GG oneshot - N/B
Title: And because love battles
Author: Hannie
Summary: And she tells you that her name is Blair and you say yours is Nate and you quickly realise that her eyes are the prettiest you have ever seen. v loosely based on the show
Pairings: N/B (mentions of N/S, C/B)
Rating: T/PG-13
Disclaimer: If i owned GG, N/B would be the OTP. But i don't. Title and subtitles inspired by Pablo Neruda's "And because love battles"
And because love battles
1.Like this I need you
You first see her across a dimly lit classroom; her face stands out through a crowd of almost 30 other people. She isn’t as loud as the girl she is perching next to on the desk, but she doesn’t need to be. She moves like the dancer you saw at the ballet the weekend before (the only part of the show that left any impression on you at all) and you wonder if you should reach out and touch her.
You see her talking to your best friend and you can feel a stab of pain rush through you. You can’t work out why though, because you’ve never spoken to her before and you have certainly never felt this way before. It doesn’t change the fact however, that you want to pull him right away from her. But it’s school and you know that fighting isn’t allowed; god knows what your parents would say if they found out that you had been fighting with Charles at school.
You’re sitting at a large round table with some of your other friends - Michael and Dylan and James - but you can’t concentrate on what they’re saying because it’s not about her. The only thing you would wish for in that moment would be for Charles to be sat where you are and for you to be over there, talking to the girl.
She doesn’t seem to be listening to your best friend that intently and it gives you hope. She seems much more interested in the conversation her taller, more conventionally beautiful friend is having with a large gaggling group of girls. You can tell that all she wants to be is the leader of the group and her head hangs when she realises the girls are all a lot more interested in what her friend is saying. You have no idea why - if she was talking to you, you know that you wouldn’t ever stop listening unless she walked away.
It doesn’t occur to you that this is quite a ridiculous thing to say at the age of eleven years old. But that doesn’t change the way you feel when the teacher seats the class boy-girl-boy-girl, boys in alphabetical order and girls in reverse and the girl is placed next to you. You obviously know that your name is Archibald; however you can only try to guess what hers might be. Zachary, perhaps? Or Young? You stop trying to figure out her name and instead begin to speak to her. Or at least you try to: Charles Bass, otherwise known as your best friend, is on the desk in front and trying his best to interrupt anything you might be trying to tell her. Charles always had to be the centre of everybody’s attention and threw a tantrum if he was not.
You can’t believe your luck when the teacher shouts ‘Charles’ and makes him move across the classroom because she thinks he’s been talking to you.
“So why’s he called Chuck?” She is talking to you and you can’t believe her voice sounds as sweet as her face (you can’t believe you’re repeating that phrase but you had read it a few weeks ago in one of your mother’s romance novels that you had found on the coffee table). It then occurs to you that you don’t know who Chuck actually is, until something registers in the back of your mind and you realise she is talking about the douche that is your best friend.
“You mean Charles? He’s been desperately trying to get everyone to call him by that name for months now: I keep telling him it’ll never catch on but he just won’t let up with that stupid nickname.” She smiles at you and you can’t help but smile back - partly because you can’t help it and partly because you’ve just realised that she has the cutest dimples you’ve ever seen.
And she tells you that her name is Blair and you say yours is Nate and you quickly realise that her eyes are the prettiest you have ever seen.
-
2.Like this I want you
You’ve known her for about a year when you realise that the only thing you want to do is kiss her. It feels strange because you’ve never felt like that before; however Chuck (he now won’t answer to anything else and you slowly had to admit defeat) has assured you that it’s perfectly normal and he’s already kissed at least ten girls. You’re not sure whether you entirely believe him but you do think that he’s more experienced than you.
So weirdly, you take his advice and drag Blair away from Serena. It isn’t hard and you like to think that her face lights up when she sees you. You really hope it does because otherwise you’re going to be embarrassing yourself for nothing.
You know her so well now; you think that she is competing with Chuck for your best friend status. But she is different because she laughs at your jokes and when she smiles you can feel your face going red. You know that she loves her best friend but at the same time hates her because she is always the prettiest, the cleverest and the most popular.
Every time she tells you this you just want to disagree and say that you think that she is the most beautiful girl in the world.
