093. if you want love, we'll make it [5/11]
Title | if you want love, we'll make it
Chapter | 5/11
Rating | hm. r-ish.
Characters | Blair/Serena (Blair/Nate, hints of Blair/Chuck and Nate/Serena)
Summary | Sometimes she forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
He looks different.
He looks really different - his outfit is all black and gray, somber and formal. Something about his eyes is off, not quite like she remembers, and he's using a cane.
"Bass," she replies with as much dignity as she can muster up with shaking hands and smushed éclairs spilled over the floor at her feet.
Serena appears out of nowhere in a tiny little tank top and a pair of sweatpants, looking perfectly comfortable, perfectly at home. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest and her mouth is twisted into a frown.
"Leave her alone, Chuck," she says softly.
"I don't need you to defend me," Blair snaps. "I don't - " She clears her throat and lifts her chin, stepping over the éclair box. "I don't need you at all, especially not if you're hanging out with him."
"Just some family bonding," Chuck smarms.
Blair shoots daggers at him with her eyes. "You're disgusting."
Serena reaches toward Chuck, her hand on his forearm, and gives him a look of such seriousness that Blair can't even begin to decipher it.
But she decides that's irrelevant. "If you two could quit staring at each other, I'd like to know where my boyfriend is."
Carefully, Serena moves so that she's standing in front of Blair, Chuck at her back - like she's protecting him or something, which makes Blair's blood boil. "Probably in his room."
"Great." Blair waits a moment and then lifts her eyebrows; Serena's in her way. "Excuse me."
Serena sighs like Blair is some huge kind of inconvenience in her life. "Those extra two steps aren't going to kill you."
"Ladies," Chuck begins, and they both whirl toward him and spit out the same words at the same time.
"Stay out of it," they say, in complete unison, which effectively shuts him up.
Nate chooses that moment to wander out of his room, one hand rubbing at his eyes. He's in sweats, like Serena, and a t-shirt and a comfy sweater, clearly intent on staying in for the evening.
"Hey, Blair," he murmurs when he sees her, and she smiles triumphantly.
"Hi, sweetheart," she chirps, her frown melting away. She steps closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and planting her lips on his.
He responds to her kiss but he pulls away gently after only a couple of seconds, rubbing at her back and peering over her shoulder. "Is there…cake on the floor?" he wonders, a smile in his voice.
Blair leans her head against his shoulder. "Chuck made me spill." She lifts her head to smile back at him. "Let's go out so I can buy you replacement éclairs." She presses a gentle kiss to his cheek and says more softly, "I want to be alone with you."
Nate rubs at his hair, almost bashfully. "I was kinda studying," he admits. His eyes keep darting over her shoulder, behind her, but Blair refuses to follow his gaze - he looks caught and trapped and a little bit sad, a little bit confused, and all she knows is that she doesn't want to see the expressions on Chuck and Serena's faces.
"I'll help you," she offers sweetly, running her hand through his hair, smoothing out the mess he just made of it with his own hand. "Come on, honey."
Chuck's voice is like a shock to her system - the sound is as sharp as nails on a chalkboard and Blair can't help her physical reaction, can't help the way she winces.
"What about the mess on my floor?" he demands.
Blair looks in his direction but not really at him. "You should learn to clean up your messes."
"Don't start," Serena interjects. Her voice is very small. "I'll do it."
"Serena," Nate says, obviously wishing to refuse her offer, and Blair watches the way the blonde sucks in a sharp breath and fixes her eyes on the floor.
"I'll do it," she repeats.
Blair wishes she hadn't come here. The four of them, together - they have too much history and too much love and too much hate and it makes her dizzy, the fact that there's just too much; it sucks the air from the room and clouds her vision and makes her wish she was anywhere else.
"Let's just go." Blair finds Nate's hand with her own and squeezes his fingers, probably harder than she should, something that feels like please. "Let's go."
He looks at her with surprised, serious eyes and nods very slowly. "Okay." He glances at Chuck and Serena, but he doesn't say anything, just pulls Blair toward the elevator, stepping over the spilled éclairs. "Let's go, then."
