Disclaimer: I don't own Gossip Girl.
AN: Because for a few moments, Nate infiltrated the space in my head that's usually reserved for Carter.
Thank you for reading. -- Sarah
Centuries Left When You're Gone.
Contrary to popular belief, Nate Archibald isn't an idiot.
In fact, he thinks, he's not really even all that slow, which tends to be the term people use when they're trying to be polite.
He just happens to surround himself with people who are constantly offering up scathing wit on top of adamant lies about knowing who they are and what they want, and so he comes off as the poor, sweet little rich boy wandering around in his pot-induced haze, never knowing a good thing when he's got it or that maybe embracing his destiny isn't the worst idea in the world.
It's tough, when you're surrounded by Chuck "I'm Chuck Bass" Bass and Blair "But I'm a Waldorf" Waldorf, to try to make a case for the difficulty that is being Nate Archibald.
When everyone else is embracing legacies, it tends to come across as a little whiny and ridiculous when all you want to do is go to USC and find yourself, especially when you don't even know how or where to begin looking and you're just sure it's not where you are.
It also makes it difficult when one or the other of the aforementioned adult-children is always so insistent upon calling your deep thoughts shallow and demanding you start actually saying something if you're going to insist upon talking such a big game.
And as for Serena, as much as she liked to think of her name as a cross to bear when she was going through her Reformed Good Serena Phase of 2007, what she was really bemoaning was a reputation, and really all said reputation was doing was providing her an excuse every time she screwed up. Free pass. Get out of jail, pass go and all that.
But not for Nate, no, with Nate it was 18 years of being told just who he was and just how important that is and how there were plans and paths and purposes and proper procedures and Dartmouth, law school, Blair.
And then Yale, law school, Blair.
And then Van der Bilts, internships with the mayor, Yale, he assumes still law school...
And of course, Blair. Always a part of the equation, even when he forces her out or drives her out or forgets to add her in or whatever the case is any given week.
XOXO
It's sometime after Spring Break of Senior year and his life has fallen apart and come back together and fallen apart just a time or five too many when Blair again becomes a focus, this time of his own making.
The days are passing in blurs of foreign colors and sounds and demands and he's had this headache that nothing in Anne's medicine cabinet seems to ease and he's altogether feeling kind of off his game (not in a stupid way, though, thanks), and the first time the edges start to un-blur just a little he's looking at the girl who was his for so many years and so he thinks there's got to be something to that.
She's over her mini-meltdown and back to being Blair, but there's still something frantic that goes unmasked by the depths of her dark eyes, something desperate and something afraid.
He thinks there's also a bit that oddly resembles an excitement he hasn't seen since this other time he'd really rather not recall, but that just doesn't seem to fit and so he decides it was just a figment of his headaches and takes comfort in the way she seems to relax in his presence and smiles at her offhand but sweet comments about how nice it is to have him back in her life.
XOXO
NYU accepts him before he remembers to tell anyone he's even applied, and he decides this will be an excellent platform for his decision to put up rather than shut up in the battle that's been being Nate Archibald.
His cheeks burn with pride and then anger as his family members don't quite disown him but rather just offer him pitying looks like they know something he doesn't, but Blair smiles at him and tells him she's proud he's doing what he wants, like he always said he would.
He thinks it has to mean something when NYU accepts her a few weeks later, and he starts to wonder if, when you combine the way the fairytale she always dreamed her life would be tripped and shattered along the path less traveled with his lifelong insistence that there were no fairytales, just a world they'd yet to experience due to their narrow-minded existence, maybe it's time they meet somewhere in the middle and dream up a new one.
He tries to drop hints but she's still busy staring into space with that same odd expression, and he decides he's probably being too subtle, because sometimes he is and he knows it.
He prefers being too subtle to those other times, when he's too obvious, because those times always seem to hurt more, even if on both occasions he usually finds himself out in the cold on something.
XOXO
They go to prom as friends – her word, not his – and he's uncomfortably reminded of the subsequent epic rise and fall of their romantic relationship the last time they attended an event as friends, but he decides it won't be that way this time.
They really are better this time, or will be. Once they establish things, of course.
