I'd Take Her If I had One Wish
Title: I'd Take Her If I had One Wish
Chapter: 1/1
Pairing: Nate/Serena
Warning: AU after 1x18
Summary: She kisses his cheek, giggling as she gets out of the car, and he just shakes his head and watches as people stare at her.
Word Count: 6,833
Disclaimer: I don't own Gossip Girl.
A/N: This was born from a prompt/Chace Crawford quote sing_song_sung gave me, like, a bajillion years ago. "So, if Nate and Serena are spending the summer together in the Hamptons, then he'll no doubt be willing to give it up, again and again, to the princess of the UES." I hope you like it, bb!
He picks her up in front of her building, and she's standing there with a couple bags at her feet, chewing her thumbnail as the sun bounces off her skin and her hair blows in the wind. She smiles when she sees him, and he winks from the drivers seat before getting out and helping put her bags in the trunk of the car.
She gets in, buckles her seatbelt and flips her sunglasses down over her nose as he gets in and puts his hand on the wheel.
"Ready?" he asks, grinning at her, and she nods just once, slipping her feet out of her flip flops.
"Let's go," she says.
He pulls his father's Aston Martin away from the curb and into traffic, laughs at the way Serena turns up the radio immediately, rests her feet on the dash, and dances in her seat when a song she loves comes through the speakers.
People are staring at them because they're two kids in this expensive car, and Serena's gorgeous, hair whipping around her face and head tipped back against the seat.
"Pull over!" she cries suddenly, hitting his arm a few times.
"S! I can't just pull over. We're in the middle of Manhattan at noon!" he laughs. "What?"
"We need frappuccinos! There's a Starbucks. Pull over!"
He's still laughing as he pulls into a no parking zone and flips on his hazard lights. (As if anyone would ask him to move anyway.) He hands her a crumpled $10 from his pocket. "Go. Hurry!"
She kisses his cheek, giggling as she gets out of the car, and he just shakes his head and watches as people stare at her.
... ... ...
Serena insists they stop at every roadside fruit or souvenir stand, charms people without even trying into giving her free berries, and she feeds them to Nate as he laughs, because none of this is exactly unexpected. She buys a straw cowboy hat, puts it on and looks like a million dollars as she walks back to the car with Nate trailing behind her.
"It should not be taking us this long to get there," Nate laughs as they pull back onto the road.
Serena smiles and shoves at his arm. "Whatever! We have all summer, Nate. We can do whatever we want."
He's sure she doesn't necessarily means that the way he hears it.
He doesn't stop her when she reaches for his hand on the gear shift. They're pretty quiet the rest of the drive, just music and wind and the sound of the tires on the road. He runs his thumb over the band of the ring she's wearing, and she taps her blue polished toes on the dash in time with the music.
This summer already feels like theirs.
... ... ...
Cece greets them at the door when he pulls the car up to her summer house. She's smiling, but Serena can tell her grandmother is wondering just what took them so long and why Serena insisted on driving with Nate in the first place.
"Hi grandma!" Serena chirps, walking over to hug Cece as Nate lifts her bags from the car.
"You should have called, dear. It took you so long."
"Oh," Serena giggles, looking at Nate, who's just shaking his head. "We took the long way."
"Well, regardless, dinner is almost ready," Cece says. "Nathaniel, will you be staying?"
"No, thank you, Mrs. Rhodes," he says politely as the staff comes to carry Serena's bags into the house. "My mother is expecting me. Some other time, maybe."
"Yes, maybe," Cece says, and Nate sees Serena roll her eyes at the way the woman puts her nose in the air just a little bit.
Serena walks him over to the car again, wrapping her arms around him as her grandmother looks on. "Thanks for driving."
"Thanks for coming with me," he says, hand running down her back.
"Call me later?" she asks. It feels strange to say it, since they barely spoke all year, but she doesn't think there's anything she wants more right now than to spend the whole summer with him.
"I will."
She kisses his cheek for some reason, then runs back to the house and slips inside.
He laughs when he's driving away and he gets her text; Oh god HELP! xo, S.
But it is kind of hard not to turn the car around and go back.
... ... ...
"Have you heard from Blair?" he asks one day when they're walking through town. She's wearing some filmy summer dress over her bikini, and her hair is in a messy ponytail. She's toying with the straw of her frappuccino.
She shakes her head. "Not in a couple days. Chuck?"
He scoffs and shakes his head. "He's not answering."
"They're so messed up," Serena laughs.
"Yeah," Nate says quietly.
But he's not really sure which is worse. Being apart and pretending you don't want to be together? Or being together and pretending you don't want to be together.
... ... ...
Two weeks into summer, he's tired of her occasional sulking. Yes, it's only occasional, but it's annoying anyway, because Serena van der Woodsen is not the kind of girl who sulks, and he's not about to let her start.
He wrenches open the curtains in her room, sits down next to her on the bed and shakes her awake. She groans and whines and covers her eyes, burying her face in the pillow as he tries to get her up.
"Nate, no. Leave me alone," she mumbles.
"No. You're getting up," he tells her. "And no arguing, because I promised your grandmother I'd wake you up, and she kinda scares me a little, so please. For me?"
She groans and turns onto her back again so she can look at him. He, of course, looks perfectly put together, hair a little messy, shirt a little wrinkled, but perfectly Nate anyway. And he's wearing this grin like he knows she's going to do what he asks her to do.
"I hate you, you know that?" she asks, grabbing his hand for no reason. "You just had to play the 'for me' card. It's almost pathetic."
He chuckles and weaves their fingers together. "You love me, and yeah, you made me play that card. And..." He stops to think about it. He needs to sweeten the deal. "I'll buy you coffee."
"Iced."
"Whatever you like, S," he says, as if that's not always the way it goes anyway. "C'mon. No more wallowing."
"I'm not wallowing," she says as she stretches. He can't help but look at her as she pulls her hands away and stretches her arms wide. When they fall back onto the bed, her palm is resting flat against his hip. "I'm just sleeping in."
"You're wallowing. Over Dan. He's from Brooklyn," he says, doing his best Blair impression. Serena giggles and lets him pull the sheets away. "Get up, Serena. We'll go to the beach."
She sighs and gets out of bed. He promptly lays down, which makes her scowl at him. "Seriously, Nate? You're getting into my bed just as I'm getting out of it?"
He arches his brow and leans up on his elbows. "You'd rather I get in when you're in it?"
She giggles and arches her back, hanging onto the frame of the bathroom door and bending her leg at the knee, her toes pointed behind her. "You know I like to cuddle," she says girlishly.
The door closes moments later, and he's just shaking his head.
After she's showered, she pulls her wet hair into a messy bun, slips on a pair of shorts over her bathing suit, and grabs his hand, pulling him out of the house.
They drive into town (it's pretty sweet to have his dad's Aston Martin for the whole summer; it's not like anyone else was using it) and he buys her iced coffee from her favourite place, as promised, and they window shop for things they'll never need. They get corn dogs for lunch at this place Nate found out about two summers ago from the locals, and get two straws so they can share the biggest soda known to man. Nate wants Coke, but Serena wants Mountain Dew, so she convinces him (it doesn't take much) to mix them and he pretends it's not totally disgusting.
