090. if you want love, we'll make it [3/11]
Title | if you want love, we'll make it
Chapter | 3/11
Rating | hm. r-ish.
Characters | Blair/Serena (Blair/Nate)
Summary | Sometimes she forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
The first person she sees is Nate.
She's on the sidewalk, near Central Park, and he bounds over to her like a puppy, blue eyes shining and a duffel bag slung over one of his shoulders, most likely full of sporting equipment of some kind.
"Blair! Hey!"
She smiles softly, ignoring the pang in her heart at the sight of him, all blond and earnest. "Nate, hi."
"You're back! How was Europe?"
"Good." She nods. "Relaxing."
The light in his eyes dims, just barely, as he teases, "You went on vacation with Serena van der Woodsen and you thought it was relaxing?"
She keeps smiling bravely. "We weren't together the whole time. I haven't seen her in a while, actually."
"No?" His brow furrows. "I thought this trip was supposed to be, like…your reunion tour, or something."
Blair shrugs, weary now. "People grow apart as they grow up."
He stares at her, clearly doubtful. "I guess."
An exhale, and then she says, "All these questions! You must have missed her."
Nate shrugs, too, and his smile brightens again. "I missed you both."
He walks her home, and right at her door, when she's about to suggest very vaguely that they get coffee sometime before school starts, he says abruptly, "That shouldn't happen to us."
She blinks. "What?"
Nate rubs at the back of his neck, like he's nervous. "Growing apart."
Still, she stares. "To who?"
His smile appears again, slowly but steadily forming. "You and me."
"Oh…kay," she says, a little startled. "Let's get coffee sometime before school starts. How about…Thursday?"
"Thursday works." He nods.
She grins for a moment. "See you then, Archibald."
She's excited for Columbia. She looks forward to her classes and her professors and living with girls who will compliment her headbands in the mornings. She wants to excel at something again, to define Blair Cornelia Waldorf without help from anyone else.
And as she's inspecting her reflection in her floor-length mirror the morning of the day she's supposed to meet Nate for coffee and textbook-shopping, she's excited that she'll know one person there.
She runs into Lily at Bendel's that same day.
(The two of them reach for the same dress at the same time, which is something she'd rather not think about ever again.)
"Blair!" Serena's mother smiles, clearly pleased to see her. "Welcome home! I wasn't expecting to see you back so soon."
She leans in to air-kiss Lily's cheeks before pulling away and slipping her hands into the pockets of her lightweight coat. "Well, school starts soon, so…"
"Yes, of course." Lily waves a hand in the air. "I just thought you would have wanted to stay as long as possible."
Blair relaxes into the conversation, the meaningless pleasantries. "Europe has its charm, of course, but I missed being home."
Lily's gaze is gentle. "Of course you did, dear." Her smile turns questioning as she says lightly, "Serena didn't happen to give you a timeframe, did she? Of when she would be coming home? She's been difficult to get a hold of lately."
Her heart lurches. "Oh. Um. No, I'm sorry, she didn't."
Lily looks wistful as she comments, jokingly, "I hope those two don't intend to stay away forever."
Blair makes an effort to keep her smile serene. "Two?"
"Serena and Charles, dear."
She crosses her arms, hugging herself a bit; she feels like she's in danger of falling apart. "Charles?" she echoes faintly.
For a moment Lily just looks at her, and then understanding flickers over her face. "Oh," she says softly, "I'm sorry, Blair, I just assumed you were with them. Since you and Charles…"
"Charles and I," Blair manages to say, her voice strangled, "broke up."
Lily nods. "I'm sure Serena would have told you she'd gone to Prague, in any other circumstances. It's just been difficult for Charles - with the physical therapy. It's good for him, to have her there."
The part of Blair that loves Serena (just loves her, free of labels or definitions) and the part of her that once loved Chuck are both angered by that statement. So why aren't you there for them? she wants to ask, but doesn't.
"Certainly," she says instead, nodding her head numbly in agreement. She wonders if Serena's been in Prague ever since she left Paris.
"I'll let you go, dear." Lily kisses her cheek. "You must be busy getting ready for school. Send Serena my love if you happen to speak with her," she adds, laughing.