They go to the Met, because it's the only place Blair can think of. It's starting to get colder now, in the evening - the wind whooshes around her as she sits heavily on one of the steps, waiting for Nate to join her.
He sits down more slowly than she does. For a while, they're silent, watching New York move around them.
And then Nate clears his throat and asks, "You cold?"
She crosses her arms and lies, "No."
"Okay," Nate says easily, taking the obvious fib at face value.
That makes tears spring to her eyes, and she blinks fiercely to get rid of them. They were never perfect but they were them, and maybe he didn't call her out on the things he should have (twenty-minute trips to the washroom and too many breath mints), and maybe she didn't call him out on all of the things that were obvious (touches and looks that weren't shared with her and that lingered too long), but he never pushed her even when she pushed him. She loved him, and he loved her, and it was adolescent and easy and at the time nothing had felt more perfect.
Nate shifts a little on the steps. "Sad?" he tries.
And she snaps, "No," a little too harshly and then holds out a hand demandingly. "What do you have on you?"
He blinks. "Huh?"
She rolls her eyes - this, too, is so familiar and so almost, so maybe - let's just be perfect. "Do you have a joint, Nate?"
His eyes go wide. "You want to smoke?" He pauses and then rephrases with new emphasis, completely doubtful: "You want to smoke?"
"That's what I said."
"Blair, you're - "
"I'm fine. Not cold and not sad," she insists, even though she is both.
Nate lights the joint tentatively, eyeing her constantly in his peripheral vision, as if they're still thirteen and there are still parts of her left uncorrupted. "Blair…" he mutters gravely.
"Shush." She presses her cold lips to his warmer ones, basks in the feeling of the kiss for a moment, and then she snatches the joint from his hands.
Nate knots his hands together while she smokes, his eyes on the street and the people around them. "You should tell me. Whatever it is." He sighs a long-suffering sigh. "I already know."
She tosses the joint aside - she is sad and tired and freezing cold and being high isn't going to take away her heartache. "You don't know."
It's not until he eases his arm around her shoulders that she realizes she's shivering. "So tell me."
"I can't." Her voice cracks and her teeth start to chatter.
Nate presses his face into her hair, his lips against the shell of her ear, his voice soothing and soft. "Always so stubborn…" he teases lightly.
She sucks in some air. "You too."
He nods, still in the same position. "We all are."
Blair huddles into him a little desperately. "I'm cold," she admits.
He pulls her as close as possible, into a cozy bear-hug. "And sad, yeah?"
"And sad," she whispers, nodding as best as she can. She doesn't care if this ends up on Gossip Girl. She doesn't care about much anymore - aside from all of the things (the people, the person) she shouldn't care about at all.
"You'll be okay." Nate rubs her arm. "You always are; you're…you, you hold it all together even when the rest of us are all broken."
She bursts into tears and cries, really cries, ugly sobs and gasping breaths that she's not proud of, hiding in his embrace. She's never felt as broken as she does now.
"This is what he wants, you know?" She has to focus very hard to understand what Nate is saying. "He just wants to get to you. And he loves you, I know he does, he just really fucking sucks at…showing it the right way."
Blair pushes away from the hug, hands on her cheeks, wiping away tears. "I don't love him anymore." It hasn't really struck her as truth until this moment, but when she says it she believes herself.
"You don't have to - "
"I'm not." She turns toward him, sniffling. "I'm really not. I just don't love him anymore."
There's a ninety-nine percent chance that Nate doesn't believe her, but he pretends to. "Alright," he shrugs.
She huffs. "You're so stupid." She cannot believe that he just shrugged.
Nate grins, sudden and too-sweet. "You love me, Blair Cornelia Waldorf."
Holding his gaze, she sighs. "I wish…"
His smile doesn't falter, not in the least. "We always do the same thing, you and me." His eyes fall away from her face. "Even when you don't love him anymore."
Her eyes are aching. "Sorry," she mumbles.
"Hey, me too," he says, easily but seriously. "If not Chuck then…" He pauses for only a millisecond. "Then Serena."
She doesn't even think before she says, "Some things never change."