When they make it to the beach, they're both sweating a little, and Nate pulls off his shirt and heads for the water as Serena lays out on a blanket Nate somehow had in the trunk of his dad's car.
When he walks back over to her after cooling down, he actually laughs to himself as he looks at her. She's so damn beautiful. He's never lost sight of that. But there are a few guys who are apparently noticing it, too, so Nate walks over to where she's laying and runs a hand through his hair, spraying her and making her squeal.
"Nate!" she cries, grabbing onto his calf and pulling so he lands on his behind on the sand. "Jerk."
"It's just water," he reminds her, sitting down next to her. He bends his knees and rests his elbows on them. She sticks her tongue out and he laughs, because she's so fucking cute sometimes. He doesn't know how he's gone without her so long. "You wanna talk about it?"
"Talk about what?" she asks, eyes still closed.
"Serena."
"Nate."
"Dan."
"Nate," she sighs. "What's there to talk about? We broke up. And for a reason. I'm just dealing with it."
"But you're not," he insists. He turns toward her a little more.
"It's only been a couple weeks. It's not like I'm writing him love letters or anything," she laughs. She knows he's not going to let her joke her way out of this. "Why do you care so much anyway?"
He rolls his eyes and reaches over, toying with the string of her bikini at her hip. "Because I care about you."
All she can do is smile at him. "You're kind of annoyingly sweet, you know that?"
"It's a blessing and a curse," he says matter-of-factly. She giggles and sits up, leaning against him, head resting on his shoulder and her hair tickling his back. "If you wanna talk..."
He lets the offer hang in the air and she slips her arm through his. "I've got your number."
He wraps his fingers around hers and they sit there for a while, until she gets bored and decides it's time to go watch movies in the air conditioning at his place. And he gives her what she wants, because he kind of always gives her what she wants.
... ... ...
His mother is in the city for something or another, and Cece is preoccupied with some event, so Serena ends up at Nate's huge house, just the two of them alone with a 12 pack of cheap beer Nate found in the fridge. They found two keepsake boxes of photographs, so they're sitting on his bed with Can't Hardly Wait playing on the television they're not really paying attention to.
Serena is three beer in, buzzed and giggly and adorable, and Nate is less affected by the alcohol as of yet. But he's just enjoying her, because she's easy to enjoy.
"Oh, my god!" she cries, holding up a photo, waving it in the air. "My seventh birthday!"
"Oh, no," he groans, reaching over to take the picture. "That was terrible."
"It was Grease themed, Nate! It was amazing."
"It was stupid!" he says laughingly. He looks down at a photo of the five of them - Nate, Serena, Chuck, Blair and Eric - the boys in black jeans, white tee shirts and little leather jackets (in July) and the girls in their big skirts and scarves around their necks. "I was so mad at you for making me wear this."
"Only until the ice cream sundae bar came out. Then you loved me," she teases lightly, poking at his thigh with her index finger. "And remember Chuck convinced Eric to walk around saying he got a hickie from Kenickie!"
She literally collapses, giggling, and Nate can only laugh when she presses her forehead against his thigh, just above his knee. He smoothes his hand over her back until she sits up again.
"What do you wanna do for your birthday this year?" he asks. She brushes the hair from her face and shrugs. "It's soon."
"I know," she says quietly, looking down at the photo of herself as a kid, happy, smiling with her best friends, wearing blue eye shadow and a pink ribbon in her hair. "Let's just do this," she insists, waving an arm around the room. "Just me and you. We'll...we'll be low key."
He laughs at her. "Serena, you don't do low key. It's like, impossible for you to be low key."
"Whatever!" she cries, throwing her hands in the air. "I just want it to be me and you."
He nods and she reaches over to crack open another beer, sifting through the photos. He's looking through his box, too, as that girl from Dharma and Greg starts talking. "Fate! There is such a thing as fate, but it only takes you so far. Then it's up to you to make it happen." He comes across one picture, laughs and nudges Serena with his knee.
"Check that out," he says. "Got you naked."
"Nate!" she squeals, grabbing the photo. "We're, like, four here."
"And in the bathtub together." He wiggles his eyebrows and she, for whatever reason, covers his mouth with her hand. He kisses her palm and she pulls it away. "You realize you've had the same hair all your life."
"I like it."
"I do, too," he says, reaching out to toy with a lock of it. "I'm just saying."
She turns to him with a little grin on her lips, and he knows she's about to make fun of him. He kind of loves that he can tell when she's about to make jokes with him. She takes a sip of her beer and then runs her fingers through his bangs.
"This is kind of new," she says quietly.
"I've had it, like, all year," he reminds her. She shrugs her shoulder.
"It wasn't like this when I left," she almost whispers. They tend not to talk about her leaving. No one talks about her leaving. (It leads too easily to the night before she left.) "I like it. It's kind of...It's sexy, Nate." He gives her a lopsided grin as she pushes his hair off his forehead just slightly, and he tucks a lock of hers behind her ear. "Nate."
He doesn't really know why he kisses her, but it feels right, and it feels good, and it's Serena, and she's just staring at him with these eyes when he pulls away.
"Sorry," he mumbles.
She smiles and shakes her head a little, leaning across his body to set her beer on the bedside table. She takes his face in her hands and the last thing he remembers before she kisses him again is her pulling the photo of them out of his hands and tossing it back into the pile with all the rest.
(He gets her naked again.)
... ... ...
She can tell he's awake without even looking at him. That's the thing about sleeping with someone you've known your whole life.
She's just waiting to hear what he has to say about how their evening went, about the fact that he's wearing just his boxers and she's wearing just his shirt.
She doesn't regret a thing; never could with Nate. Everything with him has a strange tendency to feel something close to perfect, even when it's wrong. And she thinks that maybe those are the only examples she has - when things were supposed to be wrong but didn't feel like it at all.
The thing that scares her is that everything between them always feels very final, too. Very 'at last' or 'happily ever after'. It scares her because she doesn't think it's very realistic to think that way. She's made too many mistakes, hurt everyone too many times.
It shouldn't be this easy to get everything you think you've always wanted.
"Quit pretending to be asleep," she says, poking her index finger into his ribs.
"Ow," he laughs as he grabs her hand. "Didn't wanna wake you up."
"What time is it?"
"Doesn't matter," he says, and she thinks he's right. "Serena, what..."
"Don't say it," she insists, pulling away from him a bit. She sits up and his hand comes to rest on her thigh. "I don't want to have that stupid talk."
He smiles at her, leans his head back against the pillow. "What are we doing?"
She scowls. "You don't listen very well." He shrugs one shoulder, moves his thumb over the bare skin of her leg. "Can't we just have fun? Together?"
"Yeah, but...are we..."
She leans over, stretches herself out half on top of him. She kisses his jaw, chin, the side of his mouth. "Will you be my summer fling?" she asks playfully.
"Serena," he laughs. "I'm serious."
"Me too," she insists. His hand is already tracing patterns on her hip beneath her shirt.
He can't really argue. He can't say he doesn't want to spend his whole summer, with her, like this. So he nods and kisses her.
... ... ...
He's swimming laps in his pool and she's laying on her stomach with her bikini untied and her back bared to the sun. She's listening to her iPod and taking sips of water. It's hot out, and over her music, she can hear the splashing water in the pool as Nate swims.
