Fan Fic based on the series Half Bad

Part One. Nathan POV

Gabriel convinced me to help him put a drunk Nesbitt to bed. I don't see why we couldn't have just left him sleeping on the kitchen floor, but Gabriel said since it was our last night together. Whatever.  We made pallets on the ground close together. Gabriel's breathing is slow and calming, and I let myself fall asleep.

I had a wonderful, half an hour of peaceful sleep before I wake to snoring that is loud, irregular, and unmistakably Australian.
"Bastard." I say it quietly as I get up. It's impossible to ignore snoring, especially when you know it can be stopped by smothering the idiot that's doing it.
The light from the Nightsmoke gives the room a faint green glow and Nesbitt looks ghostly in the light. He's lying on his back, mouth wide open. I roll him onto his side. He mutters but doesn't wake. I stand by him, the snoring has stopped. So I go back to my pallet next to Gabriel, who was somehow sleeping through Nesbitt's snoring. I'm about to lie down when the snoring starts up again.
A new kind of nightmare!
I haven't had a vision of me killing Nesbitt but there's a chance it might happen unless I get out of the room. I look over to Gabriel but he seems to be asleep so I take a small bowl of Nightsmoke and go looking for somewhere quiet. The next room down the corridor is a bedroom with a comfy-looking bed, but I have the urge to go somewhere else: to the room I've avoided since we came back.
It's just a bathroom. Very cold now. The bath is dirty, sill lined with bloodstains. Mercury's blood. This is where I came after I killed her. I washed here and I kissed Gabriel here.
I walk over to the basin and look in the mirror. I look older and strangely unreal in the greenish light of the Nightsmoke. I touch my face and feel the small scar on my cheek where Jessica caught me with the photo frame when I was a child. I guess I was about three or four, so Jessica would have been ten or eleven. She's oldest of us four children, though she'd just say three children and a half Black. I can't remember any occasion where she was nice to me. She hated me from birth. And in a way it's understandable; my father killed her father. And yet Deborah and Arran didn't blame me for what Marcus did. And they must have wondered about me, wondered about my Black side.
I pull my hair back to see my eyes. They're the same as ever: black, and the empty triangles in the blackness tumble around slowly and steadily. And the tattoo on my neck is the same: B 0.5
I feel my cheek and the stubble there, but I don't need to shave much. I'm still only seventeen. My chin and patchy beard say seventeen but my eyes, and maybe my soul, say one hundred and seventeen. I guess I've done a lot more than the average seventeen year old.
I see my father in my face too: a younger version of him. I'm not sure if that's part of my problem. That's what everyone sees when they look at me: his name, his myth, the people he's killed and eaten. And maybe that's what happened with Annalise. She begun to not see me, but only Marcus and the stories about him.
And part of me is proud Marcus was- is- my father. I'm proud that I'm like him. We're alike in so many ways. Fighting, yes; being good at drawing; our Gift to turn animal; and our appreciation for solitude. But I'm unlike him too. I had a White Witch for a mother and a grandmother. I've got—
"Hi."
I look through the mirror and see Gabriel is standing in the doorway. "Nesbitt wake you as well?"
It's not really a question and Gabriel doesn't answer; he stays in the doorway and I stay leaned over the sink.
"You okay?" he asks and leans against the doorway, clearly not coming any farther in.
I speak to my reflection as I reply. "Yeah, great."
He doesn't say anything. So I look at his reflection and ask him, "How old are you, Gabriel?"
"Umm...nineteen."
I turn to face him. Look him up and down, then study his face. "You look older. Twenty or twenty-one maybe."
He shakes his head. "Turned nineteen a couple of months ago. You missed the big party."
And for a brief second I'm jealous to think there was a party, Greatorex and the trainees and I didn't get an invite, but of course he's joking. But then again a couple months ago I was with Annalise and I've no idea what Gabriel was doing when I was with her.
I turn back to study my reflection. "Wish I'd known. I'd have done something. For your birthday, I mean."
He stands straight, shuffles his feet and leans against the doorway again. "I doubt it." I flick my eyes to him, but quickly back to my own reflection and he continues. "Anyway, it doesn't matter. I really don't care about my birthday."
And I'm irritated. I think he does care, maybe not about his birthday but about me not even knowing or asking before now.
And I suppose I can still give him a present. He got me a knife for no other reason than he wanted to give it to me. And, typical of Gabriel, it was a perfect present, beautiful and useful. But less typical was how nervous he was when he gave it to me. I'd like to do that: give him something and make it so clear it was special, that it was important.
I say still looking at myself, "I can still give you something."
"Yeah?" He sounds skeptical.
I stutter, "A knife or... I don't know... a book or.... or something."
"That would be nice." He adds almost like a second thought, "Nice isn't normally one of your strong points."
