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October Swap Short - Part 1
🕑 Added 2022-09-06 07:41:48 +0000 UTCPart 1
Gothenburg was a very European city. That’s what struck Matthew Watson as he stepped off the bus from the airport and looked around the square. Some of the architecture seemed rather French. Other buildings seemed more Russian. It did look rather less Dutch than he’d expected, based on what he’d read about the city’s history, though.
Either way, it was crisp, easily as chilly as Toronto had been when he’d left. It seemed the Scandinavian October wasn’t too different from the Canadian one.
“So, we’ll grab a tram out to your apartment in Johanneberg from here,” his new coworker and current guide Fredrik Magnusson explained. “The studio is across the river, but we’re mostly doing work from home these days, so you won’t have to go over too often.”
Matthew nodded, following the other man as his suitcase clicked and clacked along the brickwork sidewalk. It was rather annoying to try to pull the suitcase along, so he was glad to learn the tram stop was barely a block away.
The fact the old tram that rolled up had stairs to board it was less thrilling, but he made do. Most of the ride was a blur, though. His brain said it was the middle of the night, yet the sun was rising on the horizon. Not to mention the boredom of a four hour layover in Frankfurt having drained him.
That and the way he wanted to scratch his face off right now due to how itchy his stubble was. Thanks to forgetting to pack a razor and refusing to pay what they were demanding in the airport. So, instead, he’d suffered.
Fredrik handled talking with the landlord of the small old apartment building that was Matthew’s new home. The conversation was in Swedish, which Matthew hadn’t yet had time to learn. He’d not really expected to get the job when he’d applied, having just thought it might be neat to work in Europe for a bit. Yet they game studio hired him on as an architectural artist.
“Alright, here’s the keys. I’ll help you get the suitcase up,” Fredrik said.
“Thanks,” Matthew replied. “Does the landlord not speak English?”
“Eh… he’s not had his coffee yet, so he’s too tired to manage much right now, but his Swenglish should be clear enough you’ll get by,” Fredrik explained, leading the way up a mildly chaotic stairwell.
The apartment itself was minimal, a bachelor pad, and a small one at that. The view out onto the city street was quite nice, though. The interior was furnished, but, only to the bare minimum to be able to be labelled as such. There was a bed, a table, and a chair. The fridge was only a mini fridge, with just a microwave for heating things.
Not that Matthew minded too much, he wasn’t much of a cook.
“We’re guessing you’ll probably need a day to get adjusted, but we’re planning a welcome fika tomorrow at noon. Plus a bit of orientation,” Fredrik said, as Matthew debated falling face first into the bed without changing clothes.
“Tomorrow sounds nice,” Matthew replied.
“Try not to sleep too much. It’ll make getting adjusted to the time change harder,” Fredrik said, before excusing himself.
Matthew waved the other man off, before deciding to lie down for just a little bit, mostly to rest his feet.
-
Everyone who knew Saga Jansson considered her an admirable young woman. A bit tomboyish, sure, but intelligent and pretty. As well as cutely petite.
Of course, these descriptions all drove the history grad student up the wall as he was, in fact, a man. A man who would much rather be called Sten. Just, trapped in the closet by his family. With no idea how to get out. His mother was so attached to having had a ‘girl at last’, after his three (significantly) older brothers. And, well, if he’d been cis he’d probably have been called a ‘momma’s boy’ for how close he was to his mother.
So he was left squirming, living a lie every day. Even something as simple as going to the nearest grocery store involved things that grated, when the cashier considered him a woman in the wish to have a good day.
He was trying to ignore it when he nearly bumped into another pedestrian. The man in question had to be close to 185cm, with stubble Sten would have, well, maybe not killed for, but definitely committed some crimes to get.
“S-sorry,” the man mumbled in barely audible English.
“No worries,” Sten replied, stepping back.
-
Matthew felt more than a little embarrassed, having bumped into that petite blonde in his tiredness. He’d ended up sleeping half the day away, and yet was still exhausted.
His tiredness was not helped as he wandered around the small Swedish grocery store, trying to find the daily essentials. Only to need to take a moment to recover from every price tag he looked at. The 1:7 ratio of Canadian Dollars to Swedish Krona made prices seem absurd at first glance.
