126. everybody else's girl
Title | everybody else's girl
Chapter | 1/1
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena. Nate/Serena, Dan/Blair, allusions to Dan/Serena and Chuck/Blair.
Summary | "Serena buys new shoes, comfy brown boots that she loves instantly. She plants her feet on the ground and keeps them there."
Notes | AU s4, because Serena is my bb and I want better for her than this current sucktastic storyline.
and in the shadow she crawls
clutching her faded photograph
my image under her thumb
yes, with a message for my heart
she's been everybody else's girl
maybe one day she'll be her own
everybody else's girl
maybe one day she'll be her own
--Tori Amos, Girl
She defers her Columbia acceptance in the fall.
Her mother sighs and Blair pouts but Serena just smiles pretty, packs a bag and boards a plane - has a destination in mind.
William van der Woodsen is in Moscow. She finds him on her own this time, with her own resources and her own goals, and when she shows up at his hotel all she has are the broken pieces he left her with and a shadow of her mother's smile.
"You broke my heart," she tells him over their china teacups, making herself as small as possible in the imposing armchair, knees pressed tight together and arms wrapped around herself. She understands now, what has happened. "I used to think it was all clichés, what people said about girls whose fathers left - " She presses her lips together until they tingle with blood loss.
"I'm so sorry." His voice is low and somber.
"I don't believe you."
And there is it, that's all there is.
"Serena - "
If she were feeling dramatic, she might drop her teacup on the prettily tiled floor, watch the liquid splash and the china shatter. But she just feels tired, so she says, "Now I have to fix it."
Paris is pretty in autumn, bright red leaves against a cloudy blue sky.
She calls Blair in a moment of nostalgia, eats an entire box of macaroons while her friend tells her about Columbia and seeing Penelope and the exclusive Hamilton House and an internship at W magazine.
"Sounds perfect," Serena says earnestly, and hangs up, pretending to have bad reception.
In the evening, at the top of the Eiffel Tower, the world stretching out around her, she meets a boy. His name is Patrick and he is from Ireland; that gives her something to giggle about, and right away she knows how this will end.
The mattress in his hotel room is old with springs that creak. The sex is rough; he bruises her skin with his mouth and his teeth and his calloused hands. She cries after he falls asleep, her face turned into the pillowcase that smells like laundry detergent, tears slow against her cheeks.
She leaves - him and the room and the city - at sunrise.
She takes a month-long photography class on the West Coast of Canada, and it roots her for all of November. She dips her bare toes in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday mornings and relishes the sting of the chill that runs up her legs.
One of her classmates asks her to model for him. He is eighteen with a slight overbite and she's only ever seen him wear plaid.
It's more fun that she expects it to be. They go to a beach and she plays with the wind and the water, collects seashells and breathes in the salty hair. He watches her from afar, a camera in between them, and when he smiles at the end of the day he says thanks and does not try to kiss her.
"You were totally my muse," he tells her on the night their class holds an exhibition. Her photos are nothing to write home about but his are breathtaking.
She doesn't feel like a prize. She feels kind of beautiful.
They shake hands before she leaves the city.
She goes back to New York for Christmas, spends the holidays hidden away. She throws out the card that her father sends.
There is a girl.
Her name is Raina Thorpe. She's pretty and sexy in a way Serena has never been - slinky dresses and intimidating words and arching eyebrows and wit sharp enough to cut someone.
She kisses Nate on New Year's Eve. There's a picture in the paper the next day.
Serena is too hungover for brunch, so she goes back to bed.
Once, when she is eating lunch with Blair at W, she gets mistaken for a model by Blair's boss.
It doesn't feel remotely like a compliment and she snaps, "I'm a photographer, actually."
Which is a lie, but whatever.
She takes a lot of photographs in the winter. She learns to wear sneakers instead of stilettos and buy gloves without fingertips.
Chuck frowns when he sees her. "You look like a hipster, sis," he snarls.
She gives him her sunniest smile. "You look like a douchebag. Oh wait - "
Eric turns the page of his paper noisily. "Children," he says sarcastically, "play nice."
Serena sticks her tongue out at Chuck and bites into an apple.
Dan runs into her on Valentine's Day, which is probably funny in some twisted way.
"Oh!" she gasps when she sees pastry spilling out of the box that he dropped when they collided. "Aw, déjà vu," she says apologetically, kneeling down to see is there's anything that can be salvaged.
"Last time it was pie," he says in his typical Dan-way, crouching down too. "We've moved up to cake."