The past year seems to have gone so fast, in terms of the time you would have liked to have spent with her. There’s been lots of times where you, Blair, Serena and Chuck have gone out together, but the times where you and Blair are alone are few and far between.
Except for English lessons that is. In the English class you get to hear all about her life, and keeping to the promise you made the year before, you continue to listen until the bell rings to signal that your time is up. You spend four hours a week together and that is the time when you hear all about her family, her likes and her dislikes and anything else you can drag out of her.
You find out that she loves her Dad more then her Mom, and she worries that her parents one day may divorce because they don’t act like they’re in love anymore. You realise that she thinks she’s not good enough, mainly because her mother won’t stop telling her how perfect the bodies of the models are that she works with every day. You know that all Blair wants is her mother’s approval and although she sometimes gets on with her, you know the rift is growing deeper. She likes Kit Kats and hates pears, loves Audrey Hepburn and hates Nicole Kidman and one day wants to go to Yale and follow in her father’s footsteps.
Sometimes, when she makes you, you talk too; you tell her about your family which is as dysfunctional as hers and you tell her all about your love for sailing. When you talk about your passion to Chuck, he simply laughs and tells you to stop babbling on about boats. However when you talk to Blair, she smiles when your eyes light up because you’re talking about something you love and she never fails to ask interesting questions that you’re only too keen to answer. And your favourite part about her is that you can always tell she’s listening, ingesting everything you say: you can only hope that it looks as though you are concentrating so intently on her words. Obviously you usually are, but there are times when your gaze slips down to her lips and you reflect on how she has the most beautiful lips in the world.
You realise you need to get back to the present however because you’re staring vacantly at her and she has been waiting for you to start the conversation. Yet now you have pulled her away, you’re not quite sure what you want to say to her. Well, you do know what you want to come out of your mouth; it’s just that your mouth is finding it hard to form these thoughts into words.
Instead, struck dumb, you hand over the small parcel to her. It makes you feel incredible, the way her face and her pretty eyes light up so that they’re glowing.
“You got me a present?” She whispers and you reply, thinking that giving her a present is the most obvious thing in the world.
“It’s your birthday.” You suddenly realise that obviously Chuck didn’t get her a present and therefore maybe you shouldn’t have either. Even though you like her and you want to kiss her, maybe a present was a bit inappropriate. But you had seen it and it had reminded you that she once said she loved the idea of sailing and one day perhaps you could go together. You’d never told her but that was your hope for the future.
You watch her as she opens the parcel and you suddenly realise that you haven’t breathed for the past 30 seconds. You quickly try to let out your breath subtly, but you’re sure she must have noticed.
All your worries are whisked away when you see her open it and throw the necklace around her petite neck.
You’ve given her a necklace, with a pendant hanging off it - an anchor. You thought it would look beautiful on her when you saw it in the shop and made your mom buy it and it turns out that you were right. Right now, you can’t imagine her wearing any other piece of jewellery and you don’t want her to either.
You don’t take heed of that fact that these are very strong feelings to be having at the age of 12; instead, you’re looking into her eyes and know what you want to do next.
You kiss her.
And then she smiles and you smile back and you realise that she actually does have the most beautiful lips you’re ever going to kiss.
3.Like this I break you
You never thought anything would ever come of the secret little crush you had on Serena.
Serena was the wild and crazy friend - dare you say it, the fun friend. She was everything that Blair was not. You loved Blair as much as your young heat could however sometimes you couldn’t help but think that maybe that wasn’t enough. You had been together for years now and what you had was easy. But you weren’t sure whether you were looking for ‘easy’ anymore. You want hearts pumping and excitement, not tender glances and sweet kisses.
You think the fact that the two of you have built up this idea of sex for so long makes it harder. If it isn’t great now, it would change everything. And if you lost Blair from your life, you don’t know what you’d do.
It makes it worse that you have to hear her talking about Serena all the time. And whilst most of the time all you want to do is hug her, kiss her and tell her that to you she is the most beautiful girl in the world - sometimes, you start to think about what all the other guys see in Serena and you wish that Blair could be more like that. Not completely of course, because then she wouldn’t be your Blair but you sometimes wish that she could be more like the girl you once met - less obsessed with what she wears and what she eats.