It's been a little over a week since they started this arrangement. Well, since they started sleeping together. They haven't changed other than that. They still spend almost every day together, and they still talk about all the same things. He still teases her every chance he gets, and she still lets him.
She likes it, this summer, doing basically nothing with the one person she thinks she's missed most of all for the last...For a long time. It's nice, just being around him again. There's no discomfort or awkward moments where they have to wonder how well they know one another. They've always known one another best. They're alike, but different enough that they don't drive one another crazy.
There's always been a little place in her heart for him. Always. She doesn't think she ever wants that to change.
She doesn't hear him getting out of the pool until he lays down on the lounge chair next to hers, skin wet and hair slicked back. She opens one eye and watches as he steals a sip of her water.
"Good swim?" she asks. She doesn't realize until just then that his eyes are on her body.
"Yeah," he says distractedly. "You should have come in."
He watches her face light up, and he knows she's about to suggest something crazy that'll make him laugh.
"We should go skinny dipping," she says, like it's the best idea ever.
"Serena," he laughs, watching as she holds her towel to her chest and props herself up onto her elbows. "It's 1:00 in the afternoon and my mom is inside."
"Oh," she pouts. She looks at him again, her eyes sparking mischievously. "Later?"
He really wants to say no. There are always people around his place at all hours of the day. But then she's getting up, towel still held against herself, and laying on top of him. She kisses the side of his mouth and he runs his hands up her bare back.
"Maybe," he murmurs, leaning up to kiss her.
"Maybe definitely yes?"
He laughs a little at the adorable expression on her face, the way her lips look a little pinker than usual and her smile is too cute to ever ignore.
"You really know how to get your way with me," he says, slipping his hand into her hair to pull her close again.
"I know," she almost whispers as they trade kisses.
"'S'not fair," he mumbles.
She rests her head against his chest and closes her eyes as she feels one hand moving along the small of her back.
"You always get your way with me, too," she says quietly. She feels his little laugh through her whole body.
"Not always," he reminds her.
He kisses away the tension that comes with referencing the fact that he wanted her before, so bad, and she ran away and somehow convince him that she didn't want him, too.
... ... ...
It's the hottest night of the year so far, and she's standing at the shoreline on the beach with her hand squeezing his tightly. She's wearing her bathing suit and he's wearing his shorts, but that's not why they came here. The air is thick and muggy, and her hair is sticking to her sweaty skin. She kissed his neck earlier and tasted salt, along with what he usually tastes like. She doesn't mind. She's always done well with the heat, despite the amount of complaining she might do from time to time. She likes the sun, the way it colours her skin and feels on her face and brings out her freckles. It lightens her hair and brightens her personality and makes everything a little better somehow.
But at night time, with Nate next to her and a bit of a breeze pushing against her skin, the summer feels very, very different.
"Are you backing out?" he asks, and her head snaps over so she can look at him.
"No way!"
"You're hesitating."
She moves to stand in front of him, tugs at the drawstring of his shorts before reaching for the ties at the back of her neck. Her eyes are locked with his and she can tell he's fighting the urge to look down. She drops her red bikini top onto the sand and pushes down her bottoms. Before she runs to the water, she tugs the pockets of his shorts to get them off his hips, and she's squealing as he chases after her.
They could totally get arrested for this, but then Nate's arm snakes around her waist, pulling her out into deeper water with him, and the water is cool between their warm bodies as they kiss, standing chest-deep in ocean. It's a little hard to think or breathe or focus on anything other than his hands on her skin. Getting into trouble seems like it might almost be worth it.
... ... ...
"Happy?" he asks one night after they've left some party, gone back to his place and laid down on the lawn in the back where you can see nothing but sky if you look up.
She tangles their fingers together and kisses his shoulder through his button down shirt (the one they both know she'll wake up in tomorrow morning).
"Yeah," she says quietly.
He thinks she means more than just right now, laying here with him. He thinks she means in general, this summer, her life, even. He's glad she's happy with him, of course, but the thing with Serena is that you could never really tell. He could, because he knows her, but she's gotten a little harder to read as she's gotten older. She can put on a pretty smile that people are too taken with to see is fake, and she can carry on small talk without anyone seeing she isn't interested. She doesn't lie about how she's doing, but he thinks sometimes that she might not tell just anyone.
Right now, he knows she's telling him the truth. And he's really, really glad he's the one she's with right now.
"Which one's that again?" she asks.
He kisses her temple, stops thinking so hard, and continues making up the names of constellations above them. She knows he doesn't know about astronomy, but she keeps asking anyway.
She really just likes to hear him talk sometimes. She missed his voice a lot when she was away or they weren't speaking or they grew apart. She doesn't want to have to miss it anymore or ever again.
... ... ...
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asks, laying in his messy bed in the middle of the afternoon, the windows open and blowing hot air inside and making the air conditioning kind of pointless.
He stops trailing his hand up and down her bare side. "Happy," he answers after a moment's contemplation.
"Natie," she laughs. He kisses her temple. He loves it when she calls him that. "I'm serious."
"So'm I." She pulls away and looks up at him. The days she wears just mascara are his favourite. She's so pretty. "Why can't I want to be happy?"
"No, you should," she admits, settling against him. "Of course." He has to put his hand over hers to stop it from gliding over his hip. That's a little distracting. "I mean as a job."
He shrugs. "Dunno. Probably a lawyer or something," he says.
She sits up, grabs the sheet as an afterthought, holds it to her chest. He smirks when she glares at him playfully for obviously staring at her chest. As if he could be blamed.
"But is that what you want to do?" she asks. "Your family wants that for you, but what do you want?"
He doesn't like this conversation. It forces him to think outside of this summer with this girl, and really, what in the world could he want other than this? She's naked in his bed and he thinks he just wants her, but he knows she'll freak out and leave and tell him this is over, and he can't let that happen. The rest of the summer will be awful if he doesn't get to spend it with her. He just wants to spend it with her.
"Haven't really thought about it," he admits. He's not lying.
She actually smiles, like she's relieved or something, and runs her fingertip down his chest. "Me neither," she says quietly.
"Well," he says, sitting up and leaning forward so his lips are just inches from hers, "what do you want, like, 10 minutes from now?"
"Nate," she giggles, and he slips a hand into her hair.
"Too far in the future?" he teases, brushing his lips against hers. "How 'bout five minutes?"
She laughs and lets him lay her back on the bed, pull the sheet away and move his lips across her skin. "You pick," she murmurs. He breathes out a laugh, hot against her collarbone, positions himself over her. "You always have the best ideas."
He tries not to put too much stock into her thinking this is the best idea.
... ... ...
It doesn't really surprise him how much time they spend at the beach. It's a little surprising that they spend so much time there at night. But her grandmother's house is usually the gathering place for the older gen of people, sipping gin cocktails and sitting around the huge living room, gossiping about whoever doesn't show. Nate's house is usually crawling with his family members, different ones showing up for weeks at a time, and after he puts in his time with them, the acceptable minimum, he takes off with Serena and they drive around with the top down, going nowhere and sipping cold lemonade.
