A/N: This sort of speaks for itself. I couldn't help myself, honestly. Enjoy!
Title from song by Anya Marina.
He leans toward her, earnest and eager (as always, she thinks ruefully and somewhat happily), and whispers, his breath hot and sweet on her face, "I meant to tell you I loved you."
She sways a little, and she knows it's not the alcohol coursing through her system, not the dim lights or the dingy barstoll she's sitting on, not the scratch of her fishnets (inappropriate for work, but she only realized that a few minutes ago) against her perpetually tan skin.
No, not the curve of his lips or the shield of his bangs in his blueblueblue eyes.
It's the look on his face, the caring, the protection, the adoration. He's looking at her like he did that night, that night that she knows was wrongwrongwrong but somehow felt so utterly, completely right. The night when she forgot he belonged to someone else (her best friend, her sister, the insecure, fickle, beautiful Blair), the night when she claimed him for herself.
She doesn't regret that night.
"Nate," she whispers, because she wonders if he understands what he's just said. If he means it.
"Serena," he murmurs, reaching across the smooth, tarnished surface of the bar and covering her soft, small hands with his large, protective ones. The sea blue of his eyes – kaleidoscope, spinning and dipping and oh, how she wishes she could just fallfallfall – shimmers, as if with unshed tears, and he doesn't pull back. He simply lingers, waiting for her to say something.
Anything.
She smiles shyly, the exquisite bow of her lips slanting and pulling up at the corners, and he lets out a quick, hard, audible breath. She watches the movement curiously, hears the sound in shock, and lets her eyes fall to their hands, entwined and interlaced. (Just like their pasts, just like their futures).
"You loved me?" The words come shaky, unsure, and her voice squeaks. She's not asking the right questions, she knows (why didn't you run after me and why are you telling me this now and my god, do you still…), but it's the best she can do.
Her heart is thumping with the affection she suppressed, feelings she didn't want to feel because they weren't safe (but he's safe, safer than anyone else she knows). All she can do is wait.
He smiles, slow and gentle, like she remembers (sun-soaked summers and easy, starry nights stretched across a white bed with blue sheets), and squeezes her hand with the fervor she has missed so much. "Of course I loved you."
He speaks with such certainty, as if those words she used to imagine while pining over him – Hanover and Fiji and the Hamptons – are nothing but a fact he accepted long ago. The words stay stagnant in the air.
She doesn't say anything, and his smile only widens (and suddenly, she's remembering darkdarkdark touches and rain and light sky drifting in through the paned windows…).
"Serena," he says again, reverently, wondrously, awe seeping into his voice, as it sometimes does when he's talking to her. (As it always does).
She doesn't respond.
He takes a deep breath, steels himself for the rejection he knows she'll dole out (it won't come). "You're the most alive, amazing…" He trails off, his eyes falling to his feet, as if he's afraid to say what's on his mind.
But he makes himself say it. Because he needs her to know.
"Beautiful," he breathes the word, "Woman I have ever known. Of course I loved you."
He finds himself repeating earlier words, calling up ancient cravings and memories he dares to hold onto only because he is afraid to lose the vibrancy before him (bars and wedding dresses and blond hair). He wishes he could tell her the truth, wishes he could tell her that he's always loved her, that he will always love her.
That he loves her. Right here, right now, no matter whether she's ready to go after his cousin, no matter their history or their beginnings or anything else.
No matter what she says.
But she smiles at him, sure and easy, and strokes his thumb thoughtfully. There's raw wonder in her eyes, and she asks gently, softly, "Present tense?"
He understands what she's asking, and he wishes he could be certain of her reaction to the words he knows he must say. But with them, it's never simple, and he's tired of that. It's never the right time. There's always a relationship separating them, or a continent, or their own misgivings. They never take the chance, and now that he's with her, he can't figure out why.
He inclines his head slightly, wondering if she still knows him well enough to understand.
She does.
A tear, pearling and sparkling and falling, trembles on her eyelash, but she doesn't wipe it off. She's breaking now, but breaking the good way, the kind of fault line that ripples with coming together, the kind of pain that hurts because it never seemed possible. This right here never seemed possible.
"I don't…" she whispers, because she doesn't know what else to say.
He leans toward her, closer now, and his eyes are so gentle that the tears fall fast and unbidden. His finger reaches for the hollow beneath her doleful navy eyes (beautifulbeautifulbeautiful), and he catches a tear.
She chokes out a laugh.
He smiles benevolently, charmingly, and she's reminded of all the months she was away, reminded that despite everything, the only person she really missed was him (it was constant, the thrum of natenatenate in her head as she tried to move on). She wishes he knew all this, wishes she could tell him.
Instead, she merely sighs, the words blending and diving until only someone who truly knows her inside and out could understand what she's saying, "I love you."
His eyes widen with shock, but he doesn't miss the uncertainty in her eyes. So he pulls her to him, leaning his forehead against hers, and whispers, holding his face in her eyes like she's infinitely breakable and precious and hisalwayshis, "I love you."
She smiles, and she's crying too. (Always exuberant, always unashamed, always vibrantdancingalive. Always Serena).
"Don't let me go," she whispers, and he understands.
And so he kisses her, his lips curving to the shape of hers, leaning into her, culminating years of hope and longing and affection, wishing she could understand just how much he needs her in this moment.
Needs her always.
"I won't," he promises.
She believes him. And she kisses him back, sighing and crying and feeling this sense of right she only ever feels with him. (He's amazing and he's beautiful and he loveslovesloves her, and well, that's all she's ever wanted).
And when the newly elected Congressman walks into the bar drunk, hoping to take his mind off his broken marriage, hoping to submerge himself in a scandal so intricate he can't even see the way out…when he walks in, he sees his baby cousin kissing the girl he almost left his wife for, kissing her slow and deep and passionate and longsweetperfect.
He sees the pair holding each other like their lives depend on it (they do, they always have). And he can only smile.
They don't pause the kiss, don't break apart, don't let go; they never have. They are immersed in each other, uncertainties and fears melting away as the moon dips lower in the midnight sky.
"I love you," he whispers again, once they break apart, once the tears are flowing freely and she is in his lap. She leans her head on his shoulder, arms wrapped tightly, securely around his waist, and hopes to God she doesn't lose him this time (hopes to God she's not stupid enough, hopes she's not vain enough or silly enough or whoeversheiswithouthim).
Hopes to God he puts her back together again.
(He will, she knows he will, because he is Nate and she is Serena and theyaremeanttodothis, meant to be together).
He smiles and hugs her tighter to him, murmuring gently, "I always knew."
She doesn't argue. For once, she's content to stay with him, just be with him.
"I love you."
It's not a promise, and it's not a question.
It's simply who they are (who they were back in Central Park when they danced through rays of sunshine, who they were in his grandparents' estate when they huddled by the fire and watched the snow falling from the white sky, who they were when he said he wanted her forever on a bar at a wedding, while inside her, insideinsidealwaysinside).
It's who they've become.
fin