( alternate universe; Nate finds Serena after she flees NY )
chapter one: all good things come to an end
:::
Do you ever have a secret that's so consuming you just need to run away from it?
Serena thinks, yes, as she watches the teen drama play on the small screen in her dorm room. It's what she did. It's why she's here - stuck in some preppy boarding school with a bunch of girls who like to flirt with teachers and play games with fire. Games they don't even play back home.
:::
His skin is sun-kissed, his hair a dusty golden brown. He can feel the sun burning into his skin as he steers his boat towards the left, the wind picking up as he sails. Blair is sitting among cushions with his mother, chatting about vintage dresses and next weeks brunch and plans for the future. Her hair is pinned up in an elaborate up-do that she'd shouted at him for messing up hours before, when they were making out in the car getting here. Her figure is wrapped in a bright red one piece, matching the red on her lips; he should be enthralled by her, infatuated with her beyond belief. Everyone else is.
But ever since the Shepard Wedding - ever since Serena, and her tan legs wrapped around her waist, her golden tulle dress brushing against his stomach and his thighs and her lips on his ear - he feels numb. Numb when he looks at Blair, guilty. He loves her. But she sees him as a prize, as the perfect accessory to wear and he sees her as second-best.
"Nate," Blair calls, his name sounds bitter in her mouth to his ears, but his mother smiles lovingly at the two of them. Blair slings her arm across his shoulder and down his chest, snuggling her head in the crook of his neck. He can feel his blood pounding in his veins. For the past three weeks he's been on edge, he feels exposed. Naked, with nothing but a thin white sheet covering him. Blair should be able to see through him, through his lies and thinly veiled excuses.
Out on the open sea, the ocean splayed before him, endless possibilities at his fingertips - he feels like he's suffocating. Even his safe haven has been infected by his guilt, his numbness to the real world. But Serena left. She doesn't want him. And he doesn't know what he's supposed to do now - torn between forgetting and continuing the path his life is on or doing the right thing and letting Blair know what happened. He's selfish, impossibly in love with both girls. He wants Serena, her warmth and joy and her electric sense of humour. He wants Blair, her support and strength and her kindness for him, enveloping him and making him feel safe. He wants them both, his two girls, the two girls he's grown up with. Serena in the playground, dirt on her knees and in her hair. Blair sitting at the sandpit, her dress always neat. He wants Serena to drink six-packs with and to get high with, and he wants Blair to cuddle up to and watch black and white films he doesn't understand.
"Nate," Blair says again, lifting her head up to look at him. Her eyes are soft brown, warm and honey, full of love. He looks into them and sees his future: marriage, two children, a political career. He doesn't want the same things, at sixteen he shouldn't have to decide, but he's being tugged in the wrong direction and sometimes he swears he can still feel the heat of Serena's lips against his shoulder, burning him for his sins. "Do you want to go for a swim?"
"Later," He mumbles, looking out at the pristine blue ocean in front of them. He wants to feel the water on his skin, the coldness on his over-heating body. He wants to dive in, under, and never come up for air. He wants to hide down below in the bottom of the ocean, sinking to the ground and staying still. He doesn't want to have to face up to his mistakes and guilt and future. He wants to know what it feels like to be just sixteen, not torn up about his two best friends and who he loves more. Serena is gone. Blair is here. His decision should be final, but there's a gnawing ache at his stomach, scratching at his skin. What he did was wrong, even if it felt more right than anything in his life. Blair deserves better than him, than a boyfriend who lies and cheats and questions his feelings for her. But he can't bring himself to lose her, to lose the security and comfort and childhood love. To lose her inane ramblings at three in the morning when she can't sleep, her tangents about Science and whether Sabrina or Charade is the better film.
Blair disentangles herself from him, letting out a smooth, soft sigh as she flops down on the seats opposite from him. She picks up a magazine, flicking through it while barely looking at the pages. He can tell something's on her mind, the way she's trying her best to be calm and collected while her rage simmers softly beneath the surface.