Even doing the math, he was pretty sure the fruit and veggies were rather pricy… good thing he wasn’t buying much of those.
-
After a night of poor and broken sleep, Matthew had failed to make it to the cafe where he was meeting with his coworkers in time. Sleeping in combined with not knowing the city hadn’t been a good combination.
Still everyone was friendly and quite willing to forgive his tardiness. And he was only about 15 minutes late, at least?
As he got introduced, he swore almost all of his new coworkers had names ending in ‘son’… not that he could judge them for that, but it did mean all the names kind of blurred together. He also found himself one of only three brunettes among the dozen or so employees present.
Surprisingly, though, it seemed like his coworkers were sticking to English even when talking among themselves. He wasn’t sure if that was for his benefit or normal behaviour, but he appreciated it if it was the former.
Having woken up a bit more with some coffee, he turned to the guy beside him, the only one apart from Fredrik whose name he remembered.
“Why are we meeting here instead of at the studio?” Matthew asked.
“We’re going to the university after,” the other man, named Muhammed, replied. “The director has a friend who’s a professor. He’s going to give us an intro lecture on early Norse culture for the next project.”
Matthew nodded slowly. He… vaguely remembered something about a university. The last few days were a bit too blurry for him to remember too many facts at any one time.
-
Cleaning the office for a bunch of game designers did not strike Sten as a particularly good use of his time. He was in the middle of cataloguing some previously undocumented artifacts. The one he was working on right now was particularly interesting, seeming to be associated with Loki…
Oh well, he’d leave it and a few textbooks out on his desk to show it was an active place of study, not just a relaxing office to write in. Hopefully Professor Henriksson wouldn’t mind that… if he did, well, he wasn’t actually Sten’s supervisor, so it didn’t matter that much.
-
The lecture turned out to be in Swedish. So Matthew had sat there awkwardly, looking at the pictures. He could probably do his own research later, if he needed. Or ask for a brief summary. He eventually focused on sketching some of the pictures, since there wasn’t anything else to do and was worried he might fall asleep if he simply sat listening to a language he didn’t speak.
After the lecture, the group moved over to look at some artifacts in a small office area. Matthew didn’t have a very good camera, and the others were taking plenty of pictures. As a result he ended up drifting towards a side corner, away from where the main group were asking questions from a grad student who seemed… oddly familiar?
He tried not to stare as he tried to place her.
“She’s certainly nicer on the eyes than the professor was,” one of his new coworkers said in a quiet voice.
Matthew turned to look at the other man, not remembering his name.
The man made a few more comments that were rather less appropriate, a second coworker joining them as Matthew forced a very awkward smile. There were times he wished he wasn’t seen as part of the ‘in group’ of guys like this, but he was too tired and unsure of his job security to say anything. All he could do was feel guilty and hope it ended soon.
-
The bulk of the game designers visiting had proved more pleasant to talk to than Sten had worried they might. They’d taken serious notes during the lecture and were asking intelligent questions. They actually seemed more engaged than a fair number of undergrads Sten had had to deal with.
There were a few over in the far corner though… he didn’t have to be able to hear them to work out the sort of comments they were making. He was also a little annoyed to realise one of them was the tall dark haired stranger from yesterday. Cleanly shaven now, but still masculine in ways Sten couldn’t help but wish he was. He didn’t seem to be contributing to the conversation much, but he wasn’t exactly stopping it.
Well, at least Professor Henriksson seemed to notice what was going on and headed over to have a chat with the trio. The two blondes scooted off, spooked by confrontation. The stranger from yesterday actually stayed to talk to the professor, though. So, maybe he was mildly less terrible than his coworkers.
Still not worthy of those handsome looks, in Sten’s opinion.
Thankfully, the group had only had so long to stay, and hurried off to do something else, letting Sten get back to his research.
Only, when he looked at it again, the artifact he was working on… there were two extra points on what he’d been calling the ‘star field’. He was certain of it.
He grabbed his laptop, pulling up the pictures he’d taken earlier. And, yes. There were two fewer points on that part of the stone in the pictures.