She winces as she inspects the mess. "Sorry."
He shrugs. "Don't apologize."
They stare at each other over the unsalvageable cake for a long beat as people keep walking around them. He breaks eye contact first, adjusting the messenger bag on his shoulder.
"Dan," she says softly.
He meets her gaze again and smiles. "You look like you again," he says, nodding to her outfit - her blazer is open and she's wearing a thick woolen scarf and a pair of tight jeans. "Like I remember you."
The corners of her lips twitch upward. "You look grown up."
Blair announces her engagement to Prince Louis at the end of the month.
The day is bitterly cold and Chuck rages around the suite. Serena lays in bed and listens to him grieve, tries to measure out her pity.
"Say cheese."
Blair frowns at her; they're at her tiara-fitting for her wedding - Serena, up until today, did not know that people even had tiara-fittings.
"You got my bad side, S," Blair whines.
Serena sets her camera in your lap. "All of your sides are good sides, B." She leans her elbows on her knees, watches as the shop assistant carefully pins a diamond crown into Blair's chocolate-coloured hair and sets a veil over it.
Blair smiles dreamily but she doesn't take another picture.
"Are you happy?" she whispers when the assistant turns her back, but Blair's attention is on her reflection in the mirror.
She sulks with Chuck at the engagement party because she honestly has nothing better to do. She's starting to feel restless again, starting to feel like she needs to get out of this city and fast, but she can't because Blair is getting married.
Chuck orders another round and she doesn't protest. In her peripheral vision, she sees Nate on the dance floor, Raina in his arms.
"Hi."
Nate starts when she moves to stand next to him by the bar. His eyes meet hers, blue and blue, and he licks his lips in the nervous way he's always had. "Hey," he replies quietly.
She tries to remember how many days it's been since they've spoken - how many weeks, how many months.
"Do you love her?" she asks point-blank, heartbeat echoing in her ears, it's just the alcohol.
Nate stares at her like he doesn't understand.
"Don't," she breathes. "Okay? Please don't."
"S…" he whispers, and she walks away, like always.
She is a bridesmaid on the day Blair is supposed to get married, the spring-sunny day when the officiator says speak now or forever hold your peace and Dan Humphrey stands up, fumbling and mumbling, and -
"What I'm trying to say is that I love you."
Long after the rest of the guests have gone home with new gossip, Serena sits in a pew in the church in her bridesmaid's dress, Blair's bouquet clutched loosely in her hands. She thinks of another wedding, of sitting alone in another time, of another bridesmaid dress, of how heartbroken she had been.
A hand rests against her upper back, rubbing her skin gently, and a bottle of tequila makes its way into her lap.
She looks up and it's Nate, soft smile and kind eyes.
And all of a sudden it's another wedding and another dress and all she remembers is him.
"Let's go home, huh?" he asks gently, and she lets him take her there.
Half a bottle of tequila on the way means that she spends the next twenty-four hours in Nate's bed, a complete mess, headache-y and sweaty and vomiting intermittently into the garbage basket he's placed on the floor for her.
He helps her out of her dress with careful fingers, trying not to touch her skin, gives her a t-shirt of his to wear with her underwear.
"You…have a girlfriend," she mumbles.
"Shh," he soothes, brushing her tangled out of her face, fingers cool and soft against her skin. "You have to sleep."
"I didn't mean to make you take care of me," she whispers, self-conscious and fidgety in his clothes, crumpled bridesmaid dress in her hands.
"You didn't make me do anything." He gives a couple strands of her hair a playful tug and she can see the way he wants to go back to normal. "Listen…are you okay?"
She stares down at her painted toes against his hardwood floor and wishes she could disappear. She shakes her head; she's trying honesty now.
"That's okay," he says quickly. "That's totally okay. I can call Blair for you?" he suggests. "And you guys can talk about this, and - "
"No." She looks up at him and her heart aches for all the ways he doesn't understand. "Nate, I didn't…mean it."
He stares at her for a minute.
And then he says, "Okay, baby," with the words slipping out of his mouth as naturally as breathing and she clings to that memory for the days to come, the feel of his arm wrapping around her and his face in her hair and the sound of his voice. "Okay," he says.
Chuck frowns at her. "I was worried about you."
"You were worried about you." She slumps into a chair. "There's a difference."
She's tired.
Her phone has two missed calls from Blair. A newspaper speculates that Russell Thorpe's daughter is single.
Serena buys new shoes, comfy brown boots that she loves instantly. She plants her feet on the ground and keeps them there. She's not going to leave.
