Whilst Emily Took Her Nap

It was summer. They met in Europe. They fell in love. They're now dealing with the aftermath.

Pairings: Nate/Rory

Notes: Set during Gilmore Girls season five and Gossip Girl season three. Ages have been addled and timelines shifted for a closer match.

Rory unhurriedly returned to the Gran Romano. It was mid-afternoon and she was in no rush. Her grandmother was in their room, taking the nap she always did this time of day. She was graciously left to experience more European culture at a faster and funkier pace. The concierge was right. Grandma would not have appreciated the catacombs.

She wasn't alone on her meandering stroll. Rory's companion wasn't her grandmother. She was not, however, talking to him. She was on the phone to her mom at the gentle insistence of the handsome young man beside her. She knew that he had a fair point. They couldn't really move forward with the weight of summer's start holding her down.

"Mom?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm sorry."

"It's OK."

"I screwed up." Rory clutched the cell phone in her hand like she was drowning and had snagged the last life raft. It wasn't hers. She didn't want to think of the large bill this transatlantic call could rack up, not that he would care. Money seemed to be a non-issue for him. He had managed to check into the same hotels that she was staying in. The same hotels that Emily Gilmore had booked. Without a second thought. Without a care in the world. He was very different to what she had been used to surrounding herself with.

She felt it necessary to make this conversation short and sweet. An exceedingly difficult task for a Gilmore girl. "I screwed up so bad. I handled everything wrong."

"Oh, honey."

"I keep reliving everything over and over – it's such a mess. I just wanna fix it. I have to fix it," she stated. Her desperate determination had travelled strong through the receiver. She was gifted an encouraging smile from him.

"You will."

"I know. I just," Rory's voice insecurely shrank, "I need a favour."

"OK."

She felt the need to explain, "It's big."

"OK …" Lorelai drew out her response from the bench on the sunny porch of the Dragonfly Inn, a whole ocean away.

"I wrote a letter." Rory conspicuously paused. "To Dean." She halted again. "Could you get it to him?"

"Oh."

Rory heard her mom's hesitancy. She had to make her understand. "I don't know how else to do it. I – I can't just mail it to his apartment." Her head lowered. She looked down at the ground. A strapping arm had wrapped around her shoulders before she continued. "It's a big favour."

"Honey, I don't know."

"It's a lot to ask, but I think that this will make everything better. Please. I can't wait till I get home – I have to do something now," nearly cried a fraught Rory.

"A letter, huh? Well, get it to me and I will get it to him."

A calm assurance. She was relieved. "Thank you. Thank you." Her posture slackened. Rory hadn't realised that she had tensed enough to slacken anything. Her body relaxed and the guy walking alongside of her had noticed.

"You good?" he softly asked.

Nate didn't need to say this and they both were aware of that. Rory shyly smiled and nodded.

Their fulsome kindness was one of the fundamentals they had in common. They each went the extra mile out of their way to make the people around them happy. Nate was often manipulated because he was forthcoming and, perhaps, too trusting. Rory was pegged as an overly sensitive dormouse due to above and beyond backwards bending. She usually did whatever it took to avoid hurting the feelings of others. It was nice to share that with someone.

Dean was a good guy. But this was different. They had grown into different people and led different lives. She loved him. But the two of them no longer fit together. Doomed marriage or not. Nate was able to understand parts of her world that he simply couldn't.

Ears sharp and attuned to the unfamiliar addition, Lorelai was quick on the uptake. Her tone had shifted. It became lighter. "Who was thaaaaaaat?" she asked with a sizeable dollop of good humour.

"Oh – erm – no one. Just, uh, a, um –" Rory was glad that Lorelai wasn't in a position to see her face. It had turned very red. Nate, who could, began to laugh. Her mom would most definitely not miss that, not be unable to put two and two together. She may have been on another continent but she was Lorelai Gilmore, for goodness sake.

"The reason you have to do something now? A male reason?" she teased.

Rory decided to concede. It was stupid to even consider hiding something, especially a boy-like something, from her mother. "Not the only reason, no."

"His name's not Randy, is it?"

Nate felt like a bit of a fool. No, fool was inadequate. He was an idiot. Nate had told Rory that he was going to Yale this fall, where she went. He wasn't. He was, in fact, currently enrolled at Columbia. Idiot! He was a helplessly, hopelessly lovestruck idiot.