They usually end up at the same part of the beach. Sometimes, Blair will call Serena at the exact moment they get there (Nate really wants to know how she does that), so Serena walks along the water and talks while Nate sits on the sand and watches her. Sometimes he calls Chuck, figures he can get his conversation out of the way at the same time Serena is.
Mostly, he just wants to sit with her between his legs and play with her hair as they talk and fool around, and be alone with her, away from everyone and everything. And she usually looks so fucking gorgeous at night, with the sun going down and making her look all super tanned and super blue-eyed. Sometimes he thinks he loves her.
A lot of times, he thinks he loves her.
"When we were little?" she says, digging her toes into the sand a little deeper. She watches her silver toe ring (he bought it for her in town one day) get buried, then pulls it back out again. "I thought I'd marry you."
She bites her lip, knowing that's kind of a big confession. They don't talk about them. They talk about everything but.
"Yeah?" he asks. She glances over her shoulder and nods. "And now?"
"Nate," she giggles. He's not joking. He wants to know what she thinks about them now. "I don't know."
"Well, we're only 17," he says, slipping his arms around her waist, letting his thumb graze the underside of her breast over her tank top. "There's still time."
She smiles and lets her head fall back on his shoulder. "Promise?"
He laughs softly and she turns to him, so he presses a kiss to the tip of her nose. "Promise."
Neither of them really know what that means, but they both know it means something.
... ... ...
He's playing soccer in the yard with Eric, shirt off and grass stains on his knees. He's sweating, laughing and shouting, tackling Eric every so often and making a big show every time he scores.
He runs over to where she's laying on her stomach with her legs in the air and his shirt under her elbows, flops onto his back and looks over at her. He smiles and runs his hand down his chest, collecting the sweat there and wiping it on the grass.
"I won," he declares proudly.
She kisses his arm, just because it's right there next to her, and lays down with her head on his shirt. It smells like him, like summer. She likes it. Loves it. She doesn't know how to ever really give it up, being this close to him.
He slips his hand into hers and weaves their fingers together as they lay there in the sun.
She thinks, some days, that maybe eventually they'll get it right.
... ... ...
The end of summer comes far too quickly, and Nate knows her well enough to know that she gets a little depressed at the thought of going back to New York, back to school. He keeps her preoccupied, takes her to the carnival on the beach that only the 'townies' go to. She wears her paint-splattered shorts and a tee shirt from Old Navy and tells him to win her a prize. He does. Close to a hundred dollars and a sore throwing arm later. He knocks down all the bottles and wins her a big stuffed penguin holding a daisy, and he spends the rest of the day making fun of her for loving it so much. 'Why would a penguin have a daisy?' he asks, and she scowls as she eats her cotton candy, and tells him her penguin can have whatever it wants.
Then they go to his empty house and get drunk on expensive wine from the cellar, tangle up sitting on top of the table in his huge dining room.
"Thanks," she says quietly after they've been sitting there quietly for a moment. His legs are extended and spread, and she's sitting between them. She's facing him, her legs on either side of him with her hands holding his shirt in her fists.
"For what?"
"Summer."
He laughs, pulls at her hair a little so she squeals. "Clearly, I masterminded the whole thing," he says sarcastically, and she rolls her eyes. "Responsible for the whole season, really. I'm pretty impressive."
She giggles, moves a little closer so she's pressed right up against him, forehead resting on his shoulder. "Nate."
"'S'not over, you know," he reminds her. "Two more weeks."
"Yeah," she whispers. "Two weeks." Her fingers slip through his hair, brushing it idly away from his forehead. She looks at that instead of his eyes. "Then school and winter."
"Don't pout," he teases, squeezing her hip. She kisses the underside of his jaw and puts her head on his shoulder again, turns her face away. "Doesn't have to end."
"Oh?" she laughs. "Since you're in charge of the seasons?"
"It's sunny in the fall," he reminds her. He pushes her away so he can look at her, then lays her on her back and sits on his knees between her legs. "We're good in the sun."
"It rained a little," she reminds him, nose scrunched up cutely.
"Oh yeah," he says. He smiles down at her and drags one knuckle along the skin between her shorts and shirt. "Good in that, too."
"And there was that really cold day."
He nods and she laughs a bit and tries to get closer to him. "Yeah. I mean, we survived it." She nods, and he figures it's a good time to lay down between her thighs. He brushes the hair from her face. "I guess it's just snow that messes things up."
"Hmm," she says pensively. He kisses her palm before she moves it to rest on the back of his neck. "I don't hate the snow."
He shakes his head. "Skiing, snowball fights, hot chocolate. 'S'not so bad." She shakes her head and bites her lip. "We could try it."
His heart is beating way too fast, and he feels a little out of breath with her beneath him, looking up at him like that. And he doesn't even care that they're on a table and kind of drunk and maybe she'll change her mind in the morning or something. Wouldn't be the first time. But really, it would be the first time if she actually agreed to try, to make something work they never took seriously enough before.
"We could," she says quietly, realizing for the first time just how tightly she's holding him to her. "Do you want to?"
He grins, leans down and kisses her. "Yeah." She smiles, hums against his lips and bends her knees to get him closer. "We should..." She kisses him again, and it's really, really distracting, the way she's warm and soft and fucking perfect beneath him. "S, we're on a table."
She giggles and buries her face in his neck. "We could move."
"Family dinner would be really uncomfortable if we didn't," he says, rolling off her a bit.
She sits up, slips her arm under his to keep him close. "Am I invited?"
He doesn't know what to say to that, really, because Serena never makes plans like that. Sure, it's hypothetical or whatever the right word is here, but she's still telling him that sometime in the future she wants to have dinner with his family, and that is something new and, he thinks, really, really good.
"Of course you are," he says. He stands, grabs her hands and pulls her across the wood until her feet are on the floor. "Whenever you want."
She smiles all wide and puts her hands on his shoulders, leans in to kiss him. "Enough talking."
He nods and lets himself really realize how much he loves the way she tucks herself against him as they walk. She slips her hand into his and holds onto him tightly, leans her head against his shoulder so her hair brushes the back of his arm. They make it to his room without kissing again, which is some kind of record, since he usually backs her against the wall as they go up the stairs, or she kisses his neck once and it turns into them making out at the foot of the stairs for 10 minutes. Part of him wonders how they ever get anything done.
"Wait," he says, once he's got both their clothes off and their about thirty seconds away from losing their minds with lust.
"What?" she asks breathily, impatiently.
"I'm your boyfriend?" He grins and watches her eyes sparkle in the light of the tall white candle she lit. She nods, runs her hands up his back. "Feels good," he murmurs, inching himself closer still.
"Nate," she whispers.
(That feels really good, too.)
... ... ...
They leave the Hamptons the way they came, in his Aston Martin with the top down and their hands joined over the gearshift. Her toenails are bright pink and her skin is shades darker than it was two months ago, and she sings along with the radio, turns up the volume any time a song she loves comes on.
"School doesn't start for another few days," she says as they pull into the city. He glances at her. She loves the way he looks in his aviators. "I don't want to go home yet."
"So don't," he says easily, shrugging one shoulder. "Come home with me."
She leans over and kisses him when they're stopped at a red light, and for the first time, September doesn't feel as much like the end of summer as it does the beginning of something else.