Nate shrugs off his sweatshirt and wraps it around her shoulders instead. "You just said that you don't love him." It's more of a reminder than an accusation.
She makes an effort to pull herself together. "I wasn't talking about him."
"So…"
As much as she loves Nate, she doesn't have the patience to wait for him to connect the dots right now. "So I was talking about Serena."
Nate bristles a little, and she doesn't understand that physical reaction until he mutters, "She - she chose - I gave…" He sighs. "I said in or out. She picked out."
She would smile if it weren't for the part of her that wonders if he loves her still (and if Serena loves him still). "That's not…what I meant."
"So what'd you mean then?" He looks a bit wounded for some reason.
"I meant for me. It isn't Chuck for me."
His whole expression descends into one of confusion.
Blair sighs impatiently - of course she would pick Nate for this particular confession. "I…" she trails off uncertainly, but his sweater is still around her shoulders and his eyes are full of understanding. "Stuff…happened," she finally whispers, her voice stilted. "With Serena. This summer."
"Well, duh." Nate laughs lightly. "You two have been weird around each other since you got back."
"No, Nate." She's almost - keyword here being almost - tempted to laugh as well. "I mean…" Her cheeks heat up ridiculously and she shifts on the steps, the place she's been one million times with the same girl she's talking about right now.
"You mean what?"
"I mean." She ducks her head and tugs his sweater tighter around her. "I mean that stuff happened."
"But…what?"
He looks so earnestly confused that it drives her crazy. "Stuff, Nathaniel." She pauses and then repeats, "Stuff."
Nate stares at her for a long time - too long, and her heart starts to pound and her eyes start to water.
"Forget it," she whispers, suddenly beyond embarrassed. "Just forget I ever - "
And then his jaw drops. "You mean…like…like stuff?"
She swallows hard, her heart hammering away; she can feel her pulse in every single part of her body. "Forget it; I just said to forget it."
Never in her entire life, as much as she used to want him to, has Nate Archibald ever looked at her with such awe.
"No shit," he gasps.
tbc.
Chapter | 5/11
Rating | hm. r-ish.
Characters | Blair/Serena (Blair/Nate, hints of Blair/Chuck and Nate/Serena)
Summary | Sometimes she forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
He looks different.
He looks really different - his outfit is all black and gray, somber and formal. Something about his eyes is off, not quite like she remembers, and he's using a cane.
"Bass," she replies with as much dignity as she can muster up with shaking hands and smushed éclairs spilled over the floor at her feet.
Serena appears out of nowhere in a tiny little tank top and a pair of sweatpants, looking perfectly comfortable, perfectly at home. Her arms are crossed tightly over her chest and her mouth is twisted into a frown.
"Leave her alone, Chuck," she says softly.
"I don't need you to defend me," Blair snaps. "I don't - " She clears her throat and lifts her chin, stepping over the éclair box. "I don't need you at all, especially not if you're hanging out with him."
"Just some family bonding," Chuck smarms.
Blair shoots daggers at him with her eyes. "You're disgusting."
Serena reaches toward Chuck, her hand on his forearm, and gives him a look of such seriousness that Blair can't even begin to decipher it.
But she decides that's irrelevant. "If you two could quit staring at each other, I'd like to know where my boyfriend is."
Carefully, Serena moves so that she's standing in front of Blair, Chuck at her back - like she's protecting him or something, which makes Blair's blood boil. "Probably in his room."
"Great." Blair waits a moment and then lifts her eyebrows; Serena's in her way. "Excuse me."
Serena sighs like Blair is some huge kind of inconvenience in her life. "Those extra two steps aren't going to kill you."
"Ladies," Chuck begins, and they both whirl toward him and spit out the same words at the same time.
"Stay out of it," they say, in complete unison, which effectively shuts him up.
Nate chooses that moment to wander out of his room, one hand rubbing at his eyes. He's in sweats, like Serena, and a t-shirt and a comfy sweater, clearly intent on staying in for the evening.
"Hey, Blair," he murmurs when he sees her, and she smiles triumphantly.