She brings coffee when she goes to visit Nate.
They smoke two joints on the roof of his building and giggle together and talk about nothing. When she shivers his arm snakes up and around her shoulder, cuddling her close.
She looks at him and he looks at her. Their lips brush, just barely.
"I broke up with Raina," he whispers, his eyes wide and as blue as the sky.
"Okay," she says. She smiles at him, nuzzles her face into his shoulder. "Okay."
It takes five weeks for them to fall into bed together.
She spends a lot of that time out in the city, camera in one hand and a tall latte in the other.
One day, she lets Nate come with her as she develops prints, the two of them alone in the red-glow of a darkroom.
"You're good at this," he says as he watches her, and when she gives him a little smile he presses on, "No, I'm serious. You're…really good."
"Thanks, Natie," she mumbles. In this light, he can't see her blush.
That is the night she takes him home with her, gets lost under the sheets with him and marvels a little at the way his hands still no exactly what to do, at the way he still buries his face in her neck as he groans her name, at the way his kisses still taste unstoppably sweet.
"I missed you," she says as he lays over her. His grin is blinding as his knuckles brush her cheek and she breathes, "God, I missed you."
It seems fair to make Blair come to her.
Blair, who looks as nervous as Serena has ever seen her; Blair, whose chin is tilted up defiantly; Blair, who has Dan Humphrey's love wrapped tight around her like a blanket.
"We need to talk," she declares even as her bottom lip trembles.
Serena considers. Blair might be wearing Dan's affection like she never wants to take it off but Serena's shirt is low-cut and there's a butterfly-shaped hickey on one of her breasts and she can feel Nate marked onto every inch of her skin.
"I don't think we do," Serena says gently.
The ground between them is smouldering, but it is even.
She has tea with her mother.
"I went to see Dad in September," she offers, watching Lily's face for a reaction.
Her mother nods. "He told me, dear."
Serena breathes out. "I didn't know you two were talking."
Lily reaches out and puts two fingers beneath Serena's chin, tips her face off. "He wanted to tell me that he thought you were very brave."
She presses her lips tight together and doesn't realize she's crying until her mother's hand is on her back, rubbing gently.
"You're growing up," Lily says lightly, and it sounds like a good thing.
Nate takes her to the beach on the first warm day in a cherry-red convertible and tells her that he loves her.
They make love where the ocean meets the sand, waves lapping softly at their bodies. She comes with her mouth against his neck, gasping against his skin.
She doesn't say it back, but that's okay. He kisses her long and deep and it tastes like it means something.
When Cece comes to town, she looks at Serena and tsk-tsks at her crumbling ballet flats and her messy hair but smiles and hugs her anyway.
"You are your mother's daughter, darling," she sighs, but it doesn't quite sound like an insult.
She sits on the floor with Nate, their backs against the couch as Dan and Blair sit above them, critiquing every aspect of the movie they're watching without missing a single beat.
She leans her head against Nate's shoulder and closes her eyes. His hand smoothes over her thigh, pushing the hem of her dress up an inch or two. She smiles a little, turns her face into his neck. "Whatcha doing?" she whispers, her voice just for his ears as Blair and Dan argue about something.
"Nothing," he murmurs, thumb still stroking her skin. "This is kinda weird, right?"
"Little bit." She nods against him.
"Come to the bathroom with me."
She giggles and opens her eyes. "Nate…"
"What?" He blinks innocently.
She covers his hand with her, weaves their fingers together, smiles at him. "Let's stay here." She wants this to be normal.
They end up falling asleep, slumped against the couch and each other, and when they wake up Dan and Blair are curled together on the couch above them.
They leave coffee brewing and take pictures for future blackmail purposes. She goes home with Nate and they sleep away most of the day in his bed.
Nate tells her his wishes in kisses.
Tongue circling the fourth finger of her left hand as he tells her that he wants to marry her, a wedding on the beach. Lips pressing soft kisses over her stomach as he tells that he wants her to have his babies, their babies. Mouth between her legs as he tells her that he wants to be the only one who gets to touch her there.
She comes hard, back arching up off the bed, fingers tangled into Nate's hair, crying out, "Yes…"
He kisses his way back up her body, mouth a little sticky against her skin between her breasts.
"And here," he says.
Serena is still breathing hard enough that she can feel her heart slam into her ribs right under his lips.
"I love you," she whispers, and she feels fixed.
