125. baby, me and you
Title | baby, me and you
Chapter | 1/1
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena. Nate/Serena.
Summary | "I wanna do the Titanic thing." An exploration of what could have been. // Title and lyrics from "Perfect Two" by Auburn.
Notes | For dae_dreemer . Happy birthday! This is majorly fluffy and gushy and shippy, so I hope you enjoy it haha. I owe you much longer, much better fic when I no longer have silly essays to write. I hope you have a marvelously legal day! ♥♥
you can be the peanut butter to my jelly.
Mommy cries a lot after Daddy goes away on a long, long trip, and Serena doesn't have to go to school for a whole week. Blair calls every afternoon and tells her what happens in school, what new words they learned and how Chuck Bass pulled her pigtails during story time and how she misses Serena and hopes she comes back soon.
On Thursday, Mommy sits Serena down and tells her that if Daddy gets to go on a trip, then she does too, and that Serena and Eric are going to stay with Nate for the rest of the week and the weekend. Nate's mommy stands behind her as Serena's mommy says this, lips drawn into a very thin line, and the look on her face makes Serena's stomach hurt.
Nate's mommy carries Eric into their building and Serena tags along after her, their driver following close behind carrying two tiny suitcases. Nate is waiting the moment they enter the house, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
"I haven't seen you in all of forever!" he yells, and gives her a bone-crushing hug.
They are both allowed to sleep in Nate's room for the first night. Eric is only three and he falls asleep really early, curled up in the corner of Nate's bed, his cheek pressed to the Superman-patterned bedsheets.
Nate walks over to the door in his bare feet and peeks underneath to see if there's a light in the hallway.
"We can probably play a game!" he tells her excitedly. "I think Mommy's asleep and Daddy's sailing right now. Nobody will catch us!"
Serena is wearing Nate's pyjamas because Mommy forgot to back some for her. She sits on Nate's bed with her legs tucked underneath her and chews the end of one of the braids Mrs. Archibald put her hair into. "Nate," she whispers. "Is your daddy coming back?"
"Yeah, of course." He bounds back over to her and grins brightly. "On Tuesday. It's less than a week."
His eyes look particularly bright in the dark. "I don't know if mine is," she admits, feeling like she might need to cry. "I don't know if anyone is coming back."
He stares at her, eyes widening in alarm. "You're sad."
Serena nods solemnly, tears dripping down her cheeks before she can stop them.
"Oh, no." Nate shakes his head and reaches out to wipe her cheeks with his fingers. "No, no, no. Don't cry."
She ducks her head. "That's what people do when they're sad."
"No, no," he says again, anxiously, still trying to wipe away her tears. "No, don't. Come on." He takes her hand and pulls her off the bed. "Come on, we'll have a snack. Don't be sad."
Nate hurries around the kitchen as soon as the get there, dragging a chair from the dining room in so that he can stand on it to reach into the cupboards. He gets bread from the breadbox, peanut butter from the cupboard, and jam from the fridge.
"I'm going to get a knife," he tells her, opening up a drawer. "But not a sharp one because that's not allowed."
Nate makes the messiest peanut butter sandwiches Serena has ever seen: the peanut butter is coated on thickly, the jam sticky and it seems to get everywhere, and the slices of bread don't quite line up.
But they eat them anyway, sitting quietly together on the kitchen floor.
Licking his fingers clean, Nate sighs. "You're still sad, aren't you?"
"I just don't know what to do," Serena admits. "What will I do if no one comes back?"
"You can stay here!" Nate announces. "We can do this every single night!" His eyes glow in a way that makes her smile in spite of herself. "So don't be sad, okay?"
She nods slowly and licks her lips. "Okay."
you can be the butterflies i feel in my belly.
The first time Nate holds her hand makes her feel things. New things, weird things.
They're on a field trip to a movie for history class, and Serena feels fidgety as she stares up at the screen with her nine-year-old eyes, watching World War I enfold. The violence isn't exactly graphic but it's there and Serena has hated guns ever since her latest stepfather told her about his favourite pastime, hunting, and she learned that he killed bunnies.
She shifts in her seat a little. On her right, Blair has a notepad open on her lap, trying to scribble down notes in the dark, notes that Serena will undoubtedly want to look at before tomorrow's quiz on the film.
"B," Serena whispers, and Blair smiles over at her, but she shakes her head a little too.
