Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
AUTHORS' NOTES: Sooo, this fic, lol - it is a collaborative work by singsongsung and daedreemer. It's starts post 4x05 and spins off from there. Singsongsung has written the character of Serena throughout and daedreemer has written Nate.
It was meant to be a tag, but it's taken on a life of it's own so the only promise we make is that it's full of NS fluff and shipping.
Thank you for reading and hope you enjoy!
Nate takes another gulp from his bottle of water, tries to keep his attention from wandering. He's at Hamilton House, sitting with Juliet and two of her friends. He's got his arm around her and she's leaning into him and it feels kind of nice, domestic, like she's his girlfriend or something.
Except he's not really sure she is - she kind of seems to be. They spend a lot of time together and he's gotten to know her better, she visits his suite almost every day and he finally got to see her apartment - and her bed. He likes her, likes her little smile and the sarcastic lift she can give to her eyebrows and the business suits wears – and by all accounts, she's his girlfriend now.
Except... it doesn't really feel that way - and he doesn't really want to think about it.
He puts the water bottle down and shifts a little, smiles at her and interrupts their conversation politely, "I've got... studying to do, see you girls later...?" He gives her a kiss and is already up and moving into another room when he sees her.
Serena keeps looking at him after she meets his eyes, even if it was only an accident. She's never been the girl who avoids (only the girl who runs away), so she keeps looking at him, purposefully, even though she doesn't know what to do now.
She tugs at the hem of her shirt and wonders about her hair for a moment, considers smiling for a split second, but she remembers how he has new priorities now and how he gave credit to a rumour on Gossip Girl even after she asked him not to - and how it had shaken her, because of all the memories she has that feature Nate, in none of them has he ever turned her down.
Until now.
Their eyes meet and meet again and he has two choices. He can keep walking or he can- not. He pauses, nods at her, and says, "Hey..." a little hesitantly.
He hasn't seen her in person since that party, just lingered an extra second or two over her pictures on Gossip Girl. He knows there's a good chance she's mad at him and he has to remind himself that that's not supposed to matter - but with her gaze on his face, he can't really remember why not.
She licks her lips nervously. "Hi."
"How-" he clears his throat little, "How've you been?"
"Fine." She glances behind him, at Juliet and her friends. "You?" She waits just a second and then she can't help asking, "Having lots of safe sex?" with her eyebrows arched expectantly.
He frowns a little, bristles. "Yes," he retorts, vaguely defiant.
Serena balks a little at that, blinks at him. "Awesome," she says flatly.
Nate looks away, embarrassed suddenly. He shuffles his feet, "You asked," he defends. But he can still feel a flush to his cheeks, you're not supposed to kiss and tell and- "Not a lot a lot," he mumbles.
She tilts her head, shaking it a tiny bit, and looks down at the floor. "Stop talking," she tells him.
There's a smile that tries to work its way onto his face, he ducks his head. "Yeah, that would... seem like the best- I'm not making it any better by- yeah, right... stopping," he agrees, nodding slowly, his gaze lifting carefully to her face.
She slips her hands into the pockets of her skirt and considers him for a moment. "You could walk me to class," she says.
He tilts his head a little, kind of surprised. "Okay..." he responds automatically though, nodding.
She slips her bag off of her shoulder and holds it out to him expectantly. "You can carry my books, too."
He can't stop the smile this time, doesn't bother hiding it either. "Oh... okay..." he takes her bag and slings it over his shoulder so it joins his own. "Thanks," he adds wryly, then motions for her to precede him from the room. "After you..."
"Thank you." She walks ahead of him and doesn't stop to wait until she's out of the building. She glances over her shoulder then; she still kind of gets lost on this campus sometimes.
He comes up beside her and instinctively lifts his arm to throw around her shoulders- stops himself at the last second and ends making a jerky motion to rub at his hair that he hopes she doesn't notice.
"So... uh," he glances around, unused to feeling awkward with Serena, "Where to?"
She waves a hand vaguely in the air. "That way."
Nate laughs softly, "Do you know where you're going or is this a scavenger hunt?" He bumps her shoulder lightly, "Because I'd be okay with that."
She makes a face at him and bites the corner of her lip. "You've been to college before. How important are classes, really, do you think?"
Nate purses his lips in thought for a moment. "Not as important as knowing where to get the good iced coffee."
She sighs. She really has no idea where her class is. "I can skip," she says slowly. "This once..."
He laughs again, but slows down, stops walking all together when he remembers something. "You have your schedule?" He holds a hand out, palm up, "Lemme see it..."
She'd asked him to show her around - and he hadn't.
Serena points to her bag, shifts her weight from foot to foot. "In there, somewhere."
"Oh right... forgot." He pulls her bag around in front of him, starts to open it, and hesitates. He never would have hesitated Before, but he just doesn't know anymore.
"Do you want me to- I can look for it...?" It's an awkward sort-of question and he feels silly as soon as he says it out loud.
