Runaway
A/N: Serena and Nate, N and S, Nathaniel Fitzwilliam and Serena Celia (or in the books Caroline) Van der Woodsen and Archibald. Remember them Josh? Ever thought about giving them a scene or two? We've been so neglected this season. Bring on season three already. The fabulous song was recently featured on the show; it's Runaway by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Anyways; authors rant has now ended. Enjoy, darlings (:
--
I was feeling sad
Can't help looking back
Serena isn't sure what's missing today. She woke up this morning in her own bedroom, had breakfast with her mother and Rufus and engaged in the regular game of insult tennis with Chuck, who, reunited with Blair couldn't stop grinning. He was happy – she could see that. His eyes glimmered, his hair was cut and he donned a bow tie and scarf for the first time in a long time. He didn't showcase it though, not deliberately in Serena's face. She was missing someone to and he could sense that.
And so, when she stepped onto the steps of the Met to greet her best friend she still couldn't shake the feeling of vacancy. When Blair looped her arm through hers the way only a best friend can, nothing changed. The sun still shone, the minions still answered to Blair and Serena still felt unfulfilled. When she and Blair stroll through the courtyard, she's searching for the boy that sometimes, makes her feel less empty.
It's Dan Humphrey she scans the courtyard for.
When his brown gaze locks with her blue, they both make a beeline for one another.
"Serena..." he doesn't know what to say. There's nothing to say anymore. They're about to graduate and although they're both going to Yale they have no idea where they'll go from here.
Serena's heart didn't flutter. She didn't feel her cheeks turn red. Nothing. That charge she was searching for didn't happen. Instead, she only sees a boy who can only be a friend. He wasn't her forever. He wasn't the one she needed there everyday. He was Dan Humphrey, her first love, but not the love of her life.
"Hey...Georgina...I uh, hope that didn't scar you for life." Serena smiled. She didn't apologise. He laughed. His first thought when he saw her was to ask her on a date, but he knows their time has passed. It feels over – for the first time.
"I...I don't want us to be awkward. I want us to be friends." He says it earnestly. Before, Serena would have thought that she would have been too fragile to handle this in the morning, just before school. It feels right though, that this conversation was supposed to happen. It wasn't forced.
"Bye, Dan." She departs simply, leaving him for the first and last time.
--
"You've been zoned out all day. Shouldn't I be the one who's in a daze?" Blair says commandingly, sensing her friend's sadness. Serena sends her a brief glance. She doesn't want to tell Blair what she misses.
So instead they tolerate Ms Hethrington's rants for the rest of the period. When the bell rings, Serena glides out of the classroom as graceful as ever before Blair grabs her arm and gives her the death stare.
"What is it S? Tell me. I can help you, although admittedly I've had more than my fair share of drama for senior year, the year that is supposed to be all rainbows and Yale acceptance letters."
Serena and Blair stay in the corridor for what feels like an hour before Blair loosens her grasp and Serena tucks a lock of blond hair behind her ear.
"I miss him."
Blair sighs. "Cabbage fricken Patch; look S I thought you were over that-
"It's not Dan." She says it simply. Her tone is earnest. And all of a sudden, Blair is fourteen again and they're talking about their golden boy, as if he was the only guy on earth.
"It's Nate." Blair's realization escapes her lips. Her tone is a combination of earnest and knowing.
The girls remain silent and a teacher barks at them to get to class. For the first time since they were fourteen, they ditch class together. Blair had stopped ditching prior to Serena's stint at boarding school, but her blond best friend always had someone else to ditch with. That someone else was Nate. Without saying a word, the two find themselves walking out to the lush green of Sheep's Meadow, located in front of the respective academic institutions.
--
They lounge on the grass, basking in the sunlight. It's a day for something different, Serena muses.
"Tell me." Blair says softly. Her blue eyes met yours. Serena can't tell if it's a lure into a trap so she can eat Serena's head off, or if B just wants S to be real.
"I've felt alone lately." She admits.
"S, I know I've been shacked up with Chuck but –
"Don't apologise. You and Chuck need this time to just be together and happy for once." She interrupts and Blair just nods, understanding fully. And Blair knowing Serena, she knows what's going to come up next.
"During the summer...I was alone too. No Dan to distract me, I was mourning him. You were mourning Chuck. It's pathetic, looking back but then he came along and I..."