"I heard from Serena yesterday." Blair says, her voice is light and breezy, the way it is when she forces it to be; the no-care in the world kind of light and breezy that's so obviously fake. His heart stops for a second, he swears it does. His hands go clammy and his vision a little blurry and he wonders if she knows. Did Serena mention it? Break down and cry? Did she tell Blair how sorry she was? Nate feels sick, an anxiety riddled stomach plaguing him.
"How is she?" He asks, forcing his feelings back down, adopting the same tone as Blair. She raises an eyebrow at him, quirks it up at him like she's in on his secret, picking up in his tone of voice. She flips the magazine shut, pushing it to the side.
"Well, Lily says she's fine. I didn't talk to Serena, per say." Blair admits, tugging on her wobbly lower lip with her teeth. "She's in Boarding School in Connecticut. I knew she'd left for a while, but boarding school? I thought she'd be back in a week or two, tops." Blair avoids his eyes, gazing down at the bottom of the boat. He watches her carefully, trying to pick up on any signs of her knowing what he did behind her back. "She's a selfish bitch, you know? Running away without saying goodbye. Who does she think she is? The world doesn't revolve around Miss Serena van der Woodsen."
He silently thinks: it does. For us. Serena is the center of their universe, Blair and Nate are just spinners spinning around her, enthralled by her light. Ever since they were young, three four-year-olds banding together in the playground as their nannies gossiped on benches and their mothers had brunch and bitched about each other behind their backs, they were followers and a leader. Blair was the boss, Serena and Nate following along for fun, but Serena was their guide, their light; wherever she went, they followed. She shone, they smiled. It was Serena at seven who decided to make a tree-house in the Summer. Blair voicing her worries but ultimately going along.
"Blair," He says, her name sounds foreign on his tongue. Bitter. It's the guilt sweeping through him, turning her into something sour; he can't even bring himself to say her name without feeling like a traitor. He is a traitor. A lying, cheating traitor. Blair pouts, lower lip jutting out and somehow completely missing the look of a petulant toddler throwing a tantrum. Somehow, it just made her look adorable - made Nate ache to kiss her.
"Natie, let me rant?" Blair says. "Serena left me. I think I deserve to have a good curse of her name."
He wonders what she'll be like when she finds out the truth.
:::
Madison Harper smiles lazily at her from underneath a haze of smoke.
"Boyfriend back home?"
Boyfriend? No. Complicated mistake? Yes.
Serena bites her tongue, cherry-red blood seeping onto her lips; it tastes like the lollipop she was sucking on earlier, swirling it and out of her mouth as teachers watched on. Madison smirking next to her, a game, a challenge, a taunt, a tease.
It's like she's never left home. Girls are just as vicious and cruel, maybe even more so. Because at home she knew where she stood, in the middle, at the center, the universe span around her and she was not a puppet being played with, and if she was it was always Blair pulling the strings. Here she feels like a fish out of water, the new girl come to life for those around her to observe and punish and play with. Serena's always said she doesn't like the attention, she's never been Blair vying for power but she does miss the flock of girls who hung onto her every word, the thrill of knowing where she stood and knowing it was at the top. Everything here is different.
"Something like that." Serena drawls lazily, mystery clouding itself around her. Look up her name and 430 search results will appear. Her whole goddamn life is not a mystery. Her secrets are splashed front-page of a website, her mistakes permanent online. But nobody here has heard of Gossip Girl, nobody here cares enough to want to hear.
"Too bad." Madison grins, wickedly, the curve of her lips reminding her of Georgina at half-past three in the morning, a line of coke under her belt and red lip-stain marking some poor guys shoulder. "I think you'd have some fun with your own body type." Madison brushes past her, hips connecting for a split second, fingers lingering in the air in a wave and then she's disappeared behind some corner with her friends, cackling at the raised eyebrows on Serena's face.
If only they knew the lines of a body her tongue has traced, the inner thighs of a brunette who quivered beneath her like a priest holding onto their final prayer. Hurrah, she'd whispered, once against her temple. Sweat-soaked bodies mingling in the summer heat.