She wears Marchesa, an impeccably structured ball gown of black silk and tulle that dusts the floor just so when she walks. Champagne accents match his vest and her hair is pulled back from her glowing cheeks and she regards him with subtle surprise when he can't help but brush his fingers along the velvet skin there on two occasions.
She looks like royalty, but of course it's Serena who's named the Queen to his King and their matching crowns of platinum shine like stars atop their matching golden heads.
As the blonde falls giggling into his arms for their requisite dance he remembers thinking once, something like a million years ago, that she was the one his heart belonged to.
A softness in her blue eyes, a darker mirror of his own, hints that maybe something inside of her is waking up after a hibernation spent in Brooklyn as they dance now in culmination of their childhoods, but his gaze is elsewhere as he searches for Blair and can't find her in the crowd.
Serena looks at him oddly as he rushes their steps against the music.
XOXO
The uncomfortable déjà vu from earlier returns tenfold to fairly knock him over when he steps outside the Plaza to find her in the arms of Carter Baizen.
He takes two steps forward with every intention of ending this night the same way he did Cotillion, with Baizen on the ground attempting to deflect his fists from his face, but he suddenly finds himself turned to stone when he catches sight of her face.
She's never looked more the princess she's always wanted to be, and yet she's here outside her court, the music that should be the soundtrack to this perfect night barely audible as it wafts in spurts through a revolving door.
And instead of her white knight she's in the arms of a rogue, in jeans with his hair tousled, and she's looking up at him with eyes so bright they could burn this town.
He's dismayed to find he still can't move when she throws back her head in laughter as said rogue twirls her in their own private waltz and holds her at her waist like she's all the precious cargo the world has ever known in the form of this one perfect girl.
When his circulation decides to start back up, he still isn't sure what to make of how utterly alive she looks, and so he decides this must somehow be Chuck's fault and turns on a heel to seek out his best friend.
XOXO
Chuck isn't all that interested in talking to him when he approaches with the subject of Blair, and it's not until they're sitting at commencement a couple of weeks later, caps and gowns in place, and the keynote speaker makes mention of a gift on behalf of the Class of 2009 that was made by the Bart Bass Foundation, that he thinks to remember that maybe Chuck has had a few other issues weighing on his mind of late.
He finds him amidst a blonde flurry of Van der Woodsens, looking more a part of a family than Nate's ever seen him but still with endless shadows clouding his gaze, and hegives him a quick, one-armed masculine hug before he can protest.
"We should catch up," he offers, and a hint of a smile touches Chuck's lips, but it's gone just as quickly when he can't keep Blair's name from tumbling out in the next breath.
"I fought for her, and I lost, Nathaniel," Chuck tells him, bluntly, tiredly. "I can't fight for her for you too."
"But she's still hanging around with Carter," Nate splutters, as if this explanation should be enough, and maybe once upon a time it would have been, but Chuck just looks at him with defeated dark eyes even as he pushes. "Come on man, do you at least know if she's like with him with him, or if it's just a thing?"
"She doesn't want to be saved, Nate," Chuck tells him, glancing in the direction of Lily, who has been beckoning him frantically with camera in hand for the past couple of minutes.
Nate stares after him and convinces himself that he was wrong to worry that Chuck ever understood Blair on a deeper level than he did.
Everyone knows Blair Waldorf always wants to be saved.
XOXO
He's much more eloquent in his mind when he suggests that she get a place with him in the fall, but in reality it comes out in a breathless string of incohesive phrases and rationales all having to do with real college life and escaping the UES, and then:
"And, you know, I kind of … need you, Blair …" he stammers, but by this point her wide-eyed gaze has already relaxed and she's deep in thought as she speaks simultaneously, her own words drowning out this last quiet admission.
"Sure," she agrees. "Why not? You're right, if I'm going downtown I might as well do it all the way, and besides, it will be better than dorm life. I wonder if Eleanor will let us have Dorota, or if we'll need one of your maids? It is protocol to have service at college, right?"
He waits a beat with baited breath but she turns to him with eyebrow cocked, awaiting the answers to her questions, and so he realizes maybe she didn't hear his comment at all.
He doesn't repeat it because sometimes these moments are fleeting and one chance is one chance, but he does deflate when he realizes just how much he meant the words, even if he'd be hard-pressed to explain why, exactly.