Blair forces a stiff smile onto her face. "Same to you."
"You're quiet." Nate's hand rests at the small of her back for a moment as he steps around her, searching the shelves for the last book he needs for his political science course.
"Hm," she says faintly, licking her lips. She's still holding a Styrofoam cup, half-filled with coffee that must be cold by now. Nate guzzled two lattes while she was sipping her first cup of coffee - no cream, no sugar, just black.
He stops perusing and gives her all of his attention. "What's up?"
She pulls a book off one of the shelves a little more aggressively than necessary. "Did you know?"
"About what?"
The honest confusion on his face only annoys her more, and she kind of snaps at him when she says, "About Chuck."
Realization dawns, flickering through his eyes. "Oh. Oh, yeah. Of course."
She swallows hard. She doesn't know what to say.
Slowly, Nate says, "But you…you didn't. Did you?"
"Not until an hour ago when I ran into Lily, who just assumed I'd been in Prague with him this entire summer."
"I'm sorry." He doesn't really have anything to apologize for, but it's sweet that he says it. "I would have told you, I just…I guess I assumed, too."
She huffs. "I don't automatically know when something happens to him."
Nate shifts away from her a little, like he's expecting a negative reaction. "I thought Serena would've told you," he admits.
Blair thinks she might cry, right there in Columbia's bookstore. "I haven't spoken to Serena in months. And I don't," she adds quickly, before he can even open his mouth, "want to talk about why."
He looks worried, hovering close to her. "Okay," he says, and then, "Okay," again with a little more resolve. He takes all of the books she's carrying out of her arms and sets the pile back on one of the shelves, then sets her coffee cup on the shelf as well, leaving her hands free. He takes her elbow and steers her toward the door.
"Wait…what…" She glances over her shoulder. "But my books."
"Books can wait," Nate tells her, cheerful even though the sentence is clearly nonnegotiable.
Her voice rises in pitch just a little, tinged with panic, with something out-of-control. "Where are you taking me?"
Nate grins at her - boyish and sweet and she remembers being five years old, his smile across the playground and the way she'd wanted to bask in its glow, wanted to have it directed solely at her.
"We are getting drunk," he says, and it's still nonnegotiable - both of them know she's not going to fight him.
She sets her shot glass down on the bar, hard, it makes a satisfying, hollow noise.
"Easy there, tiger." Nate's grin is wide, softly amused by her, laughing with her rather than at her. His hand keeps hovering in the air behind her back, like he thinks she'll fall off of the stool she's sitting on. "What number is that?"
"Only two," Blair insists, even though it's more like six or seven by this point. "You know, I'm not Serena."
His face swims in front of her eyes. "I've noticed that, yeah."
She exhales sharply, suddenly nauseous. "I hurt so bad," she confesses, quiet and grammatically incorrect.
He stands from the stool he's sitting on next to her, moving closer. "You'll be okay."
"I don't know that. You don't know that."
"Sure I do." He touches her hair very lightly, very softly - different from the way Serena's fingers always weaved through her hair, like it was her property, like it was part of her own self. He gives her half of a hug, his face pressing against her neck for a split second. "You're Blair, you know?"
That sounds good, when he says it. Better than being Serena, as good as being Serena - her thoughts bend and curve and she blinks away tears and wishes.
She asks him a question; it might be d'you love me or it might be did you love me. It takes him a while to answer, at least a full minute, and she's drunk enough that she doesn't remember the question itself by the time he's replying to her, doesn't even bother listening to the answer.
His initial silence was enough.
With Nate, sex is strangely nostalgic.
It's honestly the best descriptor she can think of, late in the evening while he dozes next to her, his arm slung heavily over her stomach, her brain still a little hazy from all the tequila shots.
Even when she's drunk and even when she's been with Chuck for nearly two years and even when she kissed him first, he still touches her like there's the slimmest of possibilities that he might break her, still whispers you okay? against her skin afterward, still kisses her gently before he falls into a light slumber.
She watches his face, peaceful with sleep, and she kind of misses him.