He was proud to have gotten into a good college on his own. Without the help of his family. He looked forward to avoiding the school where his legacy included – what was probably – the highest concentration of polos and khakis who hated his father's guts in the nation. New York had been hell but New York was used to him. New York was his home. The city didn't become a raw nerve, ready to strike with vengeance in his presence.

The last time Nate was there, he had planned to get blazed at a bar off campus. He wanted to be completely done with the place. At Yale, people knew who he was. They knew all the stuff about his dad. Heck, an economy class had painted his father as Michael Milken. There was no escaping the drama on the Archibald front in New Haven. Going someplace where there was widespread, unaccepted awareness about him and the Captain wasn't particularly attractive. Nate's dreams didn't exactly include being stripped down to his boxers and tied to a statue – like Dan Humphrey had been – in the future.

Then again, Chuck did say he had enough leverage to keep the pissed masses at bay by order of 'owning' the Skull and Bones, whatever that meant. Nate was happy with his ignorance. He was fine with his plausible deniability. How his best friend had managed to make that happen was a truth he didn't mind not knowing.

Nate was glad it wasn't the Life and Death Brigade that had gone after him. They wouldn't have left him to freeze his ass off late at night in a plain, old gazebo. They would've blindfolded and then pushed him out of a moving airplane, or something else equally insane.

The Brigade had probably left him alone because he was a van der Bilt as well as an Archibald. Nate was quite certain Tripp had been in the hushest-hushed of secret societies when he was an undergrad. He had been pretty sure that his other cousin, Tripp's sister Stephanie, still was. Nate reckoned that generations of van der Bilts had littered its membership registry over the centuries.

His mother's side of the family practically owned Yale University. All William van der Bilt had to do to get Nate into the place was make a phone call. His grandfather had pushed for his attendance. He had deemed it the appropriate choice, as did his mom. Perhaps his latest decision would help drum up a touch of goodwill.

Nate had parted from Rory sooner than anticipated in Rome. He had taken an earlier flight and was now on a helicopter to see Grandfather in Greenwich. See … drop by unexpectedly … uncharacteristically shanghai …

There had been neither a breath nor a whisper from the van der Bilt compound all summer long. He knew his family would be mad after he'd skipped out on the internship at the Mayor's office. He had gotten the silent treatment from them since stirring stuff up. He had to rectify that. He needed a favour.

Nate knew he would have to give the van der Bilts some measure of control over his life once becoming indebted to them. He was aware that he'd likely end up selling part of his soul in the process. He wanted to be his own man but it'd be worth it. Rory was worth it.

"Oh, we had such a trip," Emily enthused. "Rory will fill you in." She had placed a hand on Rory's arm. She didn't bother to hide what she'd said next: "Spare her the more salacious aspects."

"Salacious aspects?" Lorelai was unsure how she should've sounded in response to her mother's claims. Her hands were in her jean pockets. She stood uncomfortably in her kitchen.

Emily had turned back to her daughter. "Those European men – young, old, in between – they saw us coming."

"They saw you coming where?" Sookie eyes had naively widened.

"We were like magnets," Emily smiled, self-satisfied. She stared into space, momentarily lost to remembrance. "Such high libidos."

Lorelai's expression was stony and held a little disgust. "You weren't walking around wearing your 'hot and wealthy' sandwich board, were you, Mom?" her voice dropped.

"She was very popular," Rory said lightly before nonchalantly pursing her lips. The words came out suspiciously fast in her mother's opinion.

"Not the only one – right, kid?" Lorelai cheekily grinned.

Rory looked like a deer in the face of quickly oncoming headlights. She minutely shook her head. Her panic was poorly disguised. Lorelai smirked at her daughter. It appeared that Emily knew nothing about the non-cultural tours of Europe her granddaughter had taken throughout their sojourns in Italy. It was fortunate that the eldest Gilmore in the room was preoccupied reliving the 'salacious aspects' of her wondrous summer abroad to notice Lorelai's amusement or Rory's alarm.

Two tall and handsome young men walked the warm streets of the Upper East Side. Summer was slowly giving way to fall. Autumn had a short while before its arrival.

Their attire had a couple of things in common: they were stitched with designer labels and cost many, many pretty pennies. That was where the similarities reached an end. And then, 'choice' would only be a loosely used term for the casual party pounding the Manhattan pavement. His mother still shopped for his clothes. She still labelled them like he was a kid, and those labels were adorned with tiny anchor pictographs before his name.