XOXO
They move into a full-floor residence in a newer high-rise on Irving Place at the start of summer because Blair thinks the modernism and glass will be a nice change.
She's far less committal about decorating than he would have assumed, shrugging and allowing that she can make a call or two unless maybe Anne is bored and looking for something to make pretty, but he doesn't read into it too much because she brings home a bottle of Dom '96 one July night and they drink it on the kitchen floor.
"To roommates!" she toasts, with her cheeks tan from a long weekend in Southampton and her hair in a ponytail and her eyes less frantic and afraid and more excited.
It's the most fun he's had in a long time, until he accidentally gets drunk and accidentally demands to know what exactly is up with Carter, because Gossip Girl has pretty much been running a slideshow of their hand-holding sessions for the past month, and so if that's the case then what was prom all about, and why didn't she just go with him then?
Blair looks momentarily stunned, and then her face softens into an all-too-sympathetic smile and she reaches to brush his hair from his eyes.
"Well, you asked first," she says simply. "It was … a rite of passage. The end of something, of … our journey, I guess. I think it was important we went together."
He doesn't miss the fact that she has only half-answered the question, but something twists in his stomach and when it doesn't stop after a beat he mumbles something about bed and flees the kitchen.
XOXO
He knows the instant Carter Baizen pulls a Carter Baizen and skips town sometime in mid-August because the light flees Blair's eyes with him.
Serena shows up with what appears to be the entire Ben & Jerry's collection and he's relegated to loitering outside Blair's bedroom door while the girls curl up in her silk sheets and curse men and praise chocolate.
When Serena offers up the requisite "He's not good enough for you anyway, B," with the words more loaded than Blair seems interested in registering, Nate can't help but blurt out his agreement.
Serena laughs and Blair offers some weak, watery gratitude, and he retreats, deciding he'll wait for her to come around.
She always does, and while he thinks he's better than a backup set of arms he supposes he's given her reasons enough not to hold him in the reverence she once did.
XOXO
The first semester of college hits him like an icy tidal wave, buckets upon buckets of cold water slapping him in the face.
It's just school. He thinks the classes might be a little harder, not that he was really paying attention at St. Jude's, but they're also even easier to ditch, so at least that's something.
He walks onto the lacrosse team. He's not the best and that bothers him like he never thought it would, but his teammates are friendly and they like to get high so he can't really complain.
XOXO
He's failing Freshman English when midterms roll around and he realizes that being an Archibald isn't going to get him out of it, because he's not that kind of an Archibald anymore, because if you ask him he never was, that's why he's here.
It's not as liberating, suddenly.
He feels kind of whorey offering his pretty, thirty-something professor a little patented Nate Archibald blue steel when he pleads his case for extra work to bring up his GPA (even though that's not really what he means, except it kind of is), but it has never failed him in the past so he figures he at least has to try.
XOXO
Blair is helping him with an inane and uninspired creative nonfiction writing assignment – he wonders when exactly college begins actually teaching you anything about yourself - some time just before Thanksgiving. It's cold outside but their apartment is almost too warm and she's lounging on the couch in something navy and satin and tiny, with her legs up over the arm and her hair splayed out all over the cushions.
"Are you even paying attention?" she snaps, eyeing him over a book as he's eyeing his way up her thighs. He blinks at her and smiles, and she rolls her eyes but smiles back. Indulgently, he thinks, and he finds himself vaguely annoyed.
She announces that it's break time and disappears briefly, returning with a bottle of Ketel One.
He's wondering when she switched from gin to vodka, and also, what's got her eyes so bright again lately because he certainly can't take any of the credit, when she suddenly, coyly, asks about Sadie from their Macroeconomics class.
"She's so into you," she adds, her perfect coral lips a playful smirk as he sits dumbfounded and quietly repeats the name, adding a question mark to his tone.
Blair rolls her eyes. "Please. Miranda Kerr's doppelganger? Don't be such a gentleman. I know you've noticed her! She finds excuses to talk to you every week!"
Nate doesn't know what to say, so he lamely offers up a weakly disgusted (because he's not really like that) "She's Southern, and … airheaded."
"She's from Charleston," Blair retorts primly. "Which is perfectly acceptable. And she's friendly."
