A/N: Rather random. Just felt like writing something angsty. And CB just happened to be the first couple that came to mind. I guess it happens some time in Season 1.

Everything and nothing

This means nothing.

She hissed it at him over and over. "Nothing, Chuck, nothing." It changes nothing, helps nothing, means nothing.

This wasn't love. This wasn't even like.

This was sex.

This was touch, this was heat, this was searching for desperately needed comfort.

Her fingernails dig into his back, as she bucks and twists and moans and screams on his bed, and it leaves marks that will hurt him later, in a way that reminds him of her. A little stinging reminder that she's still here.

Even if she's anything but.

Nate isn't enough. Nate can never be enough. After all, it's not Nate's name she moans into his ear. Not even close.

He wonders if he's enough, or if he could be. He's not her friend. Nate's her friend, Serena's her friend. He will never be her friend. They have too much between them.

She is always searching, always reaching, always feeling blindly for something she needs. He wonders if it's him.

She's made too many sacrifices for him, it seems that it was nothing but endless compromising. She doesn't want to do it again.

She doesn't want to keep going back to him either.

It doesn't really stop her.

And when her hands are clenched in his hair, when her muscles tingle in exhaustion, when she is sweating and gasping on his bed, when every breath makes her lungs burn, she almost forgets. She forgets about Nate. She forgets about anger. And she almost forgets about all the shit he has pulled on her, all the games he still plays with her.

Almost.

She never stays with him, she never speaks except to tell him that it's the "last time, for real" when she leaves, staring at her feet until she's out of his eyes, away from his questions.

He thinks he knows better.

It's in her eyes, in the brown eyes that close when his try to meet them, avoiding contact, avoiding feeling.

Chuck sighs knowingly. It's never nothing.

Because to him, it's everything.