"No.." I look to his reflection, meeting his eyes. Deep brown, gold tumbling through them. "..sorry."
"And did you say sorry then?" He shakes his head as if clearing his ears. "That's the second time you've said that to me."
I know I owe him lots of 'sorry's'. He once said he liked how I was honest with him and recently, since I last said sorry to him, I've tried harder, but I never tell him half of what I think, not a fraction.  And I wish he'd come into the room but he's still standing there in the doorway. And I know he won't come in because of what happened last time we were here and I kissed him.
I'm not sorry I kissed him. I wanted to, and it felt good, and mostly when I think about it I wish I'd done it better and not stopped so soon and not, definitely not, walked out and left him. But then there was Annalise and I'd just killed Mercury and I was freaking out and... and mainly there was Annalise.
But I wanted to kiss him then and I did and it was good and I'd like to do it again.
But he doesn't take a step into the room and I think he's staying away from me because I fucked up last time. But the kiss wasn't fucked up. And I'm not sure he'd let me do it again, but I'd like to try. I'd like to do it better.
But, oh shit, it seems a long way from the basin to the doorway. And I really don't want to mess this up. Us up.
But I want to touch him, kiss him.
I turn to the mirror and stare at myself. I see myself lick my lips, and I look a mess so I close my eyes. I'm not sure what I'm thinking except that I want to kiss him. So I turn around and take a step toward him, then another and another and another. And with each step I'm feeling less clumsy, less unsure, until I reach him and stand in front of him.
I raise my hand and with my fingertip touch the scar that runs through his eyebrow. The one I gave him. "I always meant to say sorry about that. About your eye, I mean."
He doesn't move. I don't think he's even breathing.
"I could have blinded you." I say and stroke the scar. It's pale and wide despite being only a couple centimeters long.
And, oh shit this is difficult, and I think I might be shaking but I move my left hand down, touching his cheek with my fingertips, then his jaw, his neck, my fingers intertwine into his hair at the nape of his neck. I move my lips to his and say, "Sorry." My lips caress his. And now I feel him breathing onto my mouth, and his breath mixes with mine, our mouths slightly open. "Sorry about the scar." And his lips feel good against mine and I have to kiss him, but very gently. He doesn't kiss me back, I open my eyes to see his but his eyes are closed. "Sorry I beat you up." As I speak my lips brush his again, and I kiss him again. And I check his eyes, and they're still closed and he still hasn't kissed me back. He hasn't moved away, but not into me either.
My hand is on his neck and in his hair and I want to kiss him again but I daren't now.
All I can do is say, "Sorry...sorry...sorry I hurt you." My lips still brush his as I say it, I do it on purpose, because I like doing it and I'm desperate for him to do something.
But he still does nothing.
"Gabriel, I'm sorry. This is me being as nice as I can." Still nothing. But his breath feels uneven. Maybe.
"I'll wait here forever, if that's what you want. I'll say sorry again and again."
And then I feel his hand on my waist, first one gently, barely touching, then the other; more firm. And he pulls me toward him, our hips together. I feel him against me. He says this so slowly his lips brushing against mine, "You should be nice more often." Then he says some stuff in French and all the time his lips are brushing against mine and then he finally kisses me. Hard. I move my hand farther up his through his hair and grab a fistful. My other hand wanders into his shirt, over his back taking its place above his pant line. Our mouths open, tongues intertwining. He pushes me into a wall in the bathroom. His hands are wandering over me, my stomach. I all the sudden feel overwhelmed. By everything. Him feeling my scars, I feel far to open. I shove him off me, and he cowers back. Immediate regret fills my chest. I lay my hand on his cheek, he looks up at me, and I kiss him gently.
His hands stay firmly placed on my hips, not moving. I know why, because I shoved him off me. And the first time, I did the same thing. He's kissing me back, but it's not the same as just a minute ago, he's maybe timid. Or worried what I'll do. Either way, I want him to know I'm sure, sure that this is what I want. He is what I want. So I pull away, not shove him away, I keep my hands in his shirt, caressing his back. The gold is slowly tumbling, slower than usual. He's nervous. I take his hands and move them up to my stomach, despite how I acted; I liked it. Him feeling me, knowing me. I want him to know that I want him to touch me, feel me, caress me. The gold comes back to life, and he pushes me back against the wall, caressing my stomach, my scars, all over. He's kissing me intensely again and I feel a relief flood through me. I hadn't ruined it. I caress up and down his back, feeling his skin against my hands. I slide my fingers into his pants, and kiss him quick a few times before pulling back to look at the gold tumbling. I want Gabriel to know me, every part of me. I want him to know that I trust him more than I trust anybody else. I smile at him, and I know he knows what I want.