It was before she snagged herself a golden-haired boyfriend who's hips have buckled up against Serena's, his mouth sucking gently on the skin of her shoulder for all of sixty seconds before it was over. Her name cried from his lips, coated in the same tone of worship all the other boys had. But his eyes blinked open and she didn't see the same heat of desire, the bliss of happiness, she saw something else. It was something that scared her, warm blue meeting her eyes and a secret whispered from them I love you. And she remembered her best friend curled up in Scotland, at a wedding she'd been complaining about and she fled.
Madison, she wants to call her back and feel their skin slide together. But she bites her tongue and makes a new-years-resolution one month late: to transform herself from reckless party girl with a string of heartbroken lovers in her wake and a dead boy on her conscience to studious, hard-working, doesn't-sleep-with-her-best-friends-boyfriend or anyone else for that matter.
Serena idly thinks she'll give up the hard liquor and the comfort of drugs, too.
:::
His home phone is eggshell-blue, his mother picked it out for him three years ago when she had his room redone. It matches the pale blue walls and the duvet with the sailboats, the white trim on the upper walls. He'd been thirteen and he'd only cared about three things: sailing, soccer and his girls.
His girls, he picks up the phone in his room and presses it to his ear. Silent. They're still his girls, just in a different sense. Before, they'd been two pig-tailed bright faced girls he'd known and loved his whole life, his two best-friends, his world revolved around their smiles and laughs and their hands tugging at his wrist and pulling him towards the mall. His girls who sat and watched him play lacrosse with lopsided grins and braces, gum popping. His girls now are a blonde who wraps herself around him like ivy, beautiful and dangerous and intoxicating; she dances across his vision in a gold dress, in a new light he'd never seen to her before. His brunette girlfriend who smiles like Hepburn and held herself like Grace Kelly and feels like an extension of his heart.
He wonders if Serena would pick up. He wonders what he would say. Hey, the sex was great, thanks for ditching me. It sounds bitter and jealous to his ears, like he's a scorned lover done wrong. His heart pangs for Blair, who's caught in the cross-fire of his adolescent emotions and he dials Serena's new number he'd charmed his way out of Lily. It's the beauty of being a sixteen year old boy on the Upper East Side, surrounded by women who marry for money and want to relieve their glory days of youth. Blair had told him that was sexist of him to say, the word misogynistic pouring out of her mouth before she berated a girl for wearing tights as pants to school. Because she made such a great twenty-first century feminist.
It rings once, twice, three times and he remembers the weight of her tits in his palm. Her eyes sparkling underneath the lights of the bar, glittering and golden as they fluttered closed and he could see the dust of eyeshadow and trace the curve of lipstick with his eyes.
"Hello," Serena's voice is muffled on the other end and his breath catches in his throat. He used to think romance movies and novels were dumb, rolling his eyes whenever Blair pressed play or sighed about a couple in a book she'd read, but he feels his chest beating a little faster and thinks he might have just been in love with the wrong girl all this time.
"Hey," He replies back, thinking she might hang up on him. Serena remains silent on the other end. "It's, uh, it's Nate." He says after a few awkward seconds have passed.
"I know who it is." I know your voice anywhere. Serena shuffles on the other end of the phone, the unmistakable laughter of another girl heard. "How did you get this number?"
"Lily." He grins in a boyish way he knows she can read without seeing him, the proud smirk dancing on his lips and he imagines the roll of her eyes, the crinkle in her nose.
Serena sighs on the other end, when once upon a time she'd have laughed. "I can't talk right now, Nate." She hangs up before he gets the chance to argue his case back.
It's different, he realises. Serena is gone. It hits him for the first time - properly hits him. It had seemed fake before, like she was in L.A. for the weekend or Germany with her mother, but she's gone and she's not laughing alongside him. Her voice is cold and distant and he doesn't know who this Serena is, but he plans to find out. He grabs his bag from his closet, throwing t-shirts and jeans in it without looking. He plans to find out.
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( authors note; starting another multi-fic was so not a good idea, but here i am regardless. hope this was enjoyable and i have plans to update as soon as i can )