"You're missing stuff, S," she says, and she returns her attention to the screen.
Serena taps her fingers against her armrest. She could get up and go to the bathroom, but one of their chaperones would probably insist on coming with her. She sinks down in her seat a little and blows out her breath.
An elbow pokes against her shoulder and she looks up and over to her left. Nate is looking at her.
"Are you okay?" he whispers.
"I'm…bored," she huffs, smiling slowly at him.
He holds out his bag of popcorn. "Want some?"
Serena sticks her hand into the bag and discovers that he's letting her have the last handful, so she whispers an earnest, "Thanks."
They both look back at the movie, and a moment later he touches her hand with his, slowly wrapping his fingers around hers. She glances over at him, surprised, but his gaze is fixed on the movie and he doesn't look back at her.
It sends a pleasant shock through her whole body, his hand holding hers. She keeps biting back smiles.
She falls asleep halfway through the movie, head slumped against Nate's shoulder, her fingers still tangled with his.
you can be the captain and i can be your first mate.
"What are you looking at?" Serena giggles, unable to keep herself from sounding a little delighted.
Nate's face actually colours. "Nothing," he mutters, but he's been giving her that same look all afternoon, ever since she peeled off her t-shirt and tugged off her jean shorts, leaving on only her navy-blue-and-white bikini and her sunglasses. "You look pretty," he adds after a moment. "You…always look pretty."
She grins at him, bright as the summer sun. "Thanks, Natie."
He smiles back at her like she's given him some kind of gift. "My dad and his friend are having drinks, so we'll probably just be floating out here for a little while."
"I don't mind." She leans against the railing, admiring the sea. "It's so nice today."
His smile morphs into something more charming, more teasing. "Almost as pretty as you."
She punches his shoulder, giggling again. "Do you want to swim?"
"We're not allowed. Not while there aren't any adults on deck," he reminds her.
She huffs, oddly insulted by that. "We're not babies. We're twelve."
"I'm twelve," Nate corrects. "You're still a baby."
"My birthday is in like a week." She glances around. "What are we allowed to do?"
"Sit?" Nate offers with a shrug. "I thought you liked to tan."
"I do. I just - " Her eyes widen. "Oh! Let's do this!" She tugs him toward the bow of the ship.
"S…?" He follows her willingly.
She glances at him over her shoulder, confesses mischievously, "I wanna do the Titanic thing."
He looks comically appalled. "Serena, we'll die."
"Who's the baby now?" she taunts, turning to face him.
"It's not a good idea," he protests.
"Come on," she pleads, tugging on his hand and pouting. And like always, he resists for less than a second before he lets her lead him along. She squeezes his hand tightly in thanks and holds onto him as she climbs over the railing. "Now you."
He gives her a serious look. "Hang on, okay? Don't fall."
"Hanging on," she confirms, and he climbs over too, gulping when he looks down.
"It'll be okay," she giggles as the wind picks up, blowing her hair into his face. "We have to balance."
"Here…" He touches her hip very lightly, maneuvering them so that he's standing behind her. She reaches behind them both, holds tight to the railing with one hand. "You don't have to let go," Nate says.
"No, I can," she insists. "But you have to hold on to me."
So he does, carefully at first and then with more certainty. Serena grins, opens her arms to the wind and the sky and the ocean, and all she can feel are Nate's hands tentatively gripping her bare hips, Nate's chest pressed all along her back.
"Don't let go," she gasps.
He lowers his mouth to her shoulder, tasting her skin; promises her, "I won't."
you can be the chills that i feel on our first date.
Their first official date, the kind where Serena wears a dress and Nate wears a shirt with buttons and pants that are not made of denim, is kind of a mess.
The restaurant mixes up their orders twice and Serena tries to sweet-talk a bottle of wine out of the waiter as an apology, which gets them kicked out. They share an ice cream cone instead but Nate drops it when Serena leans in to kiss him. She forgets her heels in the cab they take home and Nate has to piggyback her to the door.
But there's a moment, in between being shooed from the restaurant and the ice cream falling in slow-motion to the ground, when they're just walking and talking and laughing, and Nate reaches over and takes her hand, lacing his fingers through hers like they do this everyday, not missing a single beat in the conversation, and her heart slams hard into her ribs.