She goes to Berkley in the fall with Nate's kiss still lingering on her lips and a camera in her carry-on bag. She makes a promise to come home for the holidays and she intends to keep it.
fin
Chapter | 1/1
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena. Nate/Serena, Dan/Blair, allusions to Dan/Serena and Chuck/Blair.
Summary | "Serena buys new shoes, comfy brown boots that she loves instantly. She plants her feet on the ground and keeps them there."
Notes | AU s4, because Serena is my bb and I want better for her than this current sucktastic storyline.
and in the shadow she crawls
clutching her faded photograph
my image under her thumb
yes, with a message for my heart
she's been everybody else's girl
maybe one day she'll be her own
everybody else's girl
maybe one day she'll be her own
--Tori Amos, Girl
She defers her Columbia acceptance in the fall.
Her mother sighs and Blair pouts but Serena just smiles pretty, packs a bag and boards a plane - has a destination in mind.
William van der Woodsen is in Moscow. She finds him on her own this time, with her own resources and her own goals, and when she shows up at his hotel all she has are the broken pieces he left her with and a shadow of her mother's smile.
"You broke my heart," she tells him over their china teacups, making herself as small as possible in the imposing armchair, knees pressed tight together and arms wrapped around herself. She understands now, what has happened. "I used to think it was all clichés, what people said about girls whose fathers left - " She presses her lips together until they tingle with blood loss.
"I'm so sorry." His voice is low and somber.
"I don't believe you."
And there is it, that's all there is.
"Serena - "
If she were feeling dramatic, she might drop her teacup on the prettily tiled floor, watch the liquid splash and the china shatter. But she just feels tired, so she says, "Now I have to fix it."
Paris is pretty in autumn, bright red leaves against a cloudy blue sky.
She calls Blair in a moment of nostalgia, eats an entire box of macaroons while her friend tells her about Columbia and seeing Penelope and the exclusive Hamilton House and an internship at W magazine.
"Sounds perfect," Serena says earnestly, and hangs up, pretending to have bad reception.
In the evening, at the top of the Eiffel Tower, the world stretching out around her, she meets a boy. His name is Patrick and he is from Ireland; that gives her something to giggle about, and right away she knows how this will end.
The mattress in his hotel room is old with springs that creak. The sex is rough; he bruises her skin with his mouth and his teeth and his calloused hands. She cries after he falls asleep, her face turned into the pillowcase that smells like laundry detergent, tears slow against her cheeks.
She leaves - him and the room and the city - at sunrise.
She takes a month-long photography class on the West Coast of Canada, and it roots her for all of November. She dips her bare toes in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday mornings and relishes the sting of the chill that runs up her legs.
One of her classmates asks her to model for him. He is eighteen with a slight overbite and she's only ever seen him wear plaid.
It's more fun that she expects it to be. They go to a beach and she plays with the wind and the water, collects seashells and breathes in the salty hair. He watches her from afar, a camera in between them, and when he smiles at the end of the day he says thanks and does not try to kiss her.
"You were totally my muse," he tells her on the night their class holds an exhibition. Her photos are nothing to write home about but his are breathtaking.
She doesn't feel like a prize. She feels kind of beautiful.
They shake hands before she leaves the city.
She goes back to New York for Christmas, spends the holidays hidden away. She throws out the card that her father sends.
There is a girl.
Her name is Raina Thorpe. She's pretty and sexy in a way Serena has never been - slinky dresses and intimidating words and arching eyebrows and wit sharp enough to cut someone.
She kisses Nate on New Year's Eve. There's a picture in the paper the next day.
Serena is too hungover for brunch, so she goes back to bed.
Once, when she is eating lunch with Blair at W, she gets mistaken for a model by Blair's boss.
It doesn't feel remotely like a compliment and she snaps, "I'm a photographer, actually."
Which is a lie, but whatever.
She takes a lot of photographs in the winter. She learns to wear sneakers instead of stilettos and buy gloves without fingertips.
Chuck frowns when he sees her. "You look like a hipster, sis," he snarls.
She gives him her sunniest smile. "You look like a douchebag. Oh wait - "
Eric turns the page of his paper noisily. "Children," he says sarcastically, "play nice."
Serena sticks her tongue out at Chuck and bites into an apple.
Dan runs into her on Valentine's Day, which is probably funny in some twisted way.
"Oh!" she gasps when she sees pastry spilling out of the box that he dropped when they collided. "Aw, déjà vu," she says apologetically, kneeling down to see is there's anything that can be salvaged.
"Last time it was pie," he says in his typical Dan-way, crouching down too. "We've moved up to cake."
She winces as she inspects the mess. "Sorry."
