Somehow, in the midst of her crying the night before, Natalie was able to fall asleep. She didn’t know how, the adrenaline rush she got from her suicide attempt had to have been enough to keep her awake and alert, but whether she wanted to or not, she fell asleep.

The dreams that came to her during her sleep were exactly what she expected. And at this point, she wasn’t even mad. She had resigned herself to the fate of having to relive her slow, likely painful transformation from Nathan to Natalie with each slumber. It seemed reality really wanted her to remember every detail of it, and she had no choice in the matter.

She just couldn’t catch a break could she?

Sitting up in her bed, she recalled the extremely unpleasant and uncomfortable memories that fate had given back to her.

***

Four days of living in this apartment and Nathan still hadn’t cooked a single meal. He felt a bit bad about it, it was probably a pretty shitty and lazy thing to do, but to his credit Astian had only actually cooked twice since the move-in, which included breakfast that current morning.

Still, Nathan could definitely be a bit more helpful. He didn’t want to be a moocher, and he was applying to all the jobs he could. Every minute of the day he had his phone with him, awaiting a call back.

Nathan rubbed his face as he walked into the kitchen, taking notice of how smooth it still was. It had been three days since he shaved, shouldn’t it have grown back at least a little? Opening the camera app on his phone, he saw that his face didn’t even have a 5 o’clock shadow.

That was a little strange. He might have to keep watch of that.

He put it out of his mind as his nose was filled with the scent of bacon, eggs, toast, and hashbrowns. Enough to get his appetite going. Astian handed him a plate, having already finished and put his own plate in the sink. Gee, he was really going out of his way to be nice right now. Internally, Nathan felt even more guilty about his unemployed status.

Nathan went back to the dining room table, Astian following closely behind him. While eating, Nathan tried to focus on reading something on his phone, but he kept getting distracted by Astian looking at him from across the table. At first he tried to ignore it, thinking he would eventually leave, but that never happened. He just stayed there, staring at him.

After a while, Nathan couldn’t stand it. What was he looking at?

“Is something wrong?” Nathan asked him.

Astian’s face turned into a grin, and he almost seemed to chuckle. “No, nothing’s wrong. It’s just that you look really cute when you eat.”

Nathan immediately stopped chewing and stared as Astian finally walked out of the dining room. The fuck was that? He was “cute”? That’s what Astian was staring at? Was he gay or something?

No, Astian wasn’t gay. He was as straight as a man could be. He loved boobs, or at least Nathan had thought. Has Astian really been into men this whole time? Nathan couldn’t recall a single time he even came across as gay, but was it possible he just wasn’t looking hard enough?

Whether he was gay or not, it wasn’t normal for a guy to just go up and call his best male friend “cute” after staring at him for close to a minute. Not with that kind of grin. If it was some kind of joke then it wasn’t funny.

“Fucking weird”, Nathan thought to himself.

***

Still no call back from any of his applications, and Nathan was forced to hide his frustration. Was the world just against him succeeding? Surely one company had to have called back by now, especially with all the applications he’s sent out. He must have the shittiest luck in the world.

Nathan was walking from his bedroom to the living room when he ran into Astian.

“Shit, I dropped my pen.” He said. “Can you pick it up?”

Nathan obliged and bent down. As he grabbed the pen, he felt a hard slap to his butt. He quickly stood up with a shocked expression.

“You have a really nice ass.” Astian said with a weird grin. “And thank you.” He took back his pen.

He walked away after that, leaving Nathan in disarray. Why the hell did Astian do that? Was this part of some long running joke Nathan wasn’t in on? To say it was weird would be an understatement.

Nathan did realize though that he had bent over and displayed his butt entirely in front of Astian, which may have provoked his slap.

Nathan blushed. Why did he do that? He’d have to pay more attention to his actions. He couldn’t leave himself open to that kind of stuff.

***

A full week had passed since Nathan moved into Astian’s apartment. Still no call backs from any company he applied to, a fact that made him groan. Luck was definitely not on his side here.

That wasn’t what was bothering him most right now, though. No, that honor easily went to how Astian had been treating him recently.

For the past few days, at least once per day Astian would say or do something really weird. Something that came off as either flirting or being hit on. Hell, just earlier that day Astian had told him that his eyes looked nice. What kind of straight guy says something like that to another guy?

Of course, there was the possibility that Astian was gay, but Nathan had actually tested that theory yesterday. They had both gone out drinking (thankfully Astian didn’t make any moves on him in public), and while in the car Nathan had asked him if he wanted to go to the gay bar in town. Astian not only instantly shut that down, but he looked repulsed by the suggestion. So Nathan had a hard time believing he was gay.

That only made these actions of his even more bizarre. What was Astian getting out of this? To Nathan’s knowledge he had never remotely acted like this toward any other guy, let alone with such consistency.

Nathan wanted to bring it up with him, or tell him to lay off, but he could never bring himself to actually do it. That would likely cause an awkward confrontation, so Nathan tried his best to ignore it. Hopefully Astian would get bored of this and move on.

Nathan stared at his reflection in the mirror before his shower. Still no sign of his facial hair coming back. This was getting a bit concerning, should he call a doctor? This surely wasn’t a normal thing to happen to a guy.

Nathan went into the shower and as he washed up he noticed something else. His body hair looked a bit… lighter than it used to be. Not quite as thick, and it didn’t stand out as much. He had never really given much thought to his body hair before, but he was sure he wasn’t imagining this change.

He really should call a doctor at some point.

***

Natalie leaned back in her bed. Well, not her bed really but the bed from the hotel room she stayed at during the trial. Apparently she had been brought back to that world, whatever it was called, in her sleep. Truthfully she didn’t know how to feel about that. Maybe it was good she was away from firearms at the moment, but the dreams and the memories they recovered taunted her, making her wonder why she hadn’t just killed herself and gotten this all over with.

No, she didn’t want to go down that road again. She may not be sure who she is, and she may even think her life, the one she remembered, held no weight and didn’t matter at all, but she was sure she didn’t want to kill herself… right?

Maybe that was only because she knew she’d never be able to do it.

Life fucking sucks sometimes.

She heard a knock at her hotel door. She wasn’t surprised to see Sara when she opened it.

“What do you want?” Natalie asked, failing to hide her bitterness.

Sara looked at her sympathetically for what seemed like way too long, at least to Natalie.

“I’m sorry.” She eventually said. “So, so sorry.”