"You had Nate. I get it." Blair breaks eye contact and gazes into the distance. "I can't believe I ever gave us another chance. It was just stupidity. I love him, I do but I'm starting to wonder if I ever really was in love with him and not the idea of it all."
The girls softly give into laughter. The stupidity. The randomness. The love of it all.
"Blair...do think that you could ever forgive-
"I already have." Her eyes meet Serena's again. And without a word, they make it back in time for the next class.
--
When school has ended, she waits for him.
He strolls out with his best friend; they're clearly on good terms again. Understanding has been reached and anyway, there was always a bit of Serena that knew that Nate knew who belonged to whom in their foursome.
"Serena!" He smiles a mega watt smile that only gives Serena a tingling sensation all over her body, a new found energy, a buzz.
"I've been waiting for you all day." She doesn't care that it makes her sound like a dork. She knew she could always be herself with him and he with her, they accepted each other fully, despite all the damage. "Thought we could hang out today."
He's been waiting for this for what seems like forever. For her to just approach him without it being awkward, without them having to be interrupted. For it just to be them, two individuals, but together.
"In was thinking about how you were obsessed with coffee ice cream last summer," he tells her huskily, in the way he knows she finds irresistible, "let's get ice cream."
You both observe Chuck and Blair being Chuck and Blair as they walk out of the school gates.
They're a couple.
And maybe, that's okay.
"I saw you and Chuck talking today." Serena says casually.
"They belong together." He says, sincerely. "And the ridiculous thing about it is, I always knew that. Even when Blair said yes to moving in. Throughout it all, she belonged to him." He emits a hollow laugh.
"Nate you were there for me last summer. Let me be here for you." She smiles shyly.
Want you to stay
Want keep you inside
--
It's seven o'clock. They're high but they haven't touched a drink or done drugs. Instead, they're at Nate's apartment. It feels strange, on the way over they had stopped at the van der Woodsen-Bass-soon to be Humphrey residence and Serena had slipped into an electric blue Marc Jacobs dress and Sigerson Morrison flats. She wanted to believe that Nate standing just behind her didn't mean a thing, they had been friends forever and frankly, it would be nothing he hadn't seen before but something just felt...charged.
"There's been too much of me this year and not enough of you." Serena muses as she gazed in awe of the view.
Nate hadn't felt this good, this free since he could remember. He was always tied up with a girl this year; Vanessa, Jenny and Blair all over again.
Serena just wasn't another girl, though.
"It's been a while since it was just you and me." He approaches her, handing her a drink. "Thanks for being here, Serena." He stands beside her, they observe the city together.
"Let's do something different. It felt like a day for something different. I know it's late but all I know is that I miss the crazy sixteen year olds who would have done anything just to have some fun." The statement is riddled with laughter and a bright smile, but it's far from fake.
This is the Serena he fell for so fast, so hard. Mythical, vibrant. Free, dangerous.
"It's not like we have school tomorrow," he bargains.
"It's not like we have anything tomorrow, Nate Archibald." Then her eyes light up, "Road trip. Me, you and a car, let's get out of here, away from all of it."
"You're crazy." He laughs.
"Don't pretend you don't want to. If you don't come with me I could always have Dan come with me." She smiles deviously, knowing what will happen next.
"Fine, Serena van der Woodsen. Let's gather some money and go to wherever we feel like for the weekend."
"Fine, Nate Archibald. I drive first though!" As Nate fumbled through his pocket for the keys to his recently purchased BMW, Serena snagged the keys lying on the sparkling granite kitchen counter top.
Run, run, run away
Lost, lost, lost my mind
--
Nate swiftly packed two pairs of jeans, his ray bans, his trusty iPod and whatever else that came to mind before stopping at Serena's home so she could pack whatever she could scrimmage in the moment.
"Serena, you could at least inform me of where you're going." Lily said, maternal as ever.
"Nate and I are going away for the weekend. Consider yourself informed." Serena said in a monotone. She didn't care where she was going with him, as long as she was with him and out of here.
"Rufus has been acting strange recently and now you're being swept away to some love mobile-
"It's not a love anything...Nate and I are friends." At this Lily, scoffed.
--
So now she's in the passenger seat with the guy who she's kind of, never been really just friends with. There was always something more, threatening their stable state of platonic surface.
She retracts her legs from where they previously were slung on the dashboard, much to Nathaniel's distraction. Her phone was ringing and it was Blair.
"Um, hi B." She greets unenthusiastically.