For that reason, when you get drunk and Serena is falling all over you, you give in. It sounds disgusting to say, but you are thinking of Blair while you are fucking her best friend. It should have been her but it wasn’t.
The next day, you realise that it was all one huge mistake and you try to find Serena. But she’s gone.
Her departure leaves you more confused than you would have been otherwise - had she left because of you? Because she liked you or because she never wanted to see your face again? The thoughts swirl around in his your head until they became a constant and one mistake becomes a huge deal in your mind.
This new infatuation for a girl who isn’t even there means that you’re not there for Blair when she needs you. On the day that you lost Serena, she lost her best friend - possibly the one person apart from yourself who really understands her. You’re not there, not really, when she loses her father to France and another man. She arrived, broken at your door yet all you could do was stare and hold her loosely, dreaming of a far away country with a far away girl.
When Serena comes back, you can’t stop yourself from running straight to her. You and Blair still haven’t had sex, partly because it has been hyped up, partly thanks to Blair’s insistence that it be special and mainly due to your desire to see Serena before anything happened.
But she returned and you realised that you had lost a year of your life when you could have been loving the girl that you should have all along. However you can’t turn back time and you can’t make all those wishes disappear and you realise that you and Blair have been left with nothing.
You can hardly remember the last year you spent together. Every last hour was spent obsessing over websites and phoning contacts , trying to find out where everyone’s favourite socialite was seen last. You could see Blair fading as you became more distant but at that point, you didn’t care. Serena was all that mattered and one day you realised with a heavy heart that you had joined the group of people that could break Blair in an instant. You however knew that you were breaking her slowly but surely, painfully and agonisingly in a long drawn out fight which was going to have to end.
As everything dissolves between you and Serena, you quickly realise that you have made the biggest mistake you possibly could have ever made. Caring for a girl who would never care for anyone else but herself and her best friend (although now, even the latter was debatable) was the most stupid thing you could have done.
You tell Blair and you can feel all of the breath coming out of your body. You have to lean on a chair for support, for fear that you will fall right in front of her. She crumples, her entire body folding and all you want to do is hold her tightly and tell her that it was a one time thing. But you can’t lie, because to you that night meant so much more and you can’t tell your girlfriend anything because you know that it will just make things worse. You have never seen her like this and you realise that the one person she never thought would let her down just had.
You leave her sitting on the floor in her nightgown, wondering what she had ever done wrong to deserve such shitty parents, best friend and boyfriend. You want to tell her that she did nothing wrong, they’re the ones who screwed up but you can’t bring yourself to do it. You try to reach out to touch her shoulder but she flinches away from you and it occurs to you that she has never, ever done that before. Your hand turns cold without it even touching anything.
You meet the next day and you realise that she has perfected her look in order to be there. She has never looked more like a little doll and all you want to do is scoop her into a hug and tell her that everything will be okay, even though you know you have both gone past that.
And she tells you she thinks you should stay together and you agree (although you already know you’ve lost her) and you realise that you have proved that every little doubt she ever had about herself is true.
4.Like this I miss you
You’ve been broken up for over a year and in that time the two of you have drifted even further apart than before (even though honestly, you weren’t that close in the days leading up to the break up). You do still see each other - after all, you run in the same circles - but it becomes strange that at Charity Dinners and Balls, she isn’t your date.
Yet you still notice her: what she’s wearing, who she’s with and how she’s feeling. You pride yourself on the fact that you’re probably the only one who can see through her facade. Blair Waldorf is a strong girl, the strongest you know but that doesn’t stop her being vulnerable at times and it takes all that you have to stop yourself going to comfort her when you see her.
That’s not your place anymore, you have to tell yourself. In part, that place is reserved for Chuck and you almost have to spit their names out in the same sentence. He is still your best friend but something has changed - that something being that he now professes to love Blair as well. You can’t tell him that so do you - you always have and you always will. You watch the two of them from afar and have to tell yourself that you are no longer involved. They are so wrong together; you can see it - why can nobody else? All the two of them do together is hurt each other and in your eyes that is not a healthy relationship, not even a relationship. It takes twelve months for Blair to break completely and you have to try and tell yourself that you didn’t see it coming.