She makes him come in once they're at her door, and they eat whatever they can find in the kitchen and his kisses taste like chocolate when they make out late into the morning on her bedroom floor.
you can the hero and i can be your sidekick.
Carter Baizen agrees to sell to her, but not until he asks, "You're Archibald's girlfriend, aren't you?"
She doesn't reply for a second; it's like she's waiting for her own reaction. She expects to bristle at those words, is ready to deny it and snap at him and find someone else to roll her joints and never really believe that she'll pay them. She expects some burst of feminism or independence to fill her up. She expects to say, I'm not anyone's anything.
Instead, she says, "Yes."
Carter nods and goes to say something else, but Serena's too busy figuring out if this is what trust feels like.
you can be the tears that i cry if we ever split.
She has nightmares sometimes. They start out simple and easy and harmless: she's happy, she can feel it, walking up the three cement steps to Nate's house. The doorknob gives when she turns it, so she walks in uninvited.
The house looks normal. She takes the stairs two-by-two up to Nate's room -
and finds it empty. The furniture is gone. His clothes are gone. All of the little objects of
his life that she knows so well, gone.
He's there, by the window. When she goes to him, he touches her cheek, fingertips soft as can be against her skin. "I'm going on a trip, sweetheart."
She reaches for him, gripping handfuls of his shirt, grabbing his chin in her hand, asking a thousand questions, but the most important one is this: "When are you coming back?"
His eyes give nothing away. "I don't know," he says, and then she always wakes up.
The first and only time Lily hears her screaming and crying in the middle of the night, she calls a psychologist. But Serena doesn't need anyone to analyze her mind. She knows that this has everything to do with her father's sudden and permanent absence, with her mother's inability to be home for long enough to care, with the ache that builds inside of her every time she looks at Nate that tells her so clearly that she's fallen in love with him - that she probably fell a long time ago.
She has the dream one Saturday night when she's sleeping in Nate's bed. They went swimming in their underwear earlier, and they're both wearing his t-shirts and boxers to sleep in, their damp clothes and towels littered around the bed. Nate wakes her up a little past two o'clock in the morning with all the worry in the world in his eyes.
"S, what is it? What did you dream?" He smoothes his hands down her arm. "You're all shaky, calm down."
"Natie…" And she tells him everything, gives him a breathless and babbling account of her dream, follows it up with a mess of reasons why she thinks she has it - until he silences her with a kiss so gentle that tears spring to her eyes.
"Baby," he says. "Don't you know that I could never love anyone else the way I love you?"
She blinks at him, still half asleep and half drunk and half lost in her nightmare. "You…you love me?"
He smiles at her, that slow, easy grin that she's adored for as long as she can remember. "Of course I do." He leans his forehead against hers. "I'm never going to leave you, okay? As long as you keep me, I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise," she demands, her voice breaking between syllables.
"I promise." He wraps his arms around her and cuddles her as close to him as possible. "Now, you. Promise back."
She could give him anything for what he's said. She's totally willing to say here, have all of me, take all of me, entirely willing to lose her virginity to him in this moment, to stay in this moment and his bed forever.
But she just whispers, "I love you, too," against his neck and he holds her tight until she falls back asleep and it's kind of perfect.
you can be the rain from the cloud when it's stormin'
or you can be the sun when it shines in the mornin'.
"It doesn't matter, Nate," Serena snaps, tugging self-consciously at her sleeves.
"He's hitting you," he roars, in a tone she's never heard from him before, one that makes her wince. "Don't tell me that doesn't matter."
She curls up in a chair, hugging a throw pillow. "I shouldn't have told you."
"You should have told your mom," he snaps from where he's pacing in front of her.
"As if she'd care!" Serena yells back at him. "And she seems happy for once, so just - "
"Don't tell me to stop."
"Leave it alone, Nate," she says very softly. "It was just once - "
"Twice," he snaps.
"Natie - "
"Serena, you're not allowed to do that to a person, do you understand that? You're not allowed." He walks over to her chair, leans over her. "Has anything else happened? Tell me." She opens her mouth but he knows her too well and he repeats, "Tell me," as he reaches out to touch her arm.
She flinches away when his fingers graze a bruise, and all of a sudden all the hardness melts from his eyes and he just looks like he's aching for her, and just like that she's crying.
It's a tight fit when Nate slips into the chair with her but they manage, and he wraps his arms gently around her and rocks her slightly like she's a child, murmurs shh, shh into her hair.