Chapter: 1/1
Pairing: Nate/Serena
Warning: AU after 1x18
Summary: She kisses his cheek, giggling as she gets out of the car, and he just shakes his head and watches as people stare at her.
Word Count: 6,833
Disclaimer: I don't own Gossip Girl.
A/N: This was born from a prompt/Chace Crawford quote sing_song_sung gave me, like, a bajillion years ago. "So, if Nate and Serena are spending the summer together in the Hamptons, then he'll no doubt be willing to give it up, again and again, to the princess of the UES." I hope you like it, bb!
He picks her up in front of her building, and she's standing there with a couple bags at her feet, chewing her thumbnail as the sun bounces off her skin and her hair blows in the wind. She smiles when she sees him, and he winks from the drivers seat before getting out and helping put her bags in the trunk of the car.
She gets in, buckles her seatbelt and flips her sunglasses down over her nose as he gets in and puts his hand on the wheel.
"Ready?" he asks, grinning at her, and she nods just once, slipping her feet out of her flip flops.
"Let's go," she says.
He pulls his father's Aston Martin away from the curb and into traffic, laughs at the way Serena turns up the radio immediately, rests her feet on the dash, and dances in her seat when a song she loves comes through the speakers.
People are staring at them because they're two kids in this expensive car, and Serena's gorgeous, hair whipping around her face and head tipped back against the seat.
"Pull over!" she cries suddenly, hitting his arm a few times.
"S! I can't just pull over. We're in the middle of Manhattan at noon!" he laughs. "What?"
"We need frappuccinos! There's a Starbucks. Pull over!"
He's still laughing as he pulls into a no parking zone and flips on his hazard lights. (As if anyone would ask him to move anyway.) He hands her a crumpled $10 from his pocket. "Go. Hurry!"
She kisses his cheek, giggling as she gets out of the car, and he just shakes his head and watches as people stare at her.
... ... ...
Serena insists they stop at every roadside fruit or souvenir stand, charms people without even trying into giving her free berries, and she feeds them to Nate as he laughs, because none of this is exactly unexpected. She buys a straw cowboy hat, puts it on and looks like a million dollars as she walks back to the car with Nate trailing behind her.
"It should not be taking us this long to get there," Nate laughs as they pull back onto the road.
Serena smiles and shoves at his arm. "Whatever! We have all summer, Nate. We can do whatever we want."
He's sure she doesn't necessarily means that the way he hears it.
He doesn't stop her when she reaches for his hand on the gear shift. They're pretty quiet the rest of the drive, just music and wind and the sound of the tires on the road. He runs his thumb over the band of the ring she's wearing, and she taps her blue polished toes on the dash in time with the music.
This summer already feels like theirs.
... ... ...
Cece greets them at the door when he pulls the car up to her summer house. She's smiling, but Serena can tell her grandmother is wondering just what took them so long and why Serena insisted on driving with Nate in the first place.
"Hi grandma!" Serena chirps, walking over to hug Cece as Nate lifts her bags from the car.
"You should have called, dear. It took you so long."
"Oh," Serena giggles, looking at Nate, who's just shaking his head. "We took the long way."
"Well, regardless, dinner is almost ready," Cece says. "Nathaniel, will you be staying?"
"No, thank you, Mrs. Rhodes," he says politely as the staff comes to carry Serena's bags into the house. "My mother is expecting me. Some other time, maybe."
"Yes, maybe," Cece says, and Nate sees Serena roll her eyes at the way the woman puts her nose in the air just a little bit.
Serena walks him over to the car again, wrapping her arms around him as her grandmother looks on. "Thanks for driving."
"Thanks for coming with me," he says, hand running down her back.
"Call me later?" she asks. It feels strange to say it, since they barely spoke all year, but she doesn't think there's anything she wants more right now than to spend the whole summer with him.
"I will."
She kisses his cheek for some reason, then runs back to the house and slips inside.
He laughs when he's driving away and he gets her text; Oh god HELP! xo, S.
But it is kind of hard not to turn the car around and go back.
... ... ...
"Have you heard from Blair?" he asks one day when they're walking through town. She's wearing some filmy summer dress over her bikini, and her hair is in a messy ponytail. She's toying with the straw of her frappuccino.
She shakes her head. "Not in a couple days. Chuck?"
He scoffs and shakes his head. "He's not answering."
"They're so messed up," Serena laughs.
"Yeah," Nate says quietly.
But he's not really sure which is worse. Being apart and pretending you don't want to be together? Or being together and pretending you don't want to be together.
... ... ...
Two weeks into summer, he's tired of her occasional sulking. Yes, it's only occasional, but it's annoying anyway, because Serena van der Woodsen is not the kind of girl who sulks, and he's not about to let her start.
He wrenches open the curtains in her room, sits down next to her on the bed and shakes her awake. She groans and whines and covers her eyes, burying her face in the pillow as he tries to get her up.
"Nate, no. Leave me alone," she mumbles.
"No. You're getting up," he tells her. "And no arguing, because I promised your grandmother I'd wake you up, and she kinda scares me a little, so please. For me?"
She groans and turns onto her back again so she can look at him. He, of course, looks perfectly put together, hair a little messy, shirt a little wrinkled, but perfectly Nate anyway. And he's wearing this grin like he knows she's going to do what he asks her to do.
"I hate you, you know that?" she asks, grabbing his hand for no reason. "You just had to play the 'for me' card. It's almost pathetic."
He chuckles and weaves their fingers together. "You love me, and yeah, you made me play that card. And..." He stops to think about it. He needs to sweeten the deal. "I'll buy you coffee."
"Iced."
"Whatever you like, S," he says, as if that's not always the way it goes anyway. "C'mon. No more wallowing."
"I'm not wallowing," she says as she stretches. He can't help but look at her as she pulls her hands away and stretches her arms wide. When they fall back onto the bed, her palm is resting flat against his hip. "I'm just sleeping in."
"You're wallowing. Over Dan. He's from Brooklyn," he says, doing his best Blair impression. Serena giggles and lets him pull the sheets away. "Get up, Serena. We'll go to the beach."
She sighs and gets out of bed. He promptly lays down, which makes her scowl at him. "Seriously, Nate? You're getting into my bed just as I'm getting out of it?"
He arches his brow and leans up on his elbows. "You'd rather I get in when you're in it?"
She giggles and arches her back, hanging onto the frame of the bathroom door and bending her leg at the knee, her toes pointed behind her. "You know I like to cuddle," she says girlishly.
The door closes moments later, and he's just shaking his head.
After she's showered, she pulls her wet hair into a messy bun, slips on a pair of shorts over her bathing suit, and grabs his hand, pulling him out of the house.
They drive into town (it's pretty sweet to have his dad's Aston Martin for the whole summer; it's not like anyone else was using it) and he buys her iced coffee from her favourite place, as promised, and they window shop for things they'll never need. They get corn dogs for lunch at this place Nate found out about two summers ago from the locals, and get two straws so they can share the biggest soda known to man. Nate wants Coke, but Serena wants Mountain Dew, so she convinces him (it doesn't take much) to mix them and he pretends it's not totally disgusting.