It was never supposed to be Chuck and Blair - Nate and Blair had always sounded better together anyway. You can’t believe that you’re being so childish about this but it hurts to see that she has moved on and you have not. Maybe it looks like you have and sure, you’ve been seen with a lot of girls since the end of your relationship with Blair. But what people don’t realise is that all you are trying to do is find somebody that means as much to you as Blair does, someone that can mean more to you than Blair has. It has taken you twelve months to realise that it is never going to happen.
Chuck always keeps you up to date with what is happened between him and Blair - you have never told him that all you want during those conversations is to rip out his throat. You listen frigidly to what he is trying to say but all you can think is that it should have been you. Nothing ever came out of what happened with you and Serena and you soon realised that it never would. A few weeks of chasing after her and you realised that Serena Van Der Woodsen was not the goddess so many believed her to be. She was as flawed as anybody else and you are much more interested in the flaws of her small best friend. Their friendship had gone through hell during the year but you are glad that you didn’t end it forever.
The latest event that Chuck is telling you about is that Blair has told him she loves him. You want to get rid of the contents of your stomach but you know that to do that would reveal everything. So you stand there, gripping onto the counter and keep a fixed smile on your face. Blair was never supposed to love Chuck - they were the two most unsuited people to be together that he knew.
You try not to feel happy when Chuck tells you that he doesn’t love her back.
Chuck has never been into relationships full of love and if you’re honest with yourself, you’re not sure if he ever will. Blair has tried to change him but you know as well as anybody else that you shouldn’t have to change somebody to make them into a person you can be with. It should be natural and it should be easy - just like you and Blair were. You try not to think about the fact that you haven’t told Blair how you feel and therefore how should she know you were still waiting for her; however it still doesn’t stop you believing that in some way she betrayed you.
You tell Chuck that he should tell Blair exactly how he feels and although you don’t want to hurt her, you know it would hurt more if he lied.
He rings you after he has done it and tells you that he thinks you should go and see her, because you know what she’s like. Serena is out of town and you realise that this was going to be the first good thing you have done for Blair in a very long time. As you’re walking to hers, you start to dread what you might find - could she be throwing things and screaming and having a tantrum like she used to when she was 12? You really aren’t sure and you suddenly realise how far the two of you have grown apart and how much you want to see her again.
You used to be together almost 24/7 and it occurs to you that lately you haven’t spent any time together at all. Blair, once the most important person in your life has faded to only a memory based on what other people can tell you about her.
You are shaking as you press the buttons on the lift because for some reason, you think that if you mess this up you will have lost your chance with her forever. Maybe it’s true, perhaps it isn’t but that doesn’t stop you feeling nervous as you ask Dorota where she is. Dorota looks worried herself and you start to think that it could be worse than you ever imagined, but she points upstairs anyway. You can’t hear screaming and you can’t hear crashing and you start to think that it might be okay.
It becomes apparent how wrong you are when you step into her bedroom and see through into the open door of her bathroom. Your beautiful girl is leaning over the toilet bowl and your fear now turns to anger.
You shout at her and she looks up, her eyes full of sadness and dejectedness, but it doesn’t stop you. You scream at her for what she’s doing to herself, what she is doing to others and what she is doing to you. She cries back for all the times that anybody has ever hurt her, every time that you have hurt her and the tears fall freely down her cheeks.
Before long, you can see exhaustion cross her face and you run to her and catch her before she collapses to the ground. You carry her back through to her room and sit close to her on the floor (you are not sure if it would be inappropriate to sit with her on the bed). She starts to talk to you and you realise that this is the most honest conversation that you have had together in a very long time. You’ve missed her scent and her warmth and her eyes and the only thing you want to do now is to keep her safe.
You try to apologise for all the things you just said to her, but you had just seen the most terrifying scene of your life so far. The fact that your beautiful girl was trying to make herself ill was impossible to take but you know that all you can do is help her through it. She tells you that she started over a year ago, and you know that this means that you started it. You are sorrier than she will ever know and than you could ever show but somehow that doesn’t really mean anything. She admits to you that she is upset less because of Chuck’s confession and more because it means that yet another person has deemed her not good enough.