"I hate - " She gasps, but she presses her face into his shoulder and she can't finish.
"Shh, shh," he soothes, his mouth against her temple. "It's okay, baby. It's okay to hate him."
She shakes her head, and the words seem to tear out of her throat, "I hate her."
He's silent for a moment and then he blows out his breath slowly, says in a carefully measured voice, "That's okay, too, sweetheart."
It's like the absolution that she needs and she cries for a long time after that, maybe longer than she's cried in her whole life, and Nate doesn't say anything, just lets her.
His mouth is against hers and his thumbs are brushing tears from her cheeks when he says, "You're going to stay with me. You're going to stay here until your mom divorces him. You're going to be okay."
Never in her life has she loved anything like she loves the way Nate holds her, like that's all it will take to put her back together.
don't know if i could ever be
without you, 'cause boy you complete me.
Nate loses his virginity to her and she loses hers to him. It is a humid, rainy summer day, not long after her fifteenth birthday. His parents are away and they drink all the gin in the liquor cabinet and slip into the master bedroom. Serena is giddy and she's just…she's ready.
As he slides a hand up her stomach, moving to cup her breast, she sighs, "Natie, let's…"
He blinks at her. "Yeah?" he asks, seeking confirmation. "Really?"
"Really." She giggles, and teases, "Please."
It's too hot for much clothing so Serena peels off her thin t-shirt and wiggles out of her tiny denim shorts as Nate kicks off his own shorts. Her hands push at the waistband of his boxers and he is very careful as he unclasps her bra. He drags her panties down her legs slowly and she watches him, biting her lip.
"So beautiful," he whispers as he nudges her legs apart a little, and she's so sure of how much she loves him in that second. He kisses her, unhurried and deep, and when she moans into his mouth he slips inside of her.
Serena gasps softly, her eyes squeezed shut. Nate goes still, clenching his jaw as she wiggles her hips a little, getting used to the feel of him. Her eyes stay closed for a moment, so he drags a knuckle gently down her cheek, brushing her hair behind her ear.
"Okay?" he asks her softly, and she shivers a little at how tender it sounds.
Her eyes fly open and find his; they are the bluer than blue. "Yes," she says carefully. Her nails dig into his back a bit, but he doesn't seem to notice or if he does, he doesn't care. "Yes, you just…you…" Her head tilts back against the pillow and her lashes flutter. "I feel so…so full of you."
Nate muffles his groan against her neck. "Serena," he murmurs thickly.
Her heel digs into the small of his back. "C'mon…" she whispers.
and in time i know that we'll both see
that we're all we need.
Serena gets into Brown. Nate gets into USC.
They open their thick envelopes at the same time, sitting on his bed in their school uniforms. She squeals without meaning to when the letter says please to inform you and when she looks up Nate's grinning back at her and she practically pounces on him, throwing them both backward onto the mattress.
"Congratulations, Natie," she whispers, half-laughing.
He smoothes her hair back. "You too." His smile is so bright she can't help but kiss him and he keeps smiling against her mouth as he mumbles, "Early acceptance and everything."
She kisses the tip of his nose. "I'm so proud of you."
Nate's hands are slipping up her shirt, unhooking her bra. "Thanks, baby."
"Wait…" She moans softly into their kiss at the feel of his hands on her skin. "Nate, just…"
He pulls back a little to look at her, his eyes dark and serious. "Hmm?"
She sighs. He's dancing his fingers over her ribcage, just barely tickling her, and it's ridiculously distracting. "I don't want you to go," she admits.
Nate rolls them over so that she's on her back and he's lying over her, his weight on top of her secure and comforting. "I don't want you to go either."
She presses her palms against his back, keeping him close, when he starts to trail open-mouthed kisses down her neck. "So why…are we going?"
"Because we know it's right." She must look doubtful because he brushes his lips against the corner of her mouth and says, in the kind of solemn tone he uses very rarely, "It is, S. We're going to come right back here."
His mouth covers hers then, and it takes her several moments to realize that when he says here he doesn't mean New York or this room or anything else.
He means here, where she's giggling softly at the static electricity that sparks when he tugs her shirt over her head, here, where he's wrapping her up tight in his arms, here, where she doesn't intend to let go.
'cause you're the apple to my pie
you're the straw to my berry
you're the smoke to my high
and you're the one i wanna marry.