When they make it to the beach, they're both sweating a little, and Nate pulls off his shirt and heads for the water as Serena lays out on a blanket Nate somehow had in the trunk of his dad's car.
When he walks back over to her after cooling down, he actually laughs to himself as he looks at her. She's so damn beautiful. He's never lost sight of that. But there are a few guys who are apparently noticing it, too, so Nate walks over to where she's laying and runs a hand through his hair, spraying her and making her squeal.
"Nate!" she cries, grabbing onto his calf and pulling so he lands on his behind on the sand. "Jerk."
"It's just water," he reminds her, sitting down next to her. He bends his knees and rests his elbows on them. She sticks her tongue out and he laughs, because she's so fucking cute sometimes. He doesn't know how he's gone without her so long. "You wanna talk about it?"
"Talk about what?" she asks, eyes still closed.
"Serena."
"Nate."
"Dan."
"Nate," she sighs. "What's there to talk about? We broke up. And for a reason. I'm just dealing with it."
"But you're not," he insists. He turns toward her a little more.
"It's only been a couple weeks. It's not like I'm writing him love letters or anything," she laughs. She knows he's not going to let her joke her way out of this. "Why do you care so much anyway?"
He rolls his eyes and reaches over, toying with the string of her bikini at her hip. "Because I care about you."
All she can do is smile at him. "You're kind of annoyingly sweet, you know that?"
"It's a blessing and a curse," he says matter-of-factly. She giggles and sits up, leaning against him, head resting on his shoulder and her hair tickling his back. "If you wanna talk..."
He lets the offer hang in the air and she slips her arm through his. "I've got your number."
He wraps his fingers around hers and they sit there for a while, until she gets bored and decides it's time to go watch movies in the air conditioning at his place. And he gives her what she wants, because he kind of always gives her what she wants.
... ... ...
His mother is in the city for something or another, and Cece is preoccupied with some event, so Serena ends up at Nate's huge house, just the two of them alone with a 12 pack of cheap beer Nate found in the fridge. They found two keepsake boxes of photographs, so they're sitting on his bed with Can't Hardly Wait playing on the television they're not really paying attention to.
Serena is three beer in, buzzed and giggly and adorable, and Nate is less affected by the alcohol as of yet. But he's just enjoying her, because she's easy to enjoy.
"Oh, my god!" she cries, holding up a photo, waving it in the air. "My seventh birthday!"
"Oh, no," he groans, reaching over to take the picture. "That was terrible."
"It was Grease themed, Nate! It was amazing."
"It was stupid!" he says laughingly. He looks down at a photo of the five of them - Nate, Serena, Chuck, Blair and Eric - the boys in black jeans, white tee shirts and little leather jackets (in July) and the girls in their big skirts and scarves around their necks. "I was so mad at you for making me wear this."
"Only until the ice cream sundae bar came out. Then you loved me," she teases lightly, poking at his thigh with her index finger. "And remember Chuck convinced Eric to walk around saying he got a hickie from Kenickie!"
She literally collapses, giggling, and Nate can only laugh when she presses her forehead against his thigh, just above his knee. He smoothes his hand over her back until she sits up again.
"What do you wanna do for your birthday this year?" he asks. She brushes the hair from her face and shrugs. "It's soon."
"I know," she says quietly, looking down at the photo of herself as a kid, happy, smiling with her best friends, wearing blue eye shadow and a pink ribbon in her hair. "Let's just do this," she insists, waving an arm around the room. "Just me and you. We'll...we'll be low key."
He laughs at her. "Serena, you don't do low key. It's like, impossible for you to be low key."
"Whatever!" she cries, throwing her hands in the air. "I just want it to be me and you."
He nods and she reaches over to crack open another beer, sifting through the photos. He's looking through his box, too, as that girl from Dharma and Greg starts talking. "Fate! There is such a thing as fate, but it only takes you so far. Then it's up to you to make it happen." He comes across one picture, laughs and nudges Serena with his knee.
"Check that out," he says. "Got you naked."
"Nate!" she squeals, grabbing the photo. "We're, like, four here."
"And in the bathtub together." He wiggles his eyebrows and she, for whatever reason, covers his mouth with her hand. He kisses her palm and she pulls it away. "You realize you've had the same hair all your life."
"I like it."
"I do, too," he says, reaching out to toy with a lock of it. "I'm just saying."
She turns to him with a little grin on her lips, and he knows she's about to make fun of him. He kind of loves that he can tell when she's about to make jokes with him. She takes a sip of her beer and then runs her fingers through his bangs.
"This is kind of new," she says quietly.
"I've had it, like, all year," he reminds her. She shrugs her shoulder.
"It wasn't like this when I left," she almost whispers. They tend not to talk about her leaving. No one talks about her leaving. (It leads too easily to the night before she left.) "I like it. It's kind of...It's sexy, Nate." He gives her a lopsided grin as she pushes his hair off his forehead just slightly, and he tucks a lock of hers behind her ear. "Nate."
He doesn't really know why he kisses her, but it feels right, and it feels good, and it's Serena, and she's just staring at him with these eyes when he pulls away.
"Sorry," he mumbles.
She smiles and shakes her head a little, leaning across his body to set her beer on the bedside table. She takes his face in her hands and the last thing he remembers before she kisses him again is her pulling the photo of them out of his hands and tossing it back into the pile with all the rest.
(He gets her naked again.)
... ... ...
She can tell he's awake without even looking at him. That's the thing about sleeping with someone you've known your whole life.
She's just waiting to hear what he has to say about how their evening went, about the fact that he's wearing just his boxers and she's wearing just his shirt.
She doesn't regret a thing; never could with Nate. Everything with him has a strange tendency to feel something close to perfect, even when it's wrong. And she thinks that maybe those are the only examples she has - when things were supposed to be wrong but didn't feel like it at all.
The thing that scares her is that everything between them always feels very final, too. Very 'at last' or 'happily ever after'. It scares her because she doesn't think it's very realistic to think that way. She's made too many mistakes, hurt everyone too many times.
It shouldn't be this easy to get everything you think you've always wanted.
"Quit pretending to be asleep," she says, poking her index finger into his ribs.
"Ow," he laughs as he grabs her hand. "Didn't wanna wake you up."
"What time is it?"
"Doesn't matter," he says, and she thinks he's right. "Serena, what..."
"Don't say it," she insists, pulling away from him a bit. She sits up and his hand comes to rest on her thigh. "I don't want to have that stupid talk."
He smiles at her, leans his head back against the pillow. "What are we doing?"
She scowls. "You don't listen very well." He shrugs one shoulder, moves his thumb over the bare skin of her leg. "Can't we just have fun? Together?"
"Yeah, but...are we..."
She leans over, stretches herself out half on top of him. She kisses his jaw, chin, the side of his mouth. "Will you be my summer fling?" she asks playfully.
"Serena," he laughs. "I'm serious."
"Me too," she insists. His hand is already tracing patterns on her hip beneath her shirt.
He can't really argue. He can't say he doesn't want to spend his whole summer, with her, like this. So he nods and kisses her.
... ... ...
He's swimming laps in his pool and she's laying on her stomach with her bikini untied and her back bared to the sun. She's listening to her iPod and taking sips of water. It's hot out, and over her music, she can hear the splashing water in the pool as Nate swims.