Leaning in to look, however, the new points looked like they were marked with the same pigment as the older ones. There was no way the earlier guests could have had that prepared, surely? The stone hadn’t even been properly described for the University’s collections, let alone in anything published.
«Everything ok, Saga? » Professor Henriksson asked.
« I’m… not sure, » he replied quietly, staring at the stone. « There’s new markings on here. I don’t know how, though… do you think I could run a chemical analysis on the pigments? »
« New markings? Let me see, » the professor said, leaning over to take a look.
Surprised to see the same thing Sten had, the professor took the small artifact over to the nearest microscope. It wasn’t enough to do a chemical analysis, but it was enough to confirm how similar the new points were to the older ones.
Professor Henriksson agreed to book access to the chemical analysis lab. though it was too late to get in today. So Sten took what pictures he could, before returning to his earlier research efforts, now paying extra attention to anything that talked about mysterious dots. Not that he expected to find any reliable sources for that.
Eventually he had to give up, having not found anything that seemed particularly useful as his stomach began to grumble for dinner.
-
Matthew’s head hurt as he woke up the next day. They’d gone back to the studio, giving him a proper tour, before a brainstorming session for the new game. Then a few coworkers had dragged him out drinking, and things got a bit blurrier.
Though he was pretty sure he’d made it home, so… why was that not the ceiling of his new apartment?
Blinking, he looked around, and saw he was in a bedroom. The decoration was minimal. There was a desk with a laptop on it and a bookshelf full of rather beefy looking textbooks. Stumbling to his feet, his sense of balance felt off as he walked over to the desk and looked out the window.
There were houses around. Cute little white buildings with red barn-like roofs. Very Scandinavian.
And very much not the historic brick midrise apartments that he expected to see.
“Saga, vill du hjälpa mig med frukosten?” a feminine voice called out from the hallway.
Matthew could sort of understand some of it (it wasn’t that different a language from English after all), but didn’t think it involved him all that much, so he kept looking out the window, trying to figure out if he recognised any landmarks.
Unfortunately, he didn’t know the city nearly well enough to manage that.
“Saga? Sover du fortfarande?” the woman’s voice asked again as the door opened.
Matthew turned to look at her. She was a thin woman, blonde still existing in her otherwise grey hair. He had to guess she wasn’t too far from 60, though he wasn’t sure in which direction.
“Um, hi?” he offered.
“…Hej?” the woman replied, seeming as confused as he was.
“I must have been more drunk than I thought last night, because I swore I went home… and, uh… I don’t know where your… daughter is?” he said, hoping that covered all the bases.
“Saga, varför talar du engelska?” the woman asked.
“… wait, you think I’m Saga? Why do y—” he started to ask, before realising something and looking down.
Those were definitely breasts under the loose t-shirt he was wearing as pajamas.
How in the world did those get there?
-
Sten fell out of bed, the harsh sound of an alarm waking him up. Disoriented and struggling with a headache, he scrambled to find the source. It turned out to be a phone sitting on a chair halfway across the room.
It was only after turning off the horrid noise that he realised it wasn’t his phone. Also, this wasn’t his bedroom.
It looked like a very small apartment, everything but the toilet being a single room. He stood up and walked around, getting his bearings. Looking out the window, he was pretty sure he wasn’t far from the Göteborg Institute of Technology. He’d been in this neighbourhood for a party or two in his undergrad years.
The apartment seemed empty apart from him, though. Weirdly, the only pair of shoes present were a men’s pair he didn’t own. All the clothes in the apartment were still sitting in a suitcase as well.
None of that explained why he was here, when he’d gone to bed in his own home last night.
Well, firstly he had to pee. Then he’d try to figure the rest out.
Only, reaching the bathroom, he blinked as he looked in the mirror. That was…
That was the dark haired stranger he’d seen before.
He blinked. The reflection blinked. He stuck out his tongue. The reflection did the same. He looked down at himself, and realised how different his body looked.
He glanced up at the mirror, whispering an apology, before pulling on the band of the pajama pants and… yep. He had a—
He was going to have to touch that, since he had to use the toilet.
Well, he’d deal with the ethical repercussions later. Right now he had a full bladder to worry about.