"I hear you have eloped with dear Nathaniel without Chuck and me? Truly, I am heartbroken." She mocked.
"Blair it's not like that."
"I don't care if it is or not. Are you coming back anytime soon or should I just tell Ms Queller not to be expecting you anytime soon?" She demanded playfully.
"It's just for the weekend. We didn't want-
"Anyone getting in the way...I know you too well. Both of you. Anyway, Chuck and I are doing some spying tonight; I have to look for my beret...call me when you decide to return, again. Bye S." She departed joyously. It made Serena happy to hear how happy Blair was.
"I look at Chuck and Blair," Nate began, swallowing, "and I just think of how hard it must be to find the person who loves you for all of you, not just parts. I mean look how long it took them to just finally get together."
"It's worth it, though." Serena replies thoughtfully. "Look at them. They're so ridiculously happy it's hard to believe that it's actually Chuck and Blair with smile on their faces. This morning the guy was practically glowing."
Highways flew by
Run, run, run away
No sense of time
Want you to stay
Want keep you inside
It's about midnight when they stop at a gas station. And that's when it really hits him – what are they doing here in the middle of nowhere with nothing but each other and nowhere to go?
"We really should have invited Chuck and Blair along. They'd know somewhere to go." Nate knew this, because after all they were the evil tacticians. Nate and Serena were the members of the non-judging breakfast club who just stood there and looked pretty. Chuck and Blair were people of action.
"They'd be all loved up though." Serena comments. "It would...be different."
Serena was about to say it would be strange or weird or out of place, but that was a lie. Chuck and Blair fit and even when they didn't fit, nobody did dysfunction like them. It wasn't unexpected, the endless ridiculous cycle Blair and Nate had perfected couldn't last forever, even if they had wanted it too. When they're married (because, seriously?) It'll be the sweet tale people find adorable. We grew up on the same street. Went to the same primary school and attended Constance Billard and St Judes respectively. When we were four we played in each others garden. When we were six we pretended to get married and played house. At age eight, we avoided each other because the opposite sex was just completely gross. Fabulous twelve year olds, sneaking kisses. During high school we grew apart and collided again, but we were constant in each others lives.
The more Serena thinks about it, the more it sounds like her and a certain ex-boyfriend of her best friend. It's adorable on the outside, but of course on the inside of love it's not so pristine and perfectly formed.
"Natie, where are we going?"
--
Nate doesn't know where he's going (does he ever?) and so he and Serena find themselves on the roof of his car.
They share a comfortable silence. With their history, it's better this way. Everything about them was muted. Feelings went unexpressed, stolen glances were their communication. Anything beyond the forbidden was all new territory for them.
"We're ridiculous." Serena buries her head in the crook of his neck.
"Why did we do this?" Nate sighs and then puts an arm around her.
All along, not so strong without these open arm.
Hold on tight
Before he realizes all over again that she is the one.
He doesn't act on the hundred and one things he's feeling inside though. He has done it for so long, it's nothing new. How the familiar girl beside him, the childhood sweetheart and the girl who got away can still make him feel like this. He wishes Blair, Vanessa or even Jenny could have made him feel this way. Like he was going somewhere. Or rather, it didn't matter where he was going as long as he was with the person he was actually in love with.
And he realizes he hadn't been in love for a long time. How could he be? He had juggled Vanessa, Jenny and Blair – three completely different girls with different demands in succession. No one moves on as fast as Nate Archibald did if they're in love.
Nate was trying to fill a gap and not just in the literal sense.
"Because..." Serena trails off, sounding tired. "You can talk to me and I can talk to you without any judgement or crap from anyone else. I missed this. I missed you, Nate."
"I missed you too." He runs a hand through his hair. He knows when exactly he fell in love with her. The exact month, day even time.
He can even remember thinking about how Blair and Serena really shouldn't have been friends, because the truth was they had nothing in common. How he and Blair could have been happy if she had just settled for a minion as her best friend instead of the blond firecracker. How Blair could have been happy if he had settled for some Humphrey-esque dude as a best friend.
"Do you ever wonder what things would have been like if we ever..." Nate can't even form a comprehendible sentence.
"You'd break my heart. You already did Nate. It's better this way. Trust me." Serena kisses him on the cheek.