"Hi, sweetheart," she chirps, her frown melting away. She steps closer to him, wrapping her arms around his neck and planting her lips on his.
He responds to her kiss but he pulls away gently after only a couple of seconds, rubbing at her back and peering over her shoulder. "Is there…cake on the floor?" he wonders, a smile in his voice.
Blair leans her head against his shoulder. "Chuck made me spill." She lifts her head to smile back at him. "Let's go out so I can buy you replacement éclairs." She presses a gentle kiss to his cheek and says more softly, "I want to be alone with you."
Nate rubs at his hair, almost bashfully. "I was kinda studying," he admits. His eyes keep darting over her shoulder, behind her, but Blair refuses to follow his gaze - he looks caught and trapped and a little bit sad, a little bit confused, and all she knows is that she doesn't want to see the expressions on Chuck and Serena's faces.
"I'll help you," she offers sweetly, running her hand through his hair, smoothing out the mess he just made of it with his own hand. "Come on, honey."
Chuck's voice is like a shock to her system - the sound is as sharp as nails on a chalkboard and Blair can't help her physical reaction, can't help the way she winces.
"What about the mess on my floor?" he demands.
Blair looks in his direction but not really at him. "You should learn to clean up your messes."
"Don't start," Serena interjects. Her voice is very small. "I'll do it."
"Serena," Nate says, obviously wishing to refuse her offer, and Blair watches the way the blonde sucks in a sharp breath and fixes her eyes on the floor.
"I'll do it," she repeats.
Blair wishes she hadn't come here. The four of them, together - they have too much history and too much love and too much hate and it makes her dizzy, the fact that there's just too much; it sucks the air from the room and clouds her vision and makes her wish she was anywhere else.
"Let's just go." Blair finds Nate's hand with her own and squeezes his fingers, probably harder than she should, something that feels like please. "Let's go."
He looks at her with surprised, serious eyes and nods very slowly. "Okay." He glances at Chuck and Serena, but he doesn't say anything, just pulls Blair toward the elevator, stepping over the spilled éclairs. "Let's go, then."
They go to the Met, because it's the only place Blair can think of. It's starting to get colder now, in the evening - the wind whooshes around her as she sits heavily on one of the steps, waiting for Nate to join her.
He sits down more slowly than she does. For a while, they're silent, watching New York move around them.
And then Nate clears his throat and asks, "You cold?"
She crosses her arms and lies, "No."
"Okay," Nate says easily, taking the obvious fib at face value.
That makes tears spring to her eyes, and she blinks fiercely to get rid of them. They were never perfect but they were them, and maybe he didn't call her out on the things he should have (twenty-minute trips to the washroom and too many breath mints), and maybe she didn't call him out on all of the things that were obvious (touches and looks that weren't shared with her and that lingered too long), but he never pushed her even when she pushed him. She loved him, and he loved her, and it was adolescent and easy and at the time nothing had felt more perfect.
Nate shifts a little on the steps. "Sad?" he tries.
And she snaps, "No," a little too harshly and then holds out a hand demandingly. "What do you have on you?"
He blinks. "Huh?"
She rolls her eyes - this, too, is so familiar and so almost, so maybe - let's just be perfect. "Do you have a joint, Nate?"
His eyes go wide. "You want to smoke?" He pauses and then rephrases with new emphasis, completely doubtful: "You want to smoke?"
"That's what I said."
"Blair, you're - "
"I'm fine. Not cold and not sad," she insists, even though she is both.
Nate lights the joint tentatively, eyeing her constantly in his peripheral vision, as if they're still thirteen and there are still parts of her left uncorrupted. "Blair…" he mutters gravely.
"Shush." She presses her cold lips to his warmer ones, basks in the feeling of the kiss for a moment, and then she snatches the joint from his hands.
Nate knots his hands together while she smokes, his eyes on the street and the people around them. "You should tell me. Whatever it is." He sighs a long-suffering sigh. "I already know."
She tosses the joint aside - she is sad and tired and freezing cold and being high isn't going to take away her heartache. "You don't know."
It's not until he eases his arm around her shoulders that she realizes she's shivering. "So tell me."