Her body feels limp in your arms and you sit her up, holding the sides of her arms as gently as you can whilst keeping her upright and you make her promise that she will never say that again. She is the best person you know and has got through more than you could ever have in a lifetime. She’s the Queen B, she rules the majority of the people’s lives on the Upper East Side. She scoffs at this through her tears and you tell her seriously that she rules yours. For the first time she looks straight at you and you know that she is shocked by your sincerity. This is the first time you have been completely honest with her in a long time and it feels incredible, although you know that you have to be careful. You push the stray hairs out of her face (you know that she hates it when her hair does that) and make her promise that she will never make herself ill again.
She says she can promise if you swear to always be there for her. You agree in a heartbeat and you swear you can see the hint of a smile on her face.
And you wrap your arm tightly round her shoulder and she snuggles her head into your chest and you know that her weakness and her strength are two of the things you love most about her.
5.Like this I love you
You both go to Yale and it is corny and clichéd but you don’t care at all. The two of you together with your friends scattered around the country. The life you lead is perfect for you - you live together in a one bed-roomed apartment and your lives centre around the other. You are studying to become a lawyer and her to become a doctor. Nobody would never have imagined it but in the past two years Blair Waldorf has blossomed and now there could be no other choice for her. On weekends, the two of you try to go sailing as much as you can and when you are on the boat and the wind messes up her hair and she laughs infectiously, you know that there is no place in the world you would rather be.
Your relationship is filled with heated arguments and even more passionate make ups. You smile to yourself - the two of you should never have worried that the sex would not have been good. Your bodies fit together like no other and when she screams your name, you smirk, knowing that she will never scream any other name like that for the rest of her life.
Blair has begun to love herself, and you would like to think that you have something do with it. Honestly though, it is all her and the change that she brought about has made her undoubtedly the most popular socialite on the Upper East Side. Ridiculously, the one thing she had always wanted was now the one thing she couldn’t care less about. Your girlfriend has grown up and grown out of her insecurities and she has never been happier. It hasn’t changed anything between the two of you - you loved her when she was full of insecurities and you love her now she’s not.
Chuck and Serena - you like to think of them as the two obstacles that you have had to get through in your relationship with Blair - are now both happy on different sides of the country. Serena at Brown with a Brooklyn Boy called Dan (she also rejected the socialite status that was thrown upon her) and Chuck is at Princeton, charming as many girls that he possibly can, you assume. The two of them are over the moon about what you are going to do.
Blair, as always, would rather stay at the apartment and watch old Audrey Hepburn movies with you and that evening, she ruins all your plans by insisting that the two of you stay in. After all, she says, this is your anniversary and you should be able to celebrate it with the perfect evening. You can’t tell her that that is the reason why you have to go to the restaurant.
You have to give in because this is Blair and she doesn’t give in when it comes to Audrey and you have to start forming a plan in your head. She is wearing the old pyjamas she always wears now and you’re not sure whether she will be mad if you do it whilst she’s wearing that outfit. She may have changed but she is still Blair.
You can’t think of a plan and so you go on to think about what you’re going to say. Should you make a huge long speech about why you love her - because you could - or would she prefer a sweet and simple Will You Marry Me?
You feel her stiffen beside you and you could kick yourself because you have just said it aloud. Grand gestures and great speeches are out the window and so you turn her to face you and take the box out of the pocket of your sweats. She’s staring but she still finds the time to make an inappropriate joke about that being what had been digging into her back all night. It doesn’t make you feel any better because you just want to hear her answer; even if this wasn’t the proposal she had always dreamed of.
It feels like you have been waiting for hours even though you know it could have only been thirty seconds. You keep your gaze on hers and you realise that this is the first time you don’t know what she’s thinking or what she is going to say.
She doesn’t need to say anything however when her face breaks out into a smile and you feel yours grin back and she kisses you softly whilst taking the ring out of the box, whispering ‘yes’ against your lips. You’re not sure whether you have ever been this happy. You go to bed together and you know that this has been the most perfect evening of your life. It’s late and you know you need to sleep but you just want to stay awake so that it can’t end.
And she yawns and you kiss her head goodnight and you realise that all you’ve ever needed is Blair Waldorf wound up tightly in your arms.
-
End.
.