-fin-
Chapter | 1/1
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena. Nate/Serena.
Summary | "I wanna do the Titanic thing." An exploration of what could have been. // Title and lyrics from "Perfect Two" by Auburn.
Notes | For dae_dreemer . Happy birthday! This is majorly fluffy and gushy and shippy, so I hope you enjoy it haha. I owe you much longer, much better fic when I no longer have silly essays to write. I hope you have a marvelously legal day! ♥♥
you can be the peanut butter to my jelly.
Mommy cries a lot after Daddy goes away on a long, long trip, and Serena doesn't have to go to school for a whole week. Blair calls every afternoon and tells her what happens in school, what new words they learned and how Chuck Bass pulled her pigtails during story time and how she misses Serena and hopes she comes back soon.
On Thursday, Mommy sits Serena down and tells her that if Daddy gets to go on a trip, then she does too, and that Serena and Eric are going to stay with Nate for the rest of the week and the weekend. Nate's mommy stands behind her as Serena's mommy says this, lips drawn into a very thin line, and the look on her face makes Serena's stomach hurt.
Nate's mommy carries Eric into their building and Serena tags along after her, their driver following close behind carrying two tiny suitcases. Nate is waiting the moment they enter the house, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
"I haven't seen you in all of forever!" he yells, and gives her a bone-crushing hug.
They are both allowed to sleep in Nate's room for the first night. Eric is only three and he falls asleep really early, curled up in the corner of Nate's bed, his cheek pressed to the Superman-patterned bedsheets.
Nate walks over to the door in his bare feet and peeks underneath to see if there's a light in the hallway.
"We can probably play a game!" he tells her excitedly. "I think Mommy's asleep and Daddy's sailing right now. Nobody will catch us!"
Serena is wearing Nate's pyjamas because Mommy forgot to back some for her. She sits on Nate's bed with her legs tucked underneath her and chews the end of one of the braids Mrs. Archibald put her hair into. "Nate," she whispers. "Is your daddy coming back?"
"Yeah, of course." He bounds back over to her and grins brightly. "On Tuesday. It's less than a week."
His eyes look particularly bright in the dark. "I don't know if mine is," she admits, feeling like she might need to cry. "I don't know if anyone is coming back."
He stares at her, eyes widening in alarm. "You're sad."
Serena nods solemnly, tears dripping down her cheeks before she can stop them.
"Oh, no." Nate shakes his head and reaches out to wipe her cheeks with his fingers. "No, no, no. Don't cry."
She ducks her head. "That's what people do when they're sad."
"No, no," he says again, anxiously, still trying to wipe away her tears. "No, don't. Come on." He takes her hand and pulls her off the bed. "Come on, we'll have a snack. Don't be sad."
Nate hurries around the kitchen as soon as the get there, dragging a chair from the dining room in so that he can stand on it to reach into the cupboards. He gets bread from the breadbox, peanut butter from the cupboard, and jam from the fridge.
"I'm going to get a knife," he tells her, opening up a drawer. "But not a sharp one because that's not allowed."
Nate makes the messiest peanut butter sandwiches Serena has ever seen: the peanut butter is coated on thickly, the jam sticky and it seems to get everywhere, and the slices of bread don't quite line up.
But they eat them anyway, sitting quietly together on the kitchen floor.
Licking his fingers clean, Nate sighs. "You're still sad, aren't you?"
"I just don't know what to do," Serena admits. "What will I do if no one comes back?"
"You can stay here!" Nate announces. "We can do this every single night!" His eyes glow in a way that makes her smile in spite of herself. "So don't be sad, okay?"
She nods slowly and licks her lips. "Okay."
you can be the butterflies i feel in my belly.
The first time Nate holds her hand makes her feel things. New things, weird things.
They're on a field trip to a movie for history class, and Serena feels fidgety as she stares up at the screen with her nine-year-old eyes, watching World War I enfold. The violence isn't exactly graphic but it's there and Serena has hated guns ever since her latest stepfather told her about his favourite pastime, hunting, and she learned that he killed bunnies.
She shifts in her seat a little. On her right, Blair has a notepad open on her lap, trying to scribble down notes in the dark, notes that Serena will undoubtedly want to look at before tomorrow's quiz on the film.
"B," Serena whispers, and Blair smiles over at her, but she shakes her head a little too.
