Chapter Text
“Hey.”
His eyes flutter open to the sight of Norton standing over him, a strange mirror image of that first cyclical morning, two cups of what smells like chai in his hands. (He feels fondness warm in his chest - he’d taught Norton the proper way to make it, on one of their dates, the two of them crammed into his tiny studio kitchen snorting with laughter every time one accidentally elbowed the other.) “I think I still have your internal clock,” he informs Naib with a grimace, as Naib wiggles back til he’s sitting up against the headboard. “I woke up at the literal ass-crack of dawn. The sun was barely even out yet.”
“Old habits,” Naib says with a shrug.
“Yeah, well, I miss my blackout curtains. I’m sleeping at my place tonight.” He sits down on the edge of the bed, letting Naib take the mug he holds out in offering. Naib takes a sip - not bad. Taught him well, I guess. Unless it’s some sort of tea-brewing instinct inherent to his body, built on repetition. He’d like to think otherwise. The idea of Norton learning to brew his favorite drink for him - it’s, well, really cute, if he’s being honest.
“Sure, just invite yourself over,” he replies with a grin.
“It’s my apartment!” Norton protests, but his eyes are dancing with amusement.
Last night’s tension is all but dissipated. It helps, Naib thinks, to have all his cards laid out on the table - well, all the relevant ones, anyway. Maybe it’ll be easier to get Norton to lay down his own and open up. There’s something he hasn’t been telling Naib, that’s for sure. A lot of things. He’s not exactly subtle about it; Norton seems to think he keeps himself locked up, water-tight, but enough is seeping through the cracks that Naib knows there’s something he must be struggling with.
Finishing his tea, he realizes there’s a need creeping up on his mind, one he hasn’t felt since - fuck, probably since his late teens. Padding over to the sink to rinse out his mug, he pauses, looks back over his shoulder. “Do you usually smoke in the morning?”
Norton winces. “Yeah.”
“Thought you were trying to quit.”
“Emphasis on trying, though. It hasn’t exactly, uh, stuck.”
Naib finds his jeans, neatly folded atop the trunk at the end of his bed, and begins pulling them on as Norton folds his legs beneath himself on the bed, watching him curiously.
“You know,” he says, head tilted. “I think you make a better me than I do.”
“What?”
“You hold yourself different. Like you... belong there.”
He supposes he can see that. Norton’s instinct seems to be to slouch, to curl slightly in on himself, like there’s a bit too much of him and he doesn’t know quite what to do with it. It’s more evident now, in Naib’s body, than it ever was in his own.
“Yeah, but I don’t,” he says, moving on to buttoning his shirt (which is a damn shame, because even with it being the body he’s currently occupying, it’s a little hard not to… ogle Norton’s chest.)
“‘M just saying.” He gets up, reaching into Naib’s closet, although Naib thinks it may be more to avoid looking him in the eye than out of any real desire to get dressed. “Not like I want to be stuck like this. I just- you know what, nevermind.”
I just don’t want to be me. Naib’s brain fills in the blank for him.
Despite everything he’s gone through, despite fighting quite literally for his life and coming out victorious, Norton Campbell simply does not like himself . And Naib could sit for hours telling him every little thing he sees in him - his loyalty, the big heart that he tries his hardest to hide - but something tells him it wouldn’t get through. Wouldn’t get through, because Norton would refuse to let it.
“I happen to like you as yourself,” he says as Norton sheds his t-shirt to the floor, kicking it in the vague direction of the laundry basket. “Unbelievable as that might sound to you.”
“ Why ,” Norton deadpans, but he chases it with a laugh that means conversation over . Naib knows that laugh. It’s just another one of Norton’s defense mechanisms, and he hates it - he much prefers Norton’s genuine laugh, the ha! of surprised amusement he lets out when he’s caught off-guard.
Well, if Norton wants to be stubborn, he can be stubborn- er. “Because,” he says. “You try your hardest to be a bastard, but you’re a good fucking person, Nort. You wouldn’t care so much, otherwise.”
“Who said I care,” Norton mumbles, tugging one of Naib’s tank tops on and shaking out his bedhead.
It only takes a few strides, with Norton’s body’s longer legs, for Naib to reach him, put his hands on his shoulders. He looks so much more vulnerable like this, in this smaller body, even as he gazes up challengingly - though his eyes are focused somewhere over Naib’s ear rather than making true eye contact.
“In my experience,” Naib says, voice uncharacteristically soft, “Bad people don’t feel so guilty it very literally tries to kill them.” In one way or another, vengeful ghosts or his own mind.
“How do you know that.”
Naib sighs. “I’ve met genuinely terrible people, Norton. Believe me. You’re not one of them.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Norton says quietly, but his shoulders slump like a little bit of the fight’s gone out of him. “If you say so.”
“Well, I do say so.” Naib wraps his arms around the smaller man - it’s still a deeply odd feeling to embrace his own body, but he pulls Norton into his chest all the same, feeling him stiffen for a second before his body gives in and relaxes into it. “You’ve got to stop beating yourself down.”
“Someone’s gotta do it.”
“Listen, if your ass ever needs kicked, I’ll be more than happy to do it for you.”
Norton lets out a low snort of laughter, returning the hug and letting his head rest against Naib’s chest. “That a promise?”
“Yeah.” Naib dodges the bait set out for him - God, Norton really is a masochist in more ways than one - and answers as genuinely as he can.
“Yeah, it is.”