprised of Cerdan Death (apparently a futuristic action-survival piece about a 'Druoary seasonchange' who ends up stranded in a cave when their airship malfunctions, according to the back cover) and Your Grace: A History of Pre-Roman Britannian Governance (which boasts interviews commenting on the previous edition from some people who apparently witnessed one of the events mentioned).

What.

Okay, if he's this confused just from reading the back of the airship book, he'll probably give himself a migraine if he tries to read the actual book. The history one will probably be more helpful, if it's recent enough history that people who were there can comment on it? It might even have a map like what he was looking for earlier. With a grin as he imagines Sylas ribbing him for picking a history book over an adventure book, he starts flipping through Your Grace: A History of Pre-Roman Britannian Governance.