A/N: So even though I haven't written Nate/Blair for years, apparently that soft spot hasn't faded away yet. And also I think it's kind of cute that my 70th story on here is about them, 'cause I'm a sap like that. This ficlet takes after the season five finale, which in true GG style ruins everything just so fanfic writers like me can messily glue it back together again. Thanks for reading and your feedback is always appreciated. The title is taken from a Savage Garden song.
If love was red then she was colour-blind
Her cycle of lose/win, rinse/repeat, and fleeing the scene to returning home begins all over again when Blair decides I've come to fight for you is just another line in their elegantly written script of lies.
It wasn't anything she hadn't experienced before, when Chuck manhandled her against the hotel bed, his face pressed close to hers, his breathe reeking of alcohol and a fury she knows she never can truly fix. He had told her that he was Chuck Bass, that he wasn't a trophy to be won by a woman, not even the mighty Blair Waldorf. Then he smashed his glass on the floor and gave her a look that promised an apology, but no action to really make his words mean anything.
I don't want you anymore, and I can't see why anyone else would.
Those are the only words of his that have ever stayed with her.
The evening she returns home to an empty house, she drinks alone in the Palace hotel bar. She imagines all the whispers about how a Waldorf is drinking alone, and feels a pang of regret for running away like the vulnerable little girl Chuck moulds her into – the girl who loses her virginity in the back of vehicles; the girl who is bought and paid for.
She knows she should have stayed with her mom in Paris. She should have taken the pain and channelled it into her work.
But right now, she wants to test the theory that her script might be fixed by the time she's finished her vodka martini.
Blair half hopes that Serena will find her here alone. That their eyes would meet across the bar with lingering looks of I'm sorry and I love you because after all, what is you is me. Similar to when Serena returned home all those years ago and they had traded weary, love-worn smiles of acknowledgment.
Blair had realised then that their wars were always worth the peace that settled upon them afterwards.
She had been cooped up in Chuck's hotel room when she had received Serena's call, the girl's voice cracked in between long sighs. "I slept with Dan." She had admitted quietly. She could still be at the other side of the globe and feel like she was speaking to Serena inside a confession booth.
Blair could not bring herself to feel anger. She remembers in the rush of the moment, she didn't even break it off with Dan. She couldn't deny that history was enough to hurt her this time, not love.
"When?" Blair asked.
"When you were chasing Chuck in Europe." Serena replies sharply. "And I can't say I'm sorry. You knew how I feel about him..." she trails off, and Blair had heard Serena swallow, her voice muffled by sobs, "strongly enough to hurt you."
"He was yours first." is all Blair said before disconnecting. She feels relief for being honest with herself and her friend.
She ends the night drunk dialling Nate.
That was different – he had been Blair's boy first. She took her heart and sown it onto his sleeve, bestowed him with a responsibility neither of them were ready for at fifteen.
(She wonders if it is still there on that emerald green sweater, if it has remained there with him all along, and that's when she realises that she is royally drunk.)
"Blair," Nate says her name like he hasn't saw her for years. That's how Blair feels about them, if she allows herself to be honest. "You're not calling from a European number." He notes.
"I've only been home a matter of hours." She replies. "So the Bass-tard hasn't informed you. Surprising, because I thought for a while there he may have had you on pay-roll."
"Hey," Nate begins, "I know a classic feisty Waldorf tipsy comment. Where are you?"
"I call one of my oldest friends upon coming home, and I'm accused of being drunk?" Blair replies playfully. "I'm in the Palace bar. How about you stop playing bossy-boots for a while and have a drink?"
He can't help but chuckle lightly. "I'm on my way."
"Where's the girlfriend?" Blair enquires out of genuine curiosity. She didn't care for the girl (a lesser version of Serena, Blair had thought at one point), but she wanted Nate happy, in the end. Even if it was just a replacement for the real thing.
"She got a part." Nate says, like that explains everything. "Then we broke up." He adds.
"Well at least we both won't be drinking out of devastation." Blair raises her glass and rolls her eyes.
"Whilst we're on the topic, last I heard you and Chuck are in Europe, now you're home alone?" Nate's eyebrows furrow.
Blair remains strangely silent, swirling her drink in the glass. Nate watches her lips part, on the edge of something.
"What happened?" He continues. "Is this just another part of what you both do or..." he trails off, left without words of his own. He knew they loved each other underneath the similar exteriors, but Nate never understood BlairandChuck as a pair, not when he was sixteen and wondering why Blair had changed irrevocably as a person, not when they were seniors with a second chance but no time, and not now.