"You're missing stuff, S," she says, and she returns her attention to the screen.
Serena taps her fingers against her armrest. She could get up and go to the bathroom, but one of their chaperones would probably insist on coming with her. She sinks down in her seat a little and blows out her breath.
An elbow pokes against her shoulder and she looks up and over to her left. Nate is looking at her.
"Are you okay?" he whispers.
"I'm…bored," she huffs, smiling slowly at him.
He holds out his bag of popcorn. "Want some?"
Serena sticks her hand into the bag and discovers that he's letting her have the last handful, so she whispers an earnest, "Thanks."
They both look back at the movie, and a moment later he touches her hand with his, slowly wrapping his fingers around hers. She glances over at him, surprised, but his gaze is fixed on the movie and he doesn't look back at her.
It sends a pleasant shock through her whole body, his hand holding hers. She keeps biting back smiles.
She falls asleep halfway through the movie, head slumped against Nate's shoulder, her fingers still tangled with his.
you can be the captain and i can be your first mate.
"What are you looking at?" Serena giggles, unable to keep herself from sounding a little delighted.
Nate's face actually colours. "Nothing," he mutters, but he's been giving her that same look all afternoon, ever since she peeled off her t-shirt and tugged off her jean shorts, leaving on only her navy-blue-and-white bikini and her sunglasses. "You look pretty," he adds after a moment. "You…always look pretty."
She grins at him, bright as the summer sun. "Thanks, Natie."
He smiles back at her like she's given him some kind of gift. "My dad and his friend are having drinks, so we'll probably just be floating out here for a little while."
"I don't mind." She leans against the railing, admiring the sea. "It's so nice today."
His smile morphs into something more charming, more teasing. "Almost as pretty as you."
She punches his shoulder, giggling again. "Do you want to swim?"
"We're not allowed. Not while there aren't any adults on deck," he reminds her.
She huffs, oddly insulted by that. "We're not babies. We're twelve."
"I'm twelve," Nate corrects. "You're still a baby."
"My birthday is in like a week." She glances around. "What are we allowed to do?"
"Sit?" Nate offers with a shrug. "I thought you liked to tan."
"I do. I just - " Her eyes widen. "Oh! Let's do this!" She tugs him toward the bow of the ship.
"S…?" He follows her willingly.
She glances at him over her shoulder, confesses mischievously, "I wanna do the Titanic thing."
He looks comically appalled. "Serena, we'll die."
"Who's the baby now?" she taunts, turning to face him.
"It's not a good idea," he protests.
"Come on," she pleads, tugging on his hand and pouting. And like always, he resists for less than a second before he lets her lead him along. She squeezes his hand tightly in thanks and holds onto him as she climbs over the railing. "Now you."
He gives her a serious look. "Hang on, okay? Don't fall."
"Hanging on," she confirms, and he climbs over too, gulping when he looks down.
"It'll be okay," she giggles as the wind picks up, blowing her hair into his face. "We have to balance."
"Here…" He touches her hip very lightly, maneuvering them so that he's standing behind her. She reaches behind them both, holds tight to the railing with one hand. "You don't have to let go," Nate says.
"No, I can," she insists. "But you have to hold on to me."
So he does, carefully at first and then with more certainty. Serena grins, opens her arms to the wind and the sky and the ocean, and all she can feel are Nate's hands tentatively gripping her bare hips, Nate's chest pressed all along her back.
"Don't let go," she gasps.
He lowers his mouth to her shoulder, tasting her skin; promises her, "I won't."
you can be the chills that i feel on our first date.
Their first official date, the kind where Serena wears a dress and Nate wears a shirt with buttons and pants that are not made of denim, is kind of a mess.
The restaurant mixes up their orders twice and Serena tries to sweet-talk a bottle of wine out of the waiter as an apology, which gets them kicked out. They share an ice cream cone instead but Nate drops it when Serena leans in to kiss him. She forgets her heels in the cab they take home and Nate has to piggyback her to the door.
But there's a moment, in between being shooed from the restaurant and the ice cream falling in slow-motion to the ground, when they're just walking and talking and laughing, and Nate reaches over and takes her hand, lacing his fingers through hers like they do this everyday, not missing a single beat in the conversation, and her heart slams hard into her ribs.
She makes him come in once they're at her door, and they eat whatever they can find in the kitchen and his kisses taste like chocolate when they make out late into the morning on her bedroom floor.
you can the hero and i can be your sidekick.