He finds it appalling that this argument is ensuing at all and is just about to say so when the buzzer sounds and Blair leaps to her feet again.
Moments later he gets it, and then some, when Carter walks into his living room offering a patented, cocky, and not unfriendly lift of his chin in his direction, Blair close at his side.
He recognizes the greeting, because he does it himself, and he suddenly remembers where he learned it while simultaneously grasping an understanding of Blair's recovered glow.
He decides he's going to practice new manners of greeting for the rest of the night, and also, that maybe he should get Sadie from Macro's number after all.
XOXO
Serena returns from Brown at Christmastime for the semester break and announces she's not going back.
He figures he should be a friend and make sure everything is okay, but when they get plastered on champagne punch at Eleanor Waldorf Designs' annual holiday party and find themselves in bed together he decides that's good enough.
The sex is even better than he remembers, though if possible she's even more wild and he finds himself slowing things down. Entirely inconveniently, an absurd sense of guilt washes over him but he pushes it aside and kisses her fervently on the mouth when they finish.
She looks mildly surprised and her eyes soften as she curls herself against him to sleep, but his eyes remain wide and fixated on the dark ceiling until dawn and he's very nearly twitching with irritation and something else when he finds he still can't get Blair out of his head.
It makes no sense, he knows, and anyway she's in Cambodia of all places.
Carter gave her a backpack (Nate guesses he has to give him props for having the good sense to fill it with diamonds and Godiva) and a plane ticket on the last day of class and after an initial period of stunned silence, she had started giggling like it was some big joke Nate wasn't allowed to know about, and then she was gone.
XOXO
He surprises himself when he fucks Sadie from Macro (technically now they've moved on to Micro) on the first date, a week into second semester which is really less of a date and more of a predecessor to fucking anyway.
It's not so much the sleeping with her that's strange, but the way that that's all it is, despite the fact that he can't help but notice she tries to hold his hand when they go to sleep after and looks at him like she'd maybe like him to ask her to dinner.
He's used to falling in love with every girl he dates, so he finds it kind of odd that he sometimes has a hard time recognizing her from far away, or behind, or whatever, when she waves to him on campus, but he knows her well enough naked and that seems to work, especially since Serena's post-attempted-collegiate career path quickly takes a turn for the socialite and she can't seem to keep herself on one continent for more than a few days at a time.
XOXO
It's March when Blair tells him she's transferring to Columbia for the fall, and when he's done reeling from the initial shock he wonders aloud when she even started considering the school.
She averts his eyes because it's all still sort of awkward and tells him that Carter really likes it there, which really almost knocks him on his ass.
"Baizen's at Columbia?" he demands. "Since when?"
"January," Blair replies nonchalantly, all innocent eyes and amused lip curving at his apparent and odd distress.
"What happened to the Upper East Side representing everything he's ever loathed?" he spits, and Blair shrugs again.
"Columbia's on the Upper West Side?" she suggests, lightly, but her smile falls when he continues to glare. "What, did you want him to leave? What's it to you? Anyway, it doesn't change anything. He's still who he is, he just decided he wanted to get his education."
It makes perfect sense, and it makes his blood boil that Carter Baizen has his shit together and he doesn't, but he convinces himself he's really just mad that Carter's gone back on his ideals to be just another clone, and he repeats his own long-winded vow that he will not do the same to himself for the billionth time.
XOXO
He rushes through the paperwork for USC, and when they offer him transfer admission for January 2011 because he missed the deadline for fall he thanks the god of GPAs for Blair's tutorials and easy female professors and decides that the delay in admission will be his chance.
Now he will begin seeing the world, if briefly, and when he gets back he's really going to do things his way. No more New York, no more Blair.
XOXO
He ends up in Chateauneuf-du-Pape in September, entirely by accident.
He really does mean to go to Asia, or at the very least Eastern Europe, because he knows from Chuck and Carter and Gossip Girl and people who've lived that Western Europe is just America with better food and fewer showers, but while he's Wikipedia-ing Bangkok amidst the boxes containing his year on Irving Place, he stumbles upon a bottle of red wine from the tiny French town and by the time he's finished it he's also managed to book a plane ticket.