He shrugs. "Don't apologize."
They stare at each other over the unsalvageable cake for a long beat as people keep walking around them. He breaks eye contact first, adjusting the messenger bag on his shoulder.
"Dan," she says softly.
He meets her gaze again and smiles. "You look like you again," he says, nodding to her outfit - her blazer is open and she's wearing a thick woolen scarf and a pair of tight jeans. "Like I remember you."
The corners of her lips twitch upward. "You look grown up."
Blair announces her engagement to Prince Louis at the end of the month.
The day is bitterly cold and Chuck rages around the suite. Serena lays in bed and listens to him grieve, tries to measure out her pity.
"Say cheese."
Blair frowns at her; they're at her tiara-fitting for her wedding - Serena, up until today, did not know that people even had tiara-fittings.
"You got my bad side, S," Blair whines.
Serena sets her camera in your lap. "All of your sides are good sides, B." She leans her elbows on her knees, watches as the shop assistant carefully pins a diamond crown into Blair's chocolate-coloured hair and sets a veil over it.
Blair smiles dreamily but she doesn't take another picture.
"Are you happy?" she whispers when the assistant turns her back, but Blair's attention is on her reflection in the mirror.
She sulks with Chuck at the engagement party because she honestly has nothing better to do. She's starting to feel restless again, starting to feel like she needs to get out of this city and fast, but she can't because Blair is getting married.
Chuck orders another round and she doesn't protest. In her peripheral vision, she sees Nate on the dance floor, Raina in his arms.
"Hi."
Nate starts when she moves to stand next to him by the bar. His eyes meet hers, blue and blue, and he licks his lips in the nervous way he's always had. "Hey," he replies quietly.
She tries to remember how many days it's been since they've spoken - how many weeks, how many months.
"Do you love her?" she asks point-blank, heartbeat echoing in her ears, it's just the alcohol.
Nate stares at her like he doesn't understand.
"Don't," she breathes. "Okay? Please don't."
"S…" he whispers, and she walks away, like always.
She is a bridesmaid on the day Blair is supposed to get married, the spring-sunny day when the officiator says speak now or forever hold your peace and Dan Humphrey stands up, fumbling and mumbling, and -
"What I'm trying to say is that I love you."
Long after the rest of the guests have gone home with new gossip, Serena sits in a pew in the church in her bridesmaid's dress, Blair's bouquet clutched loosely in her hands. She thinks of another wedding, of sitting alone in another time, of another bridesmaid dress, of how heartbroken she had been.
A hand rests against her upper back, rubbing her skin gently, and a bottle of tequila makes its way into her lap.
She looks up and it's Nate, soft smile and kind eyes.
And all of a sudden it's another wedding and another dress and all she remembers is him.
"Let's go home, huh?" he asks gently, and she lets him take her there.
Half a bottle of tequila on the way means that she spends the next twenty-four hours in Nate's bed, a complete mess, headache-y and sweaty and vomiting intermittently into the garbage basket he's placed on the floor for her.
He helps her out of her dress with careful fingers, trying not to touch her skin, gives her a t-shirt of his to wear with her underwear.
"You…have a girlfriend," she mumbles.
"Shh," he soothes, brushing her tangled out of her face, fingers cool and soft against her skin. "You have to sleep."
"I didn't mean to make you take care of me," she whispers, self-conscious and fidgety in his clothes, crumpled bridesmaid dress in her hands.
"You didn't make me do anything." He gives a couple strands of her hair a playful tug and she can see the way he wants to go back to normal. "Listen…are you okay?"
She stares down at her painted toes against his hardwood floor and wishes she could disappear. She shakes her head; she's trying honesty now.
"That's okay," he says quickly. "That's totally okay. I can call Blair for you?" he suggests. "And you guys can talk about this, and - "
"No." She looks up at him and her heart aches for all the ways he doesn't understand. "Nate, I didn't…mean it."
He stares at her for a minute.
And then he says, "Okay, baby," with the words slipping out of his mouth as naturally as breathing and she clings to that memory for the days to come, the feel of his arm wrapping around her and his face in her hair and the sound of his voice. "Okay," he says.
Chuck frowns at her. "I was worried about you."
"You were worried about you." She slumps into a chair. "There's a difference."
She's tired.
Her phone has two missed calls from Blair. A newspaper speculates that Russell Thorpe's daughter is single.
Serena buys new shoes, comfy brown boots that she loves instantly. She plants her feet on the ground and keeps them there. She's not going to leave.
She brings coffee when she goes to visit Nate.