"I can't." Her voice cracks and her teeth start to chatter.
Nate presses his face into her hair, his lips against the shell of her ear, his voice soothing and soft. "Always so stubborn…" he teases lightly.
She sucks in some air. "You too."
He nods, still in the same position. "We all are."
Blair huddles into him a little desperately. "I'm cold," she admits.
He pulls her as close as possible, into a cozy bear-hug. "And sad, yeah?"
"And sad," she whispers, nodding as best as she can. She doesn't care if this ends up on Gossip Girl. She doesn't care about much anymore - aside from all of the things (the people, the person) she shouldn't care about at all.
"You'll be okay." Nate rubs her arm. "You always are; you're…you, you hold it all together even when the rest of us are all broken."
She bursts into tears and cries, really cries, ugly sobs and gasping breaths that she's not proud of, hiding in his embrace. She's never felt as broken as she does now.
"This is what he wants, you know?" She has to focus very hard to understand what Nate is saying. "He just wants to get to you. And he loves you, I know he does, he just really fucking sucks at…showing it the right way."
Blair pushes away from the hug, hands on her cheeks, wiping away tears. "I don't love him anymore." It hasn't really struck her as truth until this moment, but when she says it she believes herself.
"You don't have to - "
"I'm not." She turns toward him, sniffling. "I'm really not. I just don't love him anymore."
There's a ninety-nine percent chance that Nate doesn't believe her, but he pretends to. "Alright," he shrugs.
She huffs. "You're so stupid." She cannot believe that he just shrugged.
Nate grins, sudden and too-sweet. "You love me, Blair Cornelia Waldorf."
Holding his gaze, she sighs. "I wish…"
His smile doesn't falter, not in the least. "We always do the same thing, you and me." His eyes fall away from her face. "Even when you don't love him anymore."
Her eyes are aching. "Sorry," she mumbles.
"Hey, me too," he says, easily but seriously. "If not Chuck then…" He pauses for only a millisecond. "Then Serena."
She doesn't even think before she says, "Some things never change."
Nate shrugs off his sweatshirt and wraps it around her shoulders instead. "You just said that you don't love him." It's more of a reminder than an accusation.
She makes an effort to pull herself together. "I wasn't talking about him."
"So…"
As much as she loves Nate, she doesn't have the patience to wait for him to connect the dots right now. "So I was talking about Serena."
Nate bristles a little, and she doesn't understand that physical reaction until he mutters, "She - she chose - I gave…" He sighs. "I said in or out. She picked out."
She would smile if it weren't for the part of her that wonders if he loves her still (and if Serena loves him still). "That's not…what I meant."
"So what'd you mean then?" He looks a bit wounded for some reason.
"I meant for me. It isn't Chuck for me."
His whole expression descends into one of confusion.
Blair sighs impatiently - of course she would pick Nate for this particular confession. "I…" she trails off uncertainly, but his sweater is still around her shoulders and his eyes are full of understanding. "Stuff…happened," she finally whispers, her voice stilted. "With Serena. This summer."
"Well, duh." Nate laughs lightly. "You two have been weird around each other since you got back."
"No, Nate." She's almost - keyword here being almost - tempted to laugh as well. "I mean…" Her cheeks heat up ridiculously and she shifts on the steps, the place she's been one million times with the same girl she's talking about right now.
"You mean what?"
"I mean." She ducks her head and tugs his sweater tighter around her. "I mean that stuff happened."
"But…what?"
He looks so earnestly confused that it drives her crazy. "Stuff, Nathaniel." She pauses and then repeats, "Stuff."
Nate stares at her for a long time - too long, and her heart starts to pound and her eyes start to water.
"Forget it," she whispers, suddenly beyond embarrassed. "Just forget I ever - "
And then his jaw drops. "You mean…like…like stuff?"
She swallows hard, her heart hammering away; she can feel her pulse in every single part of her body. "Forget it; I just said to forget it."
Never in her entire life, as much as she used to want him to, has Nate Archibald ever looked at her with such awe.
"No shit," he gasps.
tbc.