It's been a little over a week since they started this arrangement. Well, since they started sleeping together. They haven't changed other than that. They still spend almost every day together, and they still talk about all the same things. He still teases her every chance he gets, and she still lets him.
She likes it, this summer, doing basically nothing with the one person she thinks she's missed most of all for the last...For a long time. It's nice, just being around him again. There's no discomfort or awkward moments where they have to wonder how well they know one another. They've always known one another best. They're alike, but different enough that they don't drive one another crazy.
There's always been a little place in her heart for him. Always. She doesn't think she ever wants that to change.
She doesn't hear him getting out of the pool until he lays down on the lounge chair next to hers, skin wet and hair slicked back. She opens one eye and watches as he steals a sip of her water.
"Good swim?" she asks. She doesn't realize until just then that his eyes are on her body.
"Yeah," he says distractedly. "You should have come in."
He watches her face light up, and he knows she's about to suggest something crazy that'll make him laugh.
"We should go skinny dipping," she says, like it's the best idea ever.
"Serena," he laughs, watching as she holds her towel to her chest and props herself up onto her elbows. "It's 1:00 in the afternoon and my mom is inside."
"Oh," she pouts. She looks at him again, her eyes sparking mischievously. "Later?"
He really wants to say no. There are always people around his place at all hours of the day. But then she's getting up, towel still held against herself, and laying on top of him. She kisses the side of his mouth and he runs his hands up her bare back.
"Maybe," he murmurs, leaning up to kiss her.
"Maybe definitely yes?"
He laughs a little at the adorable expression on her face, the way her lips look a little pinker than usual and her smile is too cute to ever ignore.
"You really know how to get your way with me," he says, slipping his hand into her hair to pull her close again.
"I know," she almost whispers as they trade kisses.
"'S'not fair," he mumbles.
She rests her head against his chest and closes her eyes as she feels one hand moving along the small of her back.
"You always get your way with me, too," she says quietly. She feels his little laugh through her whole body.
"Not always," he reminds her.
He kisses away the tension that comes with referencing the fact that he wanted her before, so bad, and she ran away and somehow convince him that she didn't want him, too.
... ... ...
It's the hottest night of the year so far, and she's standing at the shoreline on the beach with her hand squeezing his tightly. She's wearing her bathing suit and he's wearing his shorts, but that's not why they came here. The air is thick and muggy, and her hair is sticking to her sweaty skin. She kissed his neck earlier and tasted salt, along with what he usually tastes like. She doesn't mind. She's always done well with the heat, despite the amount of complaining she might do from time to time. She likes the sun, the way it colours her skin and feels on her face and brings out her freckles. It lightens her hair and brightens her personality and makes everything a little better somehow.
But at night time, with Nate next to her and a bit of a breeze pushing against her skin, the summer feels very, very different.
"Are you backing out?" he asks, and her head snaps over so she can look at him.
"No way!"
"You're hesitating."
She moves to stand in front of him, tugs at the drawstring of his shorts before reaching for the ties at the back of her neck. Her eyes are locked with his and she can tell he's fighting the urge to look down. She drops her red bikini top onto the sand and pushes down her bottoms. Before she runs to the water, she tugs the pockets of his shorts to get them off his hips, and she's squealing as he chases after her.
They could totally get arrested for this, but then Nate's arm snakes around her waist, pulling her out into deeper water with him, and the water is cool between their warm bodies as they kiss, standing chest-deep in ocean. It's a little hard to think or breathe or focus on anything other than his hands on her skin. Getting into trouble seems like it might almost be worth it.
... ... ...
"Happy?" he asks one night after they've left some party, gone back to his place and laid down on the lawn in the back where you can see nothing but sky if you look up.
She tangles their fingers together and kisses his shoulder through his button down shirt (the one they both know she'll wake up in tomorrow morning).
"Yeah," she says quietly.
He thinks she means more than just right now, laying here with him. He thinks she means in general, this summer, her life, even. He's glad she's happy with him, of course, but the thing with Serena is that you could never really tell. He could, because he knows her, but she's gotten a little harder to read as she's gotten older. She can put on a pretty smile that people are too taken with to see is fake, and she can carry on small talk without anyone seeing she isn't interested. She doesn't lie about how she's doing, but he thinks sometimes that she might not tell just anyone.
Right now, he knows she's telling him the truth. And he's really, really glad he's the one she's with right now.
"Which one's that again?" she asks.
He kisses her temple, stops thinking so hard, and continues making up the names of constellations above them. She knows he doesn't know about astronomy, but she keeps asking anyway.
She really just likes to hear him talk sometimes. She missed his voice a lot when she was away or they weren't speaking or they grew apart. She doesn't want to have to miss it anymore or ever again.
... ... ...
"What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asks, laying in his messy bed in the middle of the afternoon, the windows open and blowing hot air inside and making the air conditioning kind of pointless.
He stops trailing his hand up and down her bare side. "Happy," he answers after a moment's contemplation.
"Natie," she laughs. He kisses her temple. He loves it when she calls him that. "I'm serious."
"So'm I." She pulls away and looks up at him. The days she wears just mascara are his favourite. She's so pretty. "Why can't I want to be happy?"
"No, you should," she admits, settling against him. "Of course." He has to put his hand over hers to stop it from gliding over his hip. That's a little distracting. "I mean as a job."
He shrugs. "Dunno. Probably a lawyer or something," he says.
She sits up, grabs the sheet as an afterthought, holds it to her chest. He smirks when she glares at him playfully for obviously staring at her chest. As if he could be blamed.
"But is that what you want to do?" she asks. "Your family wants that for you, but what do you want?"
He doesn't like this conversation. It forces him to think outside of this summer with this girl, and really, what in the world could he want other than this? She's naked in his bed and he thinks he just wants her, but he knows she'll freak out and leave and tell him this is over, and he can't let that happen. The rest of the summer will be awful if he doesn't get to spend it with her. He just wants to spend it with her.
"Haven't really thought about it," he admits. He's not lying.
She actually smiles, like she's relieved or something, and runs her fingertip down his chest. "Me neither," she says quietly.
"Well," he says, sitting up and leaning forward so his lips are just inches from hers, "what do you want, like, 10 minutes from now?"
"Nate," she giggles, and he slips a hand into her hair.
"Too far in the future?" he teases, brushing his lips against hers. "How 'bout five minutes?"
She laughs and lets him lay her back on the bed, pull the sheet away and move his lips across her skin. "You pick," she murmurs. He breathes out a laugh, hot against her collarbone, positions himself over her. "You always have the best ideas."
He tries not to put too much stock into her thinking this is the best idea.
... ... ...
It doesn't really surprise him how much time they spend at the beach. It's a little surprising that they spend so much time there at night. But her grandmother's house is usually the gathering place for the older gen of people, sipping gin cocktails and sitting around the huge living room, gossiping about whoever doesn't show. Nate's house is usually crawling with his family members, different ones showing up for weeks at a time, and after he puts in his time with them, the acceptable minimum, he takes off with Serena and they drive around with the top down, going nowhere and sipping cold lemonade.