Carter Baizen agrees to sell to her, but not until he asks, "You're Archibald's girlfriend, aren't you?"
She doesn't reply for a second; it's like she's waiting for her own reaction. She expects to bristle at those words, is ready to deny it and snap at him and find someone else to roll her joints and never really believe that she'll pay them. She expects some burst of feminism or independence to fill her up. She expects to say, I'm not anyone's anything.
Instead, she says, "Yes."
Carter nods and goes to say something else, but Serena's too busy figuring out if this is what trust feels like.
you can be the tears that i cry if we ever split.
She has nightmares sometimes. They start out simple and easy and harmless: she's happy, she can feel it, walking up the three cement steps to Nate's house. The doorknob gives when she turns it, so she walks in uninvited.
The house looks normal. She takes the stairs two-by-two up to Nate's room -
and finds it empty. The furniture is gone. His clothes are gone. All of the little objects of
his life that she knows so well, gone.
He's there, by the window. When she goes to him, he touches her cheek, fingertips soft as can be against her skin. "I'm going on a trip, sweetheart."
She reaches for him, gripping handfuls of his shirt, grabbing his chin in her hand, asking a thousand questions, but the most important one is this: "When are you coming back?"
His eyes give nothing away. "I don't know," he says, and then she always wakes up.
The first and only time Lily hears her screaming and crying in the middle of the night, she calls a psychologist. But Serena doesn't need anyone to analyze her mind. She knows that this has everything to do with her father's sudden and permanent absence, with her mother's inability to be home for long enough to care, with the ache that builds inside of her every time she looks at Nate that tells her so clearly that she's fallen in love with him - that she probably fell a long time ago.
She has the dream one Saturday night when she's sleeping in Nate's bed. They went swimming in their underwear earlier, and they're both wearing his t-shirts and boxers to sleep in, their damp clothes and towels littered around the bed. Nate wakes her up a little past two o'clock in the morning with all the worry in the world in his eyes.
"S, what is it? What did you dream?" He smoothes his hands down her arm. "You're all shaky, calm down."
"Natie…" And she tells him everything, gives him a breathless and babbling account of her dream, follows it up with a mess of reasons why she thinks she has it - until he silences her with a kiss so gentle that tears spring to her eyes.
"Baby," he says. "Don't you know that I could never love anyone else the way I love you?"
She blinks at him, still half asleep and half drunk and half lost in her nightmare. "You…you love me?"
He smiles at her, that slow, easy grin that she's adored for as long as she can remember. "Of course I do." He leans his forehead against hers. "I'm never going to leave you, okay? As long as you keep me, I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise," she demands, her voice breaking between syllables.
"I promise." He wraps his arms around her and cuddles her as close to him as possible. "Now, you. Promise back."
She could give him anything for what he's said. She's totally willing to say here, have all of me, take all of me, entirely willing to lose her virginity to him in this moment, to stay in this moment and his bed forever.
But she just whispers, "I love you, too," against his neck and he holds her tight until she falls back asleep and it's kind of perfect.
you can be the rain from the cloud when it's stormin'
or you can be the sun when it shines in the mornin'.
"It doesn't matter, Nate," Serena snaps, tugging self-consciously at her sleeves.
"He's hitting you," he roars, in a tone she's never heard from him before, one that makes her wince. "Don't tell me that doesn't matter."
She curls up in a chair, hugging a throw pillow. "I shouldn't have told you."
"You should have told your mom," he snaps from where he's pacing in front of her.
"As if she'd care!" Serena yells back at him. "And she seems happy for once, so just - "
"Don't tell me to stop."
"Leave it alone, Nate," she says very softly. "It was just once - "
"Twice," he snaps.
"Natie - "
"Serena, you're not allowed to do that to a person, do you understand that? You're not allowed." He walks over to her chair, leans over her. "Has anything else happened? Tell me." She opens her mouth but he knows her too well and he repeats, "Tell me," as he reaches out to touch her arm.
She flinches away when his fingers graze a bruise, and all of a sudden all the hardness melts from his eyes and he just looks like he's aching for her, and just like that she's crying.
It's a tight fit when Nate slips into the chair with her but they manage, and he wraps his arms gently around her and rocks her slightly like she's a child, murmurs shh, shh into her hair.