"Same old story," she says bitingly, "Blair and Chuck, soulmates." She mocks the term the way it deserves to be. "We were too much for each other. Again."
He has not heard her speak like that before, and the fact that it concerns Chuck unnerves him.
"So...that's that, then...you and Chuck are over?" At this point the notion is foreign in his head, but something keeps pulling at him – something he's afraid to call hope, because ultimately, he just wants two of best friends to be happy. He could see his best brunettes together in four or five years; rings on their fingers, one last fight for a disaster of a marriage, Blair running off somewhere with Serena, shopping bags full of shattered dreams.
And Nate knows by now that losing battles won't win wars.
So he orders his drink, puts his hand on his friend's shoulder and keeps it there.
Blair finds herself leaning into the warm embrace.
"It's finished." She says, and for the first time it feels final.
After the drinks, Nate decides not to take her to the Empire and avoids suggesting it. He honestly wondered how Blair could still visit Chuck there amicably, knowing he had taken Jenny Humphrey's virginity there and proposing an hour later.
So they end up in the Waldorf brownstone in Blair's bedroom. Nate's aware of the array of suitors that have passed through this door recently, but it doesn't matter when it comes to Blair. He still considers them a part of the non-judging breakfast club group.
"I'm proud of you, you know." He says. Blair's positively drunk and he's feeling the alcohol himself.
Blair raises her eyebrows. "Proud that I was rejected in yet another holiday destination by the same guy who has been rejecting me for years?"
"Proud that you're holding out for that happy ending you so adamantly deserve." He rectifies evenly. She smiles softly for the first time in days and squeezes his hand.
All it takes for them to feel sixteen again is laying on her bed side by side.
"I can't believe this." Blair murmurs, shifting slightly.
"The Chuck thing? I don't know about ending it Blair. It's the cycle that never ends." He replies cautiously.
"No – it's not about him, I just...you were once the only one I wanted. Now you're the only person I have left here." The truth settles upon her heavily.
He smiles and she feels the sympathy radiating from him. "I think you're in need of some heart-healing, Waldorf." He lifts her off the bed and hugs her, picks her up and whirls her around and her drunken giggles remind him of being fifteen and partying in hotel suites. Then he sets her down and puts on Breakfast at Tiffany's (knowing to avoid Sabrina.)
Her head is on his shoulder when she says, "Maybe that's the thing, with Chuck I mean. I keep looking for that happy ending and we never seem to get it right." She thinks of how she treated Dan and she cannot stomach it.
"Focus on yourself," Nate says, wondering when he became the one in the group who became the best at giving advice, "your career. Build your empire. Find Serena and fix it. Then the rest will come to you. Promise." He smiles the type of optimistic smile Blair has only seen a handful of times in her life and she cannot help but believe Nate Archibald's renewed promise all over again. "You never needed Dan or Chuck, or a prince. You are Blair Waldorf and you're more than enough."
She writes Dan a letter before remembering there is nowhere to address it to.
She reads it through, and it's strictly an apologetic affair and no traces of longing on her part. She hates herself for doing this; hates it because she has been left so many times before. But Dan was too much, too fast, too soon.
Nate calls Dan for the first time all summer.
"Ciao," Dan greets, "how's home? Not that I give a fuck." He slurs.
"Blair's back," Nate cuts in straight to the situation at hand. "She's finished with Chuck." He makes sure not to add anything along the lines of she misses you. He just wants the reaction, to see if he will fight for her.
There's a beat before Dan says, "And I'm finished with her." He says, and it only sounds like he's trying to convince himself.
"She is sorry." Nate says.
"And yet not sorry enough to actually apologise herself." Dan counters. "I don't why you're even calling, man. I know you have this sacred bond with Chuck or something –
"I care about my friends. Listen man, I know you're on a drunken fuck spree with Georgina Sparks right now, probably not even focused on your writing. I know you're an author but don't you think this dishevelled poet crap is a bit much?" Nate replies, knowing he sounds every bit the WASP snob. He hears Dan laugh bitterly on the end of the line.
"Right. And you're still Nate Archibald, privileged prince who gets to be the big boss. I am writing the book, you know." Nate sighs at the attempted threat.
"Dan, there's nothing left to expose. I get that Blair broke your heart – I've been there before," he admits, "but you had a relationship at a time when she didn't really know who she was or what she wanted. She was just out of a marriage and still hadn't let go of the idea of her and Chuck."