She disentangles herself from his arms and gets up, puts herself partially back together (skirt on with no tights underneath, shirt not quite buttoned up to the collar, hair finger-combed) and then wanders around the suite that he still technically shares with Chuck. It's odd, and maybe a little haunting, that she's been in the other bedroom, the other bed, countless times, but this is one of the first time she's even seen what colour Nate's sheets are.
In the kitchen, she pours herself a glass of water, hating the way her body navigates this place, with the kind of familiarity her brain never gave it the right to have. Her instinct is to sit down at the table, so she wanders into the living room area instead, over to the window, gazes down on New York's streets.
She knows what Nate's been up to this summer - Gossip Girl is a hard addiction to break. Every picture she's seen of him has come with a lazy smile and a girl attached.
And yet. Here she is. Here they are, back to the beginning.
She sets her glass down on the counter, does not pour the remaining water out, does not place it in the sink; she's no one's girlfriend, she doesn't have to. Back in Nate's room she tiptoes around, contemplating cuddling up to him again. She doesn't really want to strip off her clothes again, but she can't exactly get into bed in her silk blouse and skirt, so she goes to his closet instead, looking for some kind of attire that is more acceptably post-coital.
His closet is full of suits and blazers, some wrinkled, some freshly dry-cleaned. She pokes around, looking for a shirt to slip into, but she doesn't find one until she reaches the back of the closet. It's pale blue and clearly unwashed, carefully placed on a hanger. Curious, she reaches for it - and is almost instantly overwhelmed by a scent she recognizes, that easy-yet-intoxicating mix of Serena's shampoo and perfume.
She takes a cab home, her feet jammed uncomfortably into her shoes, carrying her tights and her headband and her bra.
Back to the beginning is right.
Nate shows up at her house the next afternoon: sheepish smile, emerald green sweater.
"Is that." She stops short, her mouth going dry.
"You ran off on me yesterday," he says, shuffling into the foyer of her home. "That's not like you."
Blair hardly hears him. "Are you wearing…"
His eyes burn into hers. "What happened?"
She sighs, running a hand over her face wearily. She still needs to buy her school books, and she's had an incessant hangover all day. "The same thing that always happens." He'll have to figure that one out. Blair isn't going to say her name.
To his credit, after all these years, Nate understands. "We broke up. You know that."
"It's not you," she blurts it out, her voice trembling. It's me.
He shrugs, easygoing as always, even with that guarded look in his eyes. "Well. I still owe you a trip to the bookstore."
"Nate." Her heart cracks along the fault lines that have been there since she left Paris. She touches his sleeve, feeling underneath for the pin she sewed there - it feels like eons ago, now.
"Blair," he volleys back, smiling.
"Do you…"
"Do you?"
She doesn't think when she kisses him.
Their trip to the bookstore is a fun one. She giggles nearly the whole time, her hand in his, fingers woven together. They realize that they're taking three of the same classes in the first semester. He buys a hat. She buys a scarf.
"We'll match," she laughs, her heartbeat slow and calm, alwayshavealwayswill.
He loops the scarf around her, pulls her toward him for a kiss. His mouth tastes like sugar and toothpaste. He buys the scarf for her, a present, and he carries her heavy bags of books.
Classes start on a Thursday.
Nate picks her up in a towncar and they drive to campus together. They hold hands, walking close to one another, and he presses a kiss to the side of her head, whispering secrets into her ear, gossip and rumours about all of the people they pass on the way to their first classes, making her laugh and gasp.
"This way," he says brightly, pulling her along another path, but Blair freezes exactly where she is. She doesn't respond when he tugs on her hand and he turns back, wonders, "Blair?"
She blinks. Across the courtyard, unmistakable, it's Serena.
She can't be more than fifteen feet away, a yellow dress and a flower tucked into her loose hair, a map in her hands. She lifts her head, sensing someone's gaze on her, and her eyes clash abruptly with Blair's, startled.
In some kind of act of self-preservation she'll never be able to explain, Blair yanks her hand out of Nate's grasp. She lifts that hand, to wave, but it falls back to her side quickly. Lame, she berates herself, trying not to breathe so quickly.