"I hate - " She gasps, but she presses her face into his shoulder and she can't finish.
"Shh, shh," he soothes, his mouth against her temple. "It's okay, baby. It's okay to hate him."
She shakes her head, and the words seem to tear out of her throat, "I hate her."
He's silent for a moment and then he blows out his breath slowly, says in a carefully measured voice, "That's okay, too, sweetheart."
It's like the absolution that she needs and she cries for a long time after that, maybe longer than she's cried in her whole life, and Nate doesn't say anything, just lets her.
His mouth is against hers and his thumbs are brushing tears from her cheeks when he says, "You're going to stay with me. You're going to stay here until your mom divorces him. You're going to be okay."
Never in her life has she loved anything like she loves the way Nate holds her, like that's all it will take to put her back together.
don't know if i could ever be
without you, 'cause boy you complete me.
Nate loses his virginity to her and she loses hers to him. It is a humid, rainy summer day, not long after her fifteenth birthday. His parents are away and they drink all the gin in the liquor cabinet and slip into the master bedroom. Serena is giddy and she's just…she's ready.
As he slides a hand up her stomach, moving to cup her breast, she sighs, "Natie, let's…"
He blinks at her. "Yeah?" he asks, seeking confirmation. "Really?"
"Really." She giggles, and teases, "Please."
It's too hot for much clothing so Serena peels off her thin t-shirt and wiggles out of her tiny denim shorts as Nate kicks off his own shorts. Her hands push at the waistband of his boxers and he is very careful as he unclasps her bra. He drags her panties down her legs slowly and she watches him, biting her lip.
"So beautiful," he whispers as he nudges her legs apart a little, and she's so sure of how much she loves him in that second. He kisses her, unhurried and deep, and when she moans into his mouth he slips inside of her.
Serena gasps softly, her eyes squeezed shut. Nate goes still, clenching his jaw as she wiggles her hips a little, getting used to the feel of him. Her eyes stay closed for a moment, so he drags a knuckle gently down her cheek, brushing her hair behind her ear.
"Okay?" he asks her softly, and she shivers a little at how tender it sounds.
Her eyes fly open and find his; they are the bluer than blue. "Yes," she says carefully. Her nails dig into his back a bit, but he doesn't seem to notice or if he does, he doesn't care. "Yes, you just…you…" Her head tilts back against the pillow and her lashes flutter. "I feel so…so full of you."
Nate muffles his groan against her neck. "Serena," he murmurs thickly.
Her heel digs into the small of his back. "C'mon…" she whispers.
and in time i know that we'll both see
that we're all we need.
Serena gets into Brown. Nate gets into USC.
They open their thick envelopes at the same time, sitting on his bed in their school uniforms. She squeals without meaning to when the letter says please to inform you and when she looks up Nate's grinning back at her and she practically pounces on him, throwing them both backward onto the mattress.
"Congratulations, Natie," she whispers, half-laughing.
He smoothes her hair back. "You too." His smile is so bright she can't help but kiss him and he keeps smiling against her mouth as he mumbles, "Early acceptance and everything."
She kisses the tip of his nose. "I'm so proud of you."
Nate's hands are slipping up her shirt, unhooking her bra. "Thanks, baby."
"Wait…" She moans softly into their kiss at the feel of his hands on her skin. "Nate, just…"
He pulls back a little to look at her, his eyes dark and serious. "Hmm?"
She sighs. He's dancing his fingers over her ribcage, just barely tickling her, and it's ridiculously distracting. "I don't want you to go," she admits.
Nate rolls them over so that she's on her back and he's lying over her, his weight on top of her secure and comforting. "I don't want you to go either."
She presses her palms against his back, keeping him close, when he starts to trail open-mouthed kisses down her neck. "So why…are we going?"
"Because we know it's right." She must look doubtful because he brushes his lips against the corner of her mouth and says, in the kind of solemn tone he uses very rarely, "It is, S. We're going to come right back here."
His mouth covers hers then, and it takes her several moments to realize that when he says here he doesn't mean New York or this room or anything else.
He means here, where she's giggling softly at the static electricity that sparks when he tugs her shirt over her head, here, where he's wrapping her up tight in his arms, here, where she doesn't intend to let go.
'cause you're the apple to my pie
you're the straw to my berry
you're the smoke to my high
and you're the one i wanna marry.
-fin-