Nate listens to a silence that lasts well over a minute, but Dan stays on the line. "She told me he didn't have her heart," the words are laced with pure hurt. "She was finished with him then, too." Then he hangs up, and Nate doesn't call after that.
When Chuck returns with macaroons and peonies in his hands, Blair wants to slap him.
(She doesn't, though. Not when it would tie her more to him. And she is not the same; if Blair is fight then Bass is flight.)
Instead she tosses the flowers to the ground and walks away, before Chuck asks "Why?"
"I'm Blair Waldorf." She says it with conviction. "Not your trophy."
It's always been difficult for Nate when it comes to drawing lines between his friends, because when they were growing up they just shared each other.
Now there's too much history, too many could have beens, too much resentment and too much love for them to really function at all.
"Blair told me that you were forceful with her, during summer." Nate accuses.
"Blair and I have always been intense." Is all he can come up with for a response.
"You know I'll try to be here for you," Nate begins, "but she needs me right now."His loyalty lies with the girl he grew up with.
"I understand." Chuck says, sipping his scotch.
That same night, Chuck has his bags packed again.
"Running again, man?" Nate asks, exasperated.
"We need to find S." Chuck says, his voice revealing his concern for the girl who has always mirrored his troubled ways. "Why haven't you two made an effort?"
"She slept with Dan, when Blair was leaving the city."
"So you chose Blair." Chuck remarks.
"Serena doesn't want to be found." Nate says, straightforward. "Dan left, so she did too."
"I'm bringing her back." Chuck says, and Nate tries not to think about how glad he is to have Blair back in his life. "But by all means, stay in the city to protect the princess. You've been doing an exemplary job."
Nate won't be surprised if he never hears from Chuck again.
Nate calls over for a visit, but Blair isn't home. Dorota welcomes him though, the way she always does, and he finds himself looking for the love letter he wrote Blair when they were sixteen. Why is a question he doesn't care to address.
"So you're in my bedroom, Archibald." Blair says, and Nate can hear her smirk through her voice.
"Your ruby ring is still in your jewellery box." Nate replies, holding it in his palm and slipping into his pocket.
"Harry Winston is nice...but I'll always be a Tiffany's girl at heart."
"I know you're working hard, but I thought we could have dinner tonight."
"I know an Archibald proposition when I hear it." Blair replies. "Pick me up at eight."
It sounds like a date, and Nate knows it. But Blair is allowing him to be here for her this summer, and he'll do that in any form he can.
"Sometimes I wonder if it would have been like this," Blair begins. They're walking to her place; it's a balmy summer night in New York. "If we had been roomies at Columbia. Less of Chuck and Serena and more of me and you."
"And then French royalty intervened." Nate says. "And then Chuck...then Dan..." he smiles, and Blair rolls her eyes good naturedly.
"I don't think Humphrey's coming back." Blair says. "I feel like he's letting me off the hook."
"And do you want to be off the hook?" Nate questions, and Blair raises an eyebrow.
"I was just another character in his novel," Blair begins, "he'll find a new muse, another girl that won't be able to live up to the characters inside his head."
Dan's new novel surfaces during fall.
A few name changes and it is nothing new, a sequel to his first, if anything.
And the whole thing is a thinly veiled, heartbroken, fuck you to Blair Waldorf, and everyone knows it.
(Nate ensures that the Spectator review rips it apart.)
Dorota make the both of them tea whilst Blair laments over her reputation ("Humphrey turned me into the selfish bitch, as if we don't all know I'm the crazy bitch around here!") when Nate takes the book from her hands and throws it in the fire.
"You read it?" Blair asks, somewhat shocked at the gesture.
"I think this proves that Dan's the selfish one. I mean if he had any respect for you left...he wouldn't have done this." Nate steadies Blair's shoulders, and when his green eyes connect with hers she feels a type of desperation that lets her know she is really alive again, with him.
"Tell me you love me. It doesn't have to be romantic." That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever done for me flashes through her. "Just tell me you know me. Not bad-girl, scheming Blair, not Princess Blair, not the snobby intellectual edition –
Nate kisses her to shut her up, if anything.
"There has only ever been one Blair Waldorf."
She lets her forehead rest against his, hoping that their third time is a charm.
When he slips the ruby ring onto her finger, that's the only answer Blair needs.
Nate is Blair's reminder that when the past returns to haunt her, it isn't always terrible.
Fin.