Serena just stares at her, a thousand uncertainties in her eyes.
tbc.
Chapter | 3/11
Rating | hm. r-ish.
Characters | Blair/Serena (Blair/Nate)
Summary | Sometimes she forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
The first person she sees is Nate.
She's on the sidewalk, near Central Park, and he bounds over to her like a puppy, blue eyes shining and a duffel bag slung over one of his shoulders, most likely full of sporting equipment of some kind.
"Blair! Hey!"
She smiles softly, ignoring the pang in her heart at the sight of him, all blond and earnest. "Nate, hi."
"You're back! How was Europe?"
"Good." She nods. "Relaxing."
The light in his eyes dims, just barely, as he teases, "You went on vacation with Serena van der Woodsen and you thought it was relaxing?"
She keeps smiling bravely. "We weren't together the whole time. I haven't seen her in a while, actually."
"No?" His brow furrows. "I thought this trip was supposed to be, like…your reunion tour, or something."
Blair shrugs, weary now. "People grow apart as they grow up."
He stares at her, clearly doubtful. "I guess."
An exhale, and then she says, "All these questions! You must have missed her."
Nate shrugs, too, and his smile brightens again. "I missed you both."
He walks her home, and right at her door, when she's about to suggest very vaguely that they get coffee sometime before school starts, he says abruptly, "That shouldn't happen to us."
She blinks. "What?"
Nate rubs at the back of his neck, like he's nervous. "Growing apart."
Still, she stares. "To who?"
His smile appears again, slowly but steadily forming. "You and me."
"Oh…kay," she says, a little startled. "Let's get coffee sometime before school starts. How about…Thursday?"
"Thursday works." He nods.
She grins for a moment. "See you then, Archibald."
She's excited for Columbia. She looks forward to her classes and her professors and living with girls who will compliment her headbands in the mornings. She wants to excel at something again, to define Blair Cornelia Waldorf without help from anyone else.
And as she's inspecting her reflection in her floor-length mirror the morning of the day she's supposed to meet Nate for coffee and textbook-shopping, she's excited that she'll know one person there.
She runs into Lily at Bendel's that same day.
(The two of them reach for the same dress at the same time, which is something she'd rather not think about ever again.)
"Blair!" Serena's mother smiles, clearly pleased to see her. "Welcome home! I wasn't expecting to see you back so soon."
She leans in to air-kiss Lily's cheeks before pulling away and slipping her hands into the pockets of her lightweight coat. "Well, school starts soon, so…"
"Yes, of course." Lily waves a hand in the air. "I just thought you would have wanted to stay as long as possible."
Blair relaxes into the conversation, the meaningless pleasantries. "Europe has its charm, of course, but I missed being home."
Lily's gaze is gentle. "Of course you did, dear." Her smile turns questioning as she says lightly, "Serena didn't happen to give you a timeframe, did she? Of when she would be coming home? She's been difficult to get a hold of lately."
Her heart lurches. "Oh. Um. No, I'm sorry, she didn't."
Lily looks wistful as she comments, jokingly, "I hope those two don't intend to stay away forever."
Blair makes an effort to keep her smile serene. "Two?"
"Serena and Charles, dear."
She crosses her arms, hugging herself a bit; she feels like she's in danger of falling apart. "Charles?" she echoes faintly.
For a moment Lily just looks at her, and then understanding flickers over her face. "Oh," she says softly, "I'm sorry, Blair, I just assumed you were with them. Since you and Charles…"
"Charles and I," Blair manages to say, her voice strangled, "broke up."
Lily nods. "I'm sure Serena would have told you she'd gone to Prague, in any other circumstances. It's just been difficult for Charles - with the physical therapy. It's good for him, to have her there."
The part of Blair that loves Serena (just loves her, free of labels or definitions) and the part of her that once loved Chuck are both angered by that statement. So why aren't you there for them? she wants to ask, but doesn't.
"Certainly," she says instead, nodding her head numbly in agreement. She wonders if Serena's been in Prague ever since she left Paris.
"I'll let you go, dear." Lily kisses her cheek. "You must be busy getting ready for school. Send Serena my love if you happen to speak with her," she adds, laughing.