It was six thirty three when Blair and Serena arrived home from shopping. Blair and Chuck had been arguing about the "utter tragic fashion sense" that was Chuck Bass. The room had been a smoke chamber because of Nate and Chuck's newest hobby. Serena had collapsed into Nate's arms right there and then, not caring that he and Blair had previously announced their new coupled state.
She asked him if he had ever felt like he wanted to press all the buttons in the hotel elevator before the next person got in, or if he ever wanted to do something different and just fly away, just the four of them away from the sealed bubble that was their home. He said yes, that's what e felt right then and she agreed she wanted the same things as he did.
They didn't have sex; they didn't kiss or even have a goodbye hug before he set off because he and Blair were supposed to be having their first official date.
Six thirty three.
"Yeah you're right. It's just better this way if we...are you still in love with Dan?" He asks gruffly.
"No."
It's not a sympathetic tone, it's just factual.
"I could ask you the same about Blair." She responds, almost too enviously.
"No." He smiles in triumph.
All along, not that strong without these open arms
Lie beside
All along, not so strong without these open arms
Ride beside
--
They're home the next day, much to the satisfaction of their counterparts.
Lily rolls her eyes and smiles in relief to find her daughter and Chuck talking the next morning. Nate seems to be the theme of their conversation.
"I'm quite excited about this possible...union." He remarked in a smug tone. As if he knew this had been coming. (He knows everything, remember?)
"Blair told me she wouldn't mind...do you think she would?" It was the wrong question to ask him she thought immediately, but he knew her better than even she did.
"With me on her arm how could she?" He replied just as smug.
"You know now that you're with her it's like Chuck's ego times ten." Serena said, smiling.
"I think it would be Serena's happiness times ten if you just did what you wanted instead of being an oh-so tragic masochist. Summer waits, our last summer in the city with each other. Make it one to remember, S."
Chuck words were enough.
Run, run, run away
Lost, lost, lost my mind
So she arrives at his apartment once more to rewrite history, sort of.
When he answers, it's not as comfortable as it was the night before. He looks dishevelled.
"Summer starts soon." She commented. She couldn't suppress a smile. Maybe they'd have a real start this time.
"I know. I was thinking about heading up to my granddad –
"No. Don't do that." She replied, half playfully, half stern.
"Why?"
"Nate Archibald. I know you've been through so many girls this year I've lost count. But last night...that's how I want to spend my summer. With you."
"You said-
"I said a lot of things. But this is how I feel, Nate. Here I am. Ready. Ready for us." She says, unable to contain the sheer enthusiasm in her tone.
She moves nearer into him, she can smell his scent of Armani. He's gorgeous. He's the guy for her. He can make her happy.
"I don't want to kiss you." His voice cracks with sadness. "I do, but it's not the right time yet for us."
She pulls away, confused. Maybe he was right, but it didn't stop her feeling like all her vital organs would shut down. She had been with guys too, Dan and Gabriel and Aaron. They were not the right guys for her, not Nate, not people who actually made her happy. Not the kind of happiness that lasts a day, the type of happiness that feels like it can span out for years on end. She found that with the guy from last night.
"Oh." Is all she says before running into the elevator and because she's just feeling in a bad mood, presses all the buttons before Mrs Coates steps inside.
--
Two months later, they're home from the Hamptons.
Chuck and Blair reached a stage where they just fought for the sole purpose of making up. Gossip Girl had recently informed them that he and V had crawled back into their Brooklyn hole; with each other.
Nate drops Serena off (well that was his intention) but when she opens her door to an empty apartment, Nate keeps her hand.
"I'm sorry for what I said just before we graduated. I didn't mean to hurt you, Serena."
"I know," she began knowingly, lovingly; "you're Nate Archibald. It's to be expected. You break hearts without even knowing it."
He looks gorgeous in all white. She's still in her white gown, she adored it so much.
"Do you ever wonder what things would be like if we..."
She takes her hand from his.
"We could have had a whole summer, Nate. Just remember that when you miss me at Columbia that you let me go." She says sadly. "I mean what the hell is it with us?" She says, verging on fury, "Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf can get it together but we can't?"
He silences her with a kiss. The clothes are off within minutes.
They didn't have a summer. But they had that night.
Want you to stay,
want you to be my prize
And so, Chuck and Blair fall deeper in love.
Nate and Serena fall deeper in love.
They grow apart, they collide again. They're constant.
The find their way back to each other in the end.
They live happily ever after.
And just maybe, that's fine.
(It's more than fine.)