She nods, crosses her arms and hugs herself a little. "Never mind," she says quickly. "Let's just...you said something about iced coffee."
He has a hand inside her bag, but he pulls it out without looking, nods. "Yeah..." he zips the back shut again, re-adjusts it on his shoulder, "There's a place..." he motions with his head for them to walk again.
"Do you- do you like your classes?" He realizes all of a sudden that he hasn't asked her this, hasn't really asked her anything at all... hasn't really talked to her.
"Yeah, sure." A beat of silence passes and then she blurts, in a rush, "I still don't...know, though. I'm pretty sure this is where I want to be but I have no idea what I want from it."
He touches her elbow to guide her around the corner; it's a thoughtless, over before he's registered it, action - but it leaves behind the sensation of her smooth skin against his fingertips. "There's uh..." he rubs them against his jeans, "There's time to figure it out though, right?" He glances at her, "And you just got here... you have to- you have to give it a chance."
She presses her lips together. "I don't know, the boys here are kinda annoying."
He studies her profile for a beat. "Oh yeah?"
Her cheeks feel strangely hot and she keeps her eyes ahead, looking out for a coffee shop. "Yeah. I guess they have different priorities." It's a jab and she kind of means it as one.
He winces at the words, remembers their conversation and how he hadn't let himself really look at her face. He looks away now too, eyes on the sidewalk as they walk.
"Maybe they have to have different priorities," he offers quietly.
She blows out her breath and takes a peek at him in her peripheral vision. "Tell me why?" She didn't mean for it to come out like a question, but she doesn't correct it and she doesn't take it back.
Nate shrugs, "Because their old priorities aren't theirs anymore." He glances at her and can't stop himself, "Are they?" He challenges.
"I don't know. I told you that I don't know what I'm doing right now and you throw an ultimatum at me in a hospital cafeteria. You pick your priorities, Nate. It's kinda the whole point of priorities."
"Hey, whoa." He stops, latches on to her arm, "Hold on. The cafeteria- that was- what was I supposed to do? And you pick priorities out of what you have, I didn't- don't have- you took yourself out..."
"What did you expect me to do?" She shakes her arm in his grasp but she doesn't pull away.
He opens his mouth and then shuts it, stares at her for a moment. "I don't know," he admits. "But I wanted you not to leave."
"I... couldn't." She shakes her head, trying to clear it. It's two weird: he's carrying her books but he has a girlfriend and she doesn't know how this works, not at all. "Not then, not at that second. I could've...after, if you'd given me a minute, or a day, but you said..." She shrugs.
"Serena..." He's still touching her arm. He looks down at it for a beat, "There've been so many moments- days... I don't how long I'm supposed to- and I thought it didn't matter... I really thought I could-" he stops, blinks at her. "I don't know how long I'm supposed to give you and I always-" I always just want you now.
"I said out." She looks at him through her eyelashes. "I said out, and I'm out, you have...you have a girlfriend."
"Yeah," Nate says, voice low, "That's-" he swallows hard, "You said out and I have a girlfriend... I have a girlfriend because you're out."
"And I can't be back in." She bites her lip. "Because now you have a girlfriend. Because I said out."
"I... wait." His hold on her arm tightens a little as all the meaning of that sentence tumble through his thoughts at once, "Serena...? What are you-" he shakes his head, trying to pick a train of thought, of what she could mean- "What?" He can't.
She tries to shake his arm off. Let go.
He doesn't let her go. "What are you- just what...? What does that mean?"
"It means you broke up with me!" She yells it at him without meaning to, her heart beating in her throat. "And now you're happy and I can't even find my way to my English class!"
"What?" Nate squawks, kind of outraged. "I broke up with you!" He gapes at her, "That's- that's! That would never happen! I would never break up with you!"
"Okay, sure, except that you did."
"You!" He accuses, heart racing, hand holding her arm, "You did the breaking and the leaving and I-" he blows out a breath, looks at her with wide eyes, "Why would I ever...? I never wanted that."
She glares at him, shifts her arm in his hold until it's her hand instead, digs her nails into his palm a little as she grips his hand. "I didn't want it, either."
He winces, but doesn't pull his hand away, glares back at her instead. "Then why are we broken up?" He snaps.
"You tell me." She wants to laugh but she feels like she might cry instead.
"I don't-" he clenches his jaw for a second, it's not true. He knows. "Are you going to go kiss Dan every time we have a fight?"
"Are you going to call the authorities on my family just because you want to?"
"I didn't want to." He doesn't look away, but it's all he says. He doesn't have to tell her the things she already knows about her father.
"I love - I loved - I got scared and when you weren't on my side, when you weren't with me when I asked you to be, I didn't know what to do. I kept thinking..." She blows out her breath, annoyed at herself. "I kept thinking that if you were my friend and not my boyfriend, everything would've made more sense. You would have just picked me instead of trying to protect me."