One of the young gentlemen was impeccably kitted out in a sharp, double-breasted black suit. The other – the owner of the mommy-bought, anchor labelled apparel – was in fitted jeans and wore a striped blue button-up with the sleeves carelessly shoved to his elbows.

Different as day and night, the opposites amiably discussed how each of them had spent their holidays.

"Let me get this straight. You practically stalked –"

"Followed," Nate exasperatedly cut in. He was smirked at. He was unsure if this was him being humoured. "With permission," he elaborated with finality. "We exchanged numbers. I would ask the whereabouts of her next destination and she would tell me."

Chuck chuckled. "Right, Nathaniel. You 'followed' a girl throughout Europe –"

"Just Italy. We met in Vienna, near the end of our trips."

"Uh huh. So, you spent over a fortnight following a girl around Italy 'with permission' and you don't even know her last name?" Chuck's eyebrows had risen.

Nate shrugged. "Not my idea. It was hers."

"Why?" he asked slowly, as if Nate had spent the last week shut in his childhood bedroom smoking pot and playing Halo.

"She said it was incentive for her to sort stuff out back home as soon as possible," said Nate calmly. He ignored Chuck's condescension laden confusion.

Nate's face had scrunched with some confusion of his own. He thought back to Rory's long, guilty ramble about why she was travelling with her grandmother. "Or, something to that effect. I think." He scratched his head. "I'm pretty sure that's what she said. Rory used a lot of big words – she does that. She uses a lot of big words a lot of the time.

"She talks really fast too. It can get kinda confusing."

Chuck was greatly entertained with what Nathaniel had to say about the girl he met in Italy so far. She sounded like a hilariously coincidental blend of Blair and Serena and Nate, himself. She seemed to be a surreally enchanting challenge to keep up with. Nate, totally taken with her, was unwilling to walk away from his summer fling any time soon. More laughable stories were sure to come.

"Anyway, we agreed not to exchange surnames until she had everything squared away with her ex."

"That's stupid," Chuck pointed out.

"I thought Chuck Bass was a big fan of making deals and playing games."

"Not ones as lame as that."

Chuck had initially accused him of stalking Rory in Europe. Nate wondered how he would interpret his plans for college.

"I gotta get ready for work." Dean nodded without another word after his reprimanding spiel. He spun on his heel. He had left Rory on the sidewalk out the front of his parents' house. He went inside. He closed the door and didn't look back.

Rory felt horrible. More horrible than when she had let the guilt fester inside of her across Europe. Hearing the consequences of their actions plainly laid out like Dean did seconds ago was painful. When he'd said that he was an idiot, Rory decided she was definitely culpable of the same.

And she wasn't just an idiot. She was a jerk.

Rory didn't think that she'd bailed on him but maybe she did. From an objective point of view, her actions steered toward that of someone who had fled the foxhole. She had pulled a Jess. She hated herself for that. She remembered how much his actions had hurt her. She had done the same to Dean this summer.

She ran away from her problems, all the way to another continent, while Dean stayed in Stars Hollow. Rory was unsure how long ago it was when he realised what occurred between them wasn't right, but she acted as if there had been nothing wrong. She had tried to bury the feelings for as long as her moral compass was capable. Dean was getting a divorce and Rory had moved on. Yup. That screamed jerk-like behaviour.

There was, at least, one bright ray to the dour depreciation of her day. Rory stopped blankly staring at the bunch of red balloons rising higher and higher. She started her journey home on foot. It was done. She was done. It had hurt her – along with a plethora of other innocent people – but she was finally permitted to call herself finished.

Rory whipped out her cell phone. Everything was out in the open. What was done, was done. She felt bad but the paralysing weight that pressured her chest had lifted. She had dealt with Dean. Her love life wasn't as much of a steamrolled mess it had once been. Nothing was holding her back. Now, Rory and Nate could have a real relationship.

FIN?

A/N: Something I started and couldn't be bothered to finish. I was going to add Serena's exploits in Europe including Logan, Colin and Finn …

"What about this one, where she's dancing on the table?"

"Ah, well, that's what you do in Barcelona," Eric justified.

"And the one where Prince Harry is doing shots off of her –"

Dan cut in, "That – that's what you do in Saint-Tropez."

"Oh, look, another yacht …" Rufus sighed, "… which Serena sunk right off the coast of Fiji … with Logan Huntzberger … and the guys who got kicked out of Argentina with the Bush twins …"

"That's just what happens below the equator." Eric tried some quick thinking, "You know – uh – navigational systems start failing because, um … because you're at risk