provincialbelle | (no subject)

(no subject)

Something is terribly wrong.

Belle had known the moment she opened her eyes that something was wrong, but there was a part of her too ready to deny that feeling as long as she could. She wiggled her toes in bed, she shifted, but she kept her eyes shut until the very moment she couldn't do that any longer. That was roughly the moment where a certain part of her body that had never existed before reacted very happily to the smell of Jacob beside her.

"Oh," she gasped, and then was forced to open her eyes in shock when that 'oh' came out much, much deeper. "Criss de calice de tabernac!" she swore, eyes wide with horror at both the situation and how shocked she was at it happening.

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Jacob was no stranger to island weirdness but waking up to some guy cursing in French was pretty new. He woke up and tried to figure out what, exactly, had happened. Body switch? Or just gender? Gender had happened to him before and he hadn't enjoyed it all that much.

"Uh, are you my wife or someone else?"

Everything was so much bigger than before. Belle gaped down at her hands and the way her sleeping clothes were straining against new, hard muscles, and let out a sound of distress. "It's me, it's Belle," she murmured, running hands up through her now-short hair, eyes widening as she wondered what she must look like to Jacob. "Are you still Jacob?"

"Yeah, still Jacob," he said, trying to decide if that was a good or bad thing. "So are you uh, nothing hurts or anything? Everything works okay?" Jacob remembered being a lot more upset about his own weekend in a different body and Belle was really, super calm.

She still had a distraught look on her face as she gaped at Jacob, looking down at her new body. It was bigger, it was bulkier, and she felt utterly clumsy within it. "Nothing hurts, but I don't know that I want everything to work," she confessed, slightly frantic. "I don't know how to be a man."

"Well, I guess the bright side is that it's probably temporary?" Jacob had been on the island long enough to learn how these things worked and it never lasted longer than a couple days.

"So maybe you don't need to learn how to be a man yet."

She tried to adjust her seat in the bed, staring down at her large hands with a kind of horror. Everything was so out of proportion versus what she was used to. She raised a self-conscious hand to her hair and found it much shorter than usual. "Do I look horrible?" she asked, as if the change was not only a change, but somehow a curse.

"Well, you're a very pretty guy?" Jacob wasn't sure what, exactly, to say and he'd never been attracted to a guy before...but this was Belle and he wasn't telling her that.

"You'll get a little more used to it soon, I bet. I got used to being a girl that time."

That was true and Belle supposed this was a little like flipping the tables. Still, she didn't know that she had ever expected this to happen to her. In a way, it was almost like the Beast, only it wasn't quite so nasty. "Well, at least I didn't turn into a teapot," she said, staring down at her torso and framing her hands over it. "I need clothes," she realized.

"Um, do you think you can wear any of mine?"

Jacob was pretty sure he was taller and bigger than Belle-as-a-guy but there had to be something she could wear just until she got to the Compound and could get stuff that fit. It would be a temporary fix, at least.

"They might be a bit big, but bigger's better than small and that's better than nothing," Belle admitted, staring at the small waist she still possessed, through the proportions seemed to be different. "Underwear is definitely a must," she said with a fearful nod.

Jacob laughed a little. "Do you need a tutorial on how everything works down there or are you good to go? I mean, not that I'm making light of this."

It was pretty damn funny but Jacob valued both his life and his marriage so he was trying to keep his snickering to a minimum.

Belle let out a startled laugh, covering her mouth with her hand when she got a brief mental image of how that lesson might go. She wanted to willingly ignore everything that had happened to her, but she didn't think she could. "How about giving me the basics about how to make sure I don't walk around at attention, so to speak?" she settled on.

"Well, just think about things that don't turn you on. Like, uh, what's the grossest thing you can think of? That usually works for me."

Jacob had never actually had this conversation with anyone before and it was really kind of surreal.

Belle made a face as she thought about Gaston. Gaston bathing. Gaston boasting and lording it over the village as though he's the best thing that's ever happened to them. "I think I found something," she said, even though she hated to think so much on it.

"See? Hope for you yet," Jacob said, brushing a kiss against her hair. It wasn't exactly the way he normally kissed his wife hello but this was...an unusual circumstance.

"Want to risk the Compound?"

She let out a hapless, frustrated laugh when he kissed the top of her head. It certainly wasn't what she was expecting and she gave Jacob a frown that was partways amused. "I think maybe we ought to find me a pair of jeans and a shirt to get me through the day decently, at least."

"Yeah, that'd be a good idea. So uh, you know I'm not attracted to guys but I'm going to stick with this even if it is permanent, okay?"

Jacob thought it wasn't but he wanted her to know that just in case.

Belle gave him a troubled look, giving a choked sound that practically epitomized how frustrated she felt. "I really hope this isn't permanent. If it is, we might have to start looking into ways for me to be a woman without island magic snapping its fingers for us."

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