It's not his first time in France, of course, but it is his first time in this particular corner of France, and for a while it's great. The accents are marbled and he can't understand a damn word because he only studied through eleventh grade and even then it was with a Parisian accent, and the girls are all pretty and dark-haired and dark-eyed and he wanders around in the sides of mountains drinking wine.
It dawns on him after a bit, though, that's he's really always had a thing for blondes (except for one noted exception … maybe two, but he doesn't really count Vanessa anymore) and he's more of a beer man as unrefined as that may be, and before he knows it he's off to Avignon, and finally Nice, where he breathes a sigh of relief when he hears English and heads to the beach.
XOXO
Serena meets up with him in Monaco and they get drunk on a boat but she turns gently away when he attempts to kiss her and wrinkles her nose at him with a little laugh.
"So is this really your big world adventure?" she asks, and he doesn't like where it's going but he smiles because that's what he does. "The same things you've always had, but warmer?"
"What?" he replies. "I like what I like."
"Mmm-hmm," Serena muses. "And here I thought your whole problem was that you never knew what you liked."
This suits him none at all but he's at a loss for words, an affliction he often, hatefully, finds himself suffering from, and so he goes with charm, because if it's worked on anyone in the past (and really, it's worked on most) it's been Serena.
"Oh, I was sure about some things," he tells her with suggestive eyes, and leans in close to her again.
She tells him then that she's with Dan again, and when it gets awkward makes it worse when she inquires about the girl from Macro-or-Micro-or-whatever-Economics Blair mentioned last spring.
XOXO
He cuts his vagabond experience short and heads to Los Angeles early. He wouldn't say his first foray into experiencing the real world had been a failure, exactly, but more like he would need a do-over once he got some other things of hazy indetermination sorted out.
LA is fine, he decides fairly quickly, though he's also uncomfortable to note that the big, earth-shattering, life-changing moment of realization he's been waiting for didn't arrive with it. But the weather is incredible and as he stands at the edge of the Pacific Ocean he realizes how long it's been since he's really been sailing and he's almost startled by the foreign sensation that stirs inside of him until he recognizes it as excitement.
He's 19 now, almost 20, and he's doing something he always said he wanted.
XOXO
USC students are a lot like NYU students – artsy, hipster, generally rather wealthy still. A bit more friendly but a bit too tan, and he actually finds himself briefly miffed when he's often mistaken for a California boy himself.
The words "But I'm an Archibald" die on his lips as his entire body goes rigid with shock at the realization he's just thought them, and he decides then that he'll start drawing out some of his vowels in imitation of the West Coast accent.
He volleys back and forth between loving and loathing the way LA worships a different set, a celebrity set, all new money and glitz and paparazzi. Loving because it's so removed from everything he's still fairly certain he needed to escape, loathing because, well, what he escaped was better, in the simplest of terms, if that's not being too forwardly blue-blood.
Not that he wants it again, no. Bring on the pop-punk and surfers, he really, really prefers the California weather, anyway.
XOXO
When his mother calls the following fall in floods of tears it takes him five full minutes of soothing tones and calm insistence before she can breathe well enough to tell him that his grandfather is gone.
Efficiency mode has always been an easier one for him to come by, and he's booked his flight, made sure Lily Van der Woodsen is at the townhouse with Anne, emailed all of his professors and packed his bags all without batting an eye before he almost finds himself knocked on his face at the realization that with Grandfather gone and the Captain incarcerated, the patriarch of the family was nonexistent.
He's sitting on the edge of his bed and it's dark when he calls Blair, and he hopes the press hasn't gotten wind of the news yet because if he's not the one breaking it to his friends then it means they just didn't care enough to call him.
And even though he spent 18 years trying to get away, that idea leaves him breathless in a terrible way, like the way you think you're really about to die when you take a frozen soccer ball to the gut in late October.
Her voice is sleepy and confused when she picks up on the fifth ring, 4 a.m. EST because he forgot but also because not calling was out of the question, and this time she hears him loud and clear when he tells her he needs her.
XOXO
She doesn't leave his side when she joins him in Connecticut - Carter nowhere to be seen and the rest of his friends comfortingly part of the blur in the background - except for when the preparations become too overwhelming and his head gets fuzzy and then she takes over, directing floral arrangements and making sure his jacket isn't rumpled and keeping Anne from falling over.