Blair forces a stiff smile onto her face. "Same to you."
"You're quiet." Nate's hand rests at the small of her back for a moment as he steps around her, searching the shelves for the last book he needs for his political science course.
"Hm," she says faintly, licking her lips. She's still holding a Styrofoam cup, half-filled with coffee that must be cold by now. Nate guzzled two lattes while she was sipping her first cup of coffee - no cream, no sugar, just black.
He stops perusing and gives her all of his attention. "What's up?"
She pulls a book off one of the shelves a little more aggressively than necessary. "Did you know?"
"About what?"
The honest confusion on his face only annoys her more, and she kind of snaps at him when she says, "About Chuck."
Realization dawns, flickering through his eyes. "Oh. Oh, yeah. Of course."
She swallows hard. She doesn't know what to say.
Slowly, Nate says, "But you…you didn't. Did you?"
"Not until an hour ago when I ran into Lily, who just assumed I'd been in Prague with him this entire summer."
"I'm sorry." He doesn't really have anything to apologize for, but it's sweet that he says it. "I would have told you, I just…I guess I assumed, too."
She huffs. "I don't automatically know when something happens to him."
Nate shifts away from her a little, like he's expecting a negative reaction. "I thought Serena would've told you," he admits.
Blair thinks she might cry, right there in Columbia's bookstore. "I haven't spoken to Serena in months. And I don't," she adds quickly, before he can even open his mouth, "want to talk about why."
He looks worried, hovering close to her. "Okay," he says, and then, "Okay," again with a little more resolve. He takes all of the books she's carrying out of her arms and sets the pile back on one of the shelves, then sets her coffee cup on the shelf as well, leaving her hands free. He takes her elbow and steers her toward the door.
"Wait…what…" She glances over her shoulder. "But my books."
"Books can wait," Nate tells her, cheerful even though the sentence is clearly nonnegotiable.
Her voice rises in pitch just a little, tinged with panic, with something out-of-control. "Where are you taking me?"
Nate grins at her - boyish and sweet and she remembers being five years old, his smile across the playground and the way she'd wanted to bask in its glow, wanted to have it directed solely at her.
"We are getting drunk," he says, and it's still nonnegotiable - both of them know she's not going to fight him.
She sets her shot glass down on the bar, hard, it makes a satisfying, hollow noise.
"Easy there, tiger." Nate's grin is wide, softly amused by her, laughing with her rather than at her. His hand keeps hovering in the air behind her back, like he thinks she'll fall off of the stool she's sitting on. "What number is that?"
"Only two," Blair insists, even though it's more like six or seven by this point. "You know, I'm not Serena."
His face swims in front of her eyes. "I've noticed that, yeah."
She exhales sharply, suddenly nauseous. "I hurt so bad," she confesses, quiet and grammatically incorrect.
He stands from the stool he's sitting on next to her, moving closer. "You'll be okay."
"I don't know that. You don't know that."
"Sure I do." He touches her hair very lightly, very softly - different from the way Serena's fingers always weaved through her hair, like it was her property, like it was part of her own self. He gives her half of a hug, his face pressing against her neck for a split second. "You're Blair, you know?"
That sounds good, when he says it. Better than being Serena, as good as being Serena - her thoughts bend and curve and she blinks away tears and wishes.
She asks him a question; it might be d'you love me or it might be did you love me. It takes him a while to answer, at least a full minute, and she's drunk enough that she doesn't remember the question itself by the time he's replying to her, doesn't even bother listening to the answer.
His initial silence was enough.
With Nate, sex is strangely nostalgic.
It's honestly the best descriptor she can think of, late in the evening while he dozes next to her, his arm slung heavily over her stomach, her brain still a little hazy from all the tequila shots.
Even when she's drunk and even when she's been with Chuck for nearly two years and even when she kissed him first, he still touches her like there's the slimmest of possibilities that he might break her, still whispers you okay? against her skin afterward, still kisses her gently before he falls into a light slumber.
She watches his face, peaceful with sleep, and she kind of misses him.