They smoke two joints on the roof of his building and giggle together and talk about nothing. When she shivers his arm snakes up and around her shoulder, cuddling her close.
She looks at him and he looks at her. Their lips brush, just barely.
"I broke up with Raina," he whispers, his eyes wide and as blue as the sky.
"Okay," she says. She smiles at him, nuzzles her face into his shoulder. "Okay."
It takes five weeks for them to fall into bed together.
She spends a lot of that time out in the city, camera in one hand and a tall latte in the other.
One day, she lets Nate come with her as she develops prints, the two of them alone in the red-glow of a darkroom.
"You're good at this," he says as he watches her, and when she gives him a little smile he presses on, "No, I'm serious. You're…really good."
"Thanks, Natie," she mumbles. In this light, he can't see her blush.
That is the night she takes him home with her, gets lost under the sheets with him and marvels a little at the way his hands still no exactly what to do, at the way he still buries his face in her neck as he groans her name, at the way his kisses still taste unstoppably sweet.
"I missed you," she says as he lays over her. His grin is blinding as his knuckles brush her cheek and she breathes, "God, I missed you."
It seems fair to make Blair come to her.
Blair, who looks as nervous as Serena has ever seen her; Blair, whose chin is tilted up defiantly; Blair, who has Dan Humphrey's love wrapped tight around her like a blanket.
"We need to talk," she declares even as her bottom lip trembles.
Serena considers. Blair might be wearing Dan's affection like she never wants to take it off but Serena's shirt is low-cut and there's a butterfly-shaped hickey on one of her breasts and she can feel Nate marked onto every inch of her skin.
"I don't think we do," Serena says gently.
The ground between them is smouldering, but it is even.
She has tea with her mother.
"I went to see Dad in September," she offers, watching Lily's face for a reaction.
Her mother nods. "He told me, dear."
Serena breathes out. "I didn't know you two were talking."
Lily reaches out and puts two fingers beneath Serena's chin, tips her face off. "He wanted to tell me that he thought you were very brave."
She presses her lips tight together and doesn't realize she's crying until her mother's hand is on her back, rubbing gently.
"You're growing up," Lily says lightly, and it sounds like a good thing.
Nate takes her to the beach on the first warm day in a cherry-red convertible and tells her that he loves her.
They make love where the ocean meets the sand, waves lapping softly at their bodies. She comes with her mouth against his neck, gasping against his skin.
She doesn't say it back, but that's okay. He kisses her long and deep and it tastes like it means something.
When Cece comes to town, she looks at Serena and tsk-tsks at her crumbling ballet flats and her messy hair but smiles and hugs her anyway.
"You are your mother's daughter, darling," she sighs, but it doesn't quite sound like an insult.
She sits on the floor with Nate, their backs against the couch as Dan and Blair sit above them, critiquing every aspect of the movie they're watching without missing a single beat.
She leans her head against Nate's shoulder and closes her eyes. His hand smoothes over her thigh, pushing the hem of her dress up an inch or two. She smiles a little, turns her face into his neck. "Whatcha doing?" she whispers, her voice just for his ears as Blair and Dan argue about something.
"Nothing," he murmurs, thumb still stroking her skin. "This is kinda weird, right?"
"Little bit." She nods against him.
"Come to the bathroom with me."
She giggles and opens her eyes. "Nate…"
"What?" He blinks innocently.
She covers his hand with her, weaves their fingers together, smiles at him. "Let's stay here." She wants this to be normal.
They end up falling asleep, slumped against the couch and each other, and when they wake up Dan and Blair are curled together on the couch above them.
They leave coffee brewing and take pictures for future blackmail purposes. She goes home with Nate and they sleep away most of the day in his bed.
Nate tells her his wishes in kisses.
Tongue circling the fourth finger of her left hand as he tells her that he wants to marry her, a wedding on the beach. Lips pressing soft kisses over her stomach as he tells that he wants her to have his babies, their babies. Mouth between her legs as he tells her that he wants to be the only one who gets to touch her there.
She comes hard, back arching up off the bed, fingers tangled into Nate's hair, crying out, "Yes…"
He kisses his way back up her body, mouth a little sticky against her skin between her breasts.
"And here," he says.
Serena is still breathing hard enough that she can feel her heart slam into her ribs right under his lips.
"I love you," she whispers, and she feels fixed.
She goes to Berkley in the fall with Nate's kiss still lingering on her lips and a camera in her carry-on bag. She makes a promise to come home for the holidays and she intends to keep it.
fin