She looks older, somehow, though it hasn't been so long, and thinner, too thin, he thinks, but pristine and buttoned all the way up to where she's supposed to be, and when she holds his hand during Tripp's eulogy he has to clench his jaw because he suddenly feels so home despite the fact that yet more walls have crumbled since he escaped.
XOXO
They've drunk entirely too much single malt when they find themselves alone, still dressed in mourning attire, and she tells him with tears in her throat that she left Carter and so he ran and she doesn't know where he is.
He doesn't know what to say, and he hesitates twice before reaching to hold her, but she buries her face in his neck easily and he rests his hands at her waist.
"Three times," she tells him. "I've loved three times now, and shouldn't the third time be a charm?"
He finds he still can't speak and so he begins to reconsider his theory that he's not an idiot, and then she asks him how many times he's loved.
"Just once," he answers softly and without pause, and he thinks maybe it's a lie but when she's trembling in his arms he just can't accept it so he convinces himself it's the truth.
XOXO
When he wakes hours later in bed beside her she's crying like her heart will break and he doesn't know what to do yet again so he reaches for her but she won't let him touch her until she's put her clothes back on.
She speaks too quickly and breathlessly, gasping and shuddering, about Santorini and Serena, always Serena, Serena Serena, and Carter and the past and forgiveness and revenge and missing him so much it hurts to breathe, and by the last part Nate thinks they're on the same page because something is constricting in his chest.
He wants to leave, because his entire body is buzzing in a way that feels he's about to break from his skin and he thinks he needs some fresh air, but if he leaves her like this he's afraid she might combust as well, the way her tiny body is shaking.
The relief that floods him when she's gone in the morning is immediately replaced with guilt and then an ache that will follow him until he sees her again.
XOXO
California isn't the same when he returns, he thinks, until he realizes it is, and it's welcoming, but it's he who is hollow, and he doubles his course load so he'll still graduate on time despite his brief hiatus from study during transfer.
His visits to New York are abbreviated, but Anne comes out often enough and he takes her sailing and she tells him she's proud of him and she looks like she means it, even though he's about to graduate from the school of his dreams with less of a plan than he ever even pretended he was going to seek.
Chuck visits once as well, and Nate manages to offer a few sentences of pleasantries before turning the subject to Blair, and he holds his breath for a beat but Chuck seems to be resigned to the subject now and he answers easily when asked if he loved her, like really loved her.
"Enough to let her go," he says. "And enough to know there was life after loving her."
Nate nods, then, and it's not a formality, because he really gets it, and he's only sorry he didn't know how to phrase the question long ago and learn from the answer. He's even more sorry for the life he missed while he was busy searching for the meaning of life, and he tells Chuck so.
"I'm sorry it took me so long to know what matters, I guess," he tells his best friend. "I'm sorry I just threw so many good things away."
Chuck shrugs and squints around in the sunshine.
"You can make up for it by introducing me to some of these West Coast co-eds," he suggests. "I hear they're very friendly out here. And … enhanced."
XOXO
It's hard to talk around the lump that lodges itself in his throat when his entire family shows up to watch him graduate, but Archibalds don't cry so he feigns allergies and coughs a lot and smiles too wide for the society pages but he doesn't care.
Blair arrives with Chuck, though the solitaire on her left hand came from Carter, whom she thoughtfully decided against bringing with her.
She jumps into his arms easily, platonically, though he supposes that weird little tugging thing that happens inside of him might just be a permanent side effect, and he offers a low whistle and he takes her hand and examines the rock.
"I see Baizen is still adhering to his destiny," he comments, and she slaps him playfully but they're both smiling.
"It's going to be a long engagement," she tells him. "He won't finish B-school for another year, and he's going to take me to Japan first."
"Ah," Nate nods. "You two just got tired of chasing each other away and then having to chase after each other again, then?"
She laughs. "I think we've all spent too much time running from the things that matter."
He thinks he couldn't agree more, and again curses himself for not paying attention to the important things in the life he spent so long trying to escape.
Nate Archibald might be kind of an idiot, he realizes, but he's 22 and there's a lifetime left to enjoy.