She disentangles herself from his arms and gets up, puts herself partially back together (skirt on with no tights underneath, shirt not quite buttoned up to the collar, hair finger-combed) and then wanders around the suite that he still technically shares with Chuck. It's odd, and maybe a little haunting, that she's been in the other bedroom, the other bed, countless times, but this is one of the first time she's even seen what colour Nate's sheets are.
In the kitchen, she pours herself a glass of water, hating the way her body navigates this place, with the kind of familiarity her brain never gave it the right to have. Her instinct is to sit down at the table, so she wanders into the living room area instead, over to the window, gazes down on New York's streets.
She knows what Nate's been up to this summer - Gossip Girl is a hard addiction to break. Every picture she's seen of him has come with a lazy smile and a girl attached.
And yet. Here she is. Here they are, back to the beginning.
She sets her glass down on the counter, does not pour the remaining water out, does not place it in the sink; she's no one's girlfriend, she doesn't have to. Back in Nate's room she tiptoes around, contemplating cuddling up to him again. She doesn't really want to strip off her clothes again, but she can't exactly get into bed in her silk blouse and skirt, so she goes to his closet instead, looking for some kind of attire that is more acceptably post-coital.
His closet is full of suits and blazers, some wrinkled, some freshly dry-cleaned. She pokes around, looking for a shirt to slip into, but she doesn't find one until she reaches the back of the closet. It's pale blue and clearly unwashed, carefully placed on a hanger. Curious, she reaches for it - and is almost instantly overwhelmed by a scent she recognizes, that easy-yet-intoxicating mix of Serena's shampoo and perfume.
She takes a cab home, her feet jammed uncomfortably into her shoes, carrying her tights and her headband and her bra.
Back to the beginning is right.
Nate shows up at her house the next afternoon: sheepish smile, emerald green sweater.
"Is that." She stops short, her mouth going dry.
"You ran off on me yesterday," he says, shuffling into the foyer of her home. "That's not like you."
Blair hardly hears him. "Are you wearing…"
His eyes burn into hers. "What happened?"
She sighs, running a hand over her face wearily. She still needs to buy her school books, and she's had an incessant hangover all day. "The same thing that always happens." He'll have to figure that one out. Blair isn't going to say her name.
To his credit, after all these years, Nate understands. "We broke up. You know that."
"It's not you," she blurts it out, her voice trembling. It's me.
He shrugs, easygoing as always, even with that guarded look in his eyes. "Well. I still owe you a trip to the bookstore."
"Nate." Her heart cracks along the fault lines that have been there since she left Paris. She touches his sleeve, feeling underneath for the pin she sewed there - it feels like eons ago, now.
"Blair," he volleys back, smiling.
"Do you…"
"Do you?"
She doesn't think when she kisses him.
Their trip to the bookstore is a fun one. She giggles nearly the whole time, her hand in his, fingers woven together. They realize that they're taking three of the same classes in the first semester. He buys a hat. She buys a scarf.
"We'll match," she laughs, her heartbeat slow and calm, alwayshavealwayswill.
He loops the scarf around her, pulls her toward him for a kiss. His mouth tastes like sugar and toothpaste. He buys the scarf for her, a present, and he carries her heavy bags of books.
Classes start on a Thursday.
Nate picks her up in a towncar and they drive to campus together. They hold hands, walking close to one another, and he presses a kiss to the side of her head, whispering secrets into her ear, gossip and rumours about all of the people they pass on the way to their first classes, making her laugh and gasp.
"This way," he says brightly, pulling her along another path, but Blair freezes exactly where she is. She doesn't respond when he tugs on her hand and he turns back, wonders, "Blair?"
She blinks. Across the courtyard, unmistakable, it's Serena.
She can't be more than fifteen feet away, a yellow dress and a flower tucked into her loose hair, a map in her hands. She lifts her head, sensing someone's gaze on her, and her eyes clash abruptly with Blair's, startled.
In some kind of act of self-preservation she'll never be able to explain, Blair yanks her hand out of Nate's grasp. She lifts that hand, to wave, but it falls back to her side quickly. Lame, she berates herself, trying not to breathe so quickly.
Serena just stares at her, a thousand uncertainties in her eyes.
tbc.