"I was your boyfriend and your friend - I would have done the same thing." He drops his gaze from her face, "I'm sorry that you- that you hate that, but it's... it's still- you ran off to meet him and I-" he licks his lips, "I got scared. So... yeah, it's still what I would have done."
She loosens her hold on his hand a little. "You got scared of what?"
"I don't know-" he sighs, "I guess... crazy dad's at the ends of their ropes that kidnap their children..?" He gives her a humorless smile, "It's possible my perspective is warped on this... it doesn't matter. But I didn't want to, okay?"
Serena looks at him for a long moment, considering his level of honesty. "Okay," she finally agrees.
"Mhm... yeah, okay." He blows out a slow breath and then tries to wiggle his fingers in her hold, "I think my hand is bleeding."
She squeezes his hand harder. "Good."
He pulls her a step forward, closer to him. "Are you going to tell me?"
"What?" His mouth is distracting. "Tell you what?"
He sidles a little closer to her, knows in the back of his mind that they're in public, that they're not that far from Hamilton House, that Gossip Girl has streaming video now.
But mostly he knows Serena's eyes and the smell of her hair and her mouth. "You. Dan." His eyes are on her mouth, "Kissing." There's more to that question, but he doesn't have quite enough focus to remember it right now.
She ducks her head a bit, letting her hair fall into her face. "You hurt me," she mumbles.
"I'm sorry. I'm so so so sorry," he whispers, moves a little closer, "I didn't mean to. But it'd've been nice if you'd yelled at me or ruined my stuff but not kissed Dan."
"I want you to be on my side." She tugs at his hand for emphasis. "I just want you to be on my side.'
"Who else's side would I even be on?" He pulls her another step closer, "I don't want to be on anybody else's side. Serena-" he sighs, stares hard at her, "Don't you know that?"
"I - maybe." She sniffs; her nose is running. "Yes."
He pulls her hand up to wrap around the back of his neck and steps into her space, his other arm around her waist and his mouth covering hers. He kisses her to make a point - and loses the point a few seconds in. He spent three months dampening every memory he had of them, of this, and three seconds is all it takes for them to spring to life in vivid color.
He pulls back breathless, surprised even though he initiated, and with her startled blue eyes on his face he remembers the point. "That's not-" he laughs hoarsely, "That's not why we broke up either."
"Don't do that." She lays her hand flat against his chest but never gets around to pushing him away. We're outside. You have a girlfriend. She wipes at her nose with a back of her hand, feels teary and a little shaky all of a sudden - he has a girlfriend. "I'm a mess."
Nate tilts his head forward, touches their foreheads together, "Hey... do what...?" He slides the hand at her waist up, rubs at her back, "You know how I feel about messes, I love them."
She really wants to hug him, just hug him, but, "You know Gossip Girl's probably streaming this right now, and you have..." She presses the heels of her hands just under her eyes, leaning back from him a little, taking a deep breath. "You have to buy me iced coffee, you said you would."
"I am," he nods, watches her intently, "I will." But he doesn't move. "We're going to find your English class too." He says carefully, lifts a hand to brush a strand of her hair off her cheek. "Maybe we can walk the whole campus...?" He peers down, "Let me see your shoes?"
"I can't." She presses her lips together, lifts one foot so that he can see her heels, even though her shoes have nothing to do with anything. "I just can't right now." Not with all of campus most likely watching.
There's something about the way she says that that makes him ache a little inside. He watches her for another beat before nodding slowly, "Okay," he says softly, "Okay..." He takes a step back from her and instantly misses having her so close.
He tamps the feeling down. "We'll uh..." he blinks at her— and realizes abruptly what he just did.
"... go to the..." he trails off, not bothering to finish the sentence.
He just kissed her. His eyes widen a little, thoughts clearer suddenly - he kissed her, on the street.
He glances around and blows out a slow breath, feels unbalanced and stupid and yet he still almost takes her hand. "Shit."
Serena smiles gently, and if this was four months ago she would've giggled and kissed him and teased, but it's now and it's the middle of campus, so she tucks her hair out of her face and says, "Let's go somewhere that's...not here."
He nods, eyes on her face, strangely dazed. "Yeah..." his lips tilt up a little, "Good idea... yeah." He rubs at his hair sheepishly.
She bites her lip. "I don't know...where."
"I'm taking you to get coffee and we're going to..." he sighs, shrugs, "I don't actually know what just happened." He gives her a half-smile, "You?"
"Can we go somewhere that...there aren't any other people?" All of a sudden, out of nowhere, she wants to talk to him; to talk to him about them, which she's never really allowed before.
"We can do that..." he agrees carefully, glances at her, "If that's what you want..."
When they take a step and he bumps into her a little, so their hands brush together.
"None of that," she says lightly. She crosses her arms but lets herself fall into step with him; exes are allowed to do that much.
.tbc.