They usually end up at the same part of the beach. Sometimes, Blair will call Serena at the exact moment they get there (Nate really wants to know how she does that), so Serena walks along the water and talks while Nate sits on the sand and watches her. Sometimes he calls Chuck, figures he can get his conversation out of the way at the same time Serena is.
Mostly, he just wants to sit with her between his legs and play with her hair as they talk and fool around, and be alone with her, away from everyone and everything. And she usually looks so fucking gorgeous at night, with the sun going down and making her look all super tanned and super blue-eyed. Sometimes he thinks he loves her.
A lot of times, he thinks he loves her.
"When we were little?" she says, digging her toes into the sand a little deeper. She watches her silver toe ring (he bought it for her in town one day) get buried, then pulls it back out again. "I thought I'd marry you."
She bites her lip, knowing that's kind of a big confession. They don't talk about them. They talk about everything but.
"Yeah?" he asks. She glances over her shoulder and nods. "And now?"
"Nate," she giggles. He's not joking. He wants to know what she thinks about them now. "I don't know."
"Well, we're only 17," he says, slipping his arms around her waist, letting his thumb graze the underside of her breast over her tank top. "There's still time."
She smiles and lets her head fall back on his shoulder. "Promise?"
He laughs softly and she turns to him, so he presses a kiss to the tip of her nose. "Promise."
Neither of them really know what that means, but they both know it means something.
... ... ...
He's playing soccer in the yard with Eric, shirt off and grass stains on his knees. He's sweating, laughing and shouting, tackling Eric every so often and making a big show every time he scores.
He runs over to where she's laying on her stomach with her legs in the air and his shirt under her elbows, flops onto his back and looks over at her. He smiles and runs his hand down his chest, collecting the sweat there and wiping it on the grass.
"I won," he declares proudly.
She kisses his arm, just because it's right there next to her, and lays down with her head on his shirt. It smells like him, like summer. She likes it. Loves it. She doesn't know how to ever really give it up, being this close to him.
He slips his hand into hers and weaves their fingers together as they lay there in the sun.
She thinks, some days, that maybe eventually they'll get it right.
... ... ...
The end of summer comes far too quickly, and Nate knows her well enough to know that she gets a little depressed at the thought of going back to New York, back to school. He keeps her preoccupied, takes her to the carnival on the beach that only the 'townies' go to. She wears her paint-splattered shorts and a tee shirt from Old Navy and tells him to win her a prize. He does. Close to a hundred dollars and a sore throwing arm later. He knocks down all the bottles and wins her a big stuffed penguin holding a daisy, and he spends the rest of the day making fun of her for loving it so much. 'Why would a penguin have a daisy?' he asks, and she scowls as she eats her cotton candy, and tells him her penguin can have whatever it wants.
Then they go to his empty house and get drunk on expensive wine from the cellar, tangle up sitting on top of the table in his huge dining room.
"Thanks," she says quietly after they've been sitting there quietly for a moment. His legs are extended and spread, and she's sitting between them. She's facing him, her legs on either side of him with her hands holding his shirt in her fists.
"For what?"
"Summer."
He laughs, pulls at her hair a little so she squeals. "Clearly, I masterminded the whole thing," he says sarcastically, and she rolls her eyes. "Responsible for the whole season, really. I'm pretty impressive."
She giggles, moves a little closer so she's pressed right up against him, forehead resting on his shoulder. "Nate."
"'S'not over, you know," he reminds her. "Two more weeks."
"Yeah," she whispers. "Two weeks." Her fingers slip through his hair, brushing it idly away from his forehead. She looks at that instead of his eyes. "Then school and winter."
"Don't pout," he teases, squeezing her hip. She kisses the underside of his jaw and puts her head on his shoulder again, turns her face away. "Doesn't have to end."
"Oh?" she laughs. "Since you're in charge of the seasons?"
"It's sunny in the fall," he reminds her. He pushes her away so he can look at her, then lays her on her back and sits on his knees between her legs. "We're good in the sun."
"It rained a little," she reminds him, nose scrunched up cutely.
"Oh yeah," he says. He smiles down at her and drags one knuckle along the skin between her shorts and shirt. "Good in that, too."
"And there was that really cold day."
He nods and she laughs a bit and tries to get closer to him. "Yeah. I mean, we survived it." She nods, and he figures it's a good time to lay down between her thighs. He brushes the hair from her face. "I guess it's just snow that messes things up."
"Hmm," she says pensively. He kisses her palm before she moves it to rest on the back of his neck. "I don't hate the snow."
He shakes his head. "Skiing, snowball fights, hot chocolate. 'S'not so bad." She shakes her head and bites her lip. "We could try it."
His heart is beating way too fast, and he feels a little out of breath with her beneath him, looking up at him like that. And he doesn't even care that they're on a table and kind of drunk and maybe she'll change her mind in the morning or something. Wouldn't be the first time. But really, it would be the first time if she actually agreed to try, to make something work they never took seriously enough before.
"We could," she says quietly, realizing for the first time just how tightly she's holding him to her. "Do you want to?"
He grins, leans down and kisses her. "Yeah." She smiles, hums against his lips and bends her knees to get him closer. "We should..." She kisses him again, and it's really, really distracting, the way she's warm and soft and fucking perfect beneath him. "S, we're on a table."
She giggles and buries her face in his neck. "We could move."
"Family dinner would be really uncomfortable if we didn't," he says, rolling off her a bit.
She sits up, slips her arm under his to keep him close. "Am I invited?"
He doesn't know what to say to that, really, because Serena never makes plans like that. Sure, it's hypothetical or whatever the right word is here, but she's still telling him that sometime in the future she wants to have dinner with his family, and that is something new and, he thinks, really, really good.
"Of course you are," he says. He stands, grabs her hands and pulls her across the wood until her feet are on the floor. "Whenever you want."
She smiles all wide and puts her hands on his shoulders, leans in to kiss him. "Enough talking."
He nods and lets himself really realize how much he loves the way she tucks herself against him as they walk. She slips her hand into his and holds onto him tightly, leans her head against his shoulder so her hair brushes the back of his arm. They make it to his room without kissing again, which is some kind of record, since he usually backs her against the wall as they go up the stairs, or she kisses his neck once and it turns into them making out at the foot of the stairs for 10 minutes. Part of him wonders how they ever get anything done.
"Wait," he says, once he's got both their clothes off and their about thirty seconds away from losing their minds with lust.
"What?" she asks breathily, impatiently.
"I'm your boyfriend?" He grins and watches her eyes sparkle in the light of the tall white candle she lit. She nods, runs her hands up his back. "Feels good," he murmurs, inching himself closer still.
"Nate," she whispers.
(That feels really good, too.)
... ... ...
They leave the Hamptons the way they came, in his Aston Martin with the top down and their hands joined over the gearshift. Her toenails are bright pink and her skin is shades darker than it was two months ago, and she sings along with the radio, turns up the volume any time a song she loves comes on.
"School doesn't start for another few days," she says as they pull into the city. He glances at her. She loves the way he looks in his aviators. "I don't want to go home yet."
"So don't," he says easily, shrugging one shoulder. "Come home with me."
She leans over and kisses him when they're stopped at a red light, and for the first time, September doesn't feel as much like the end of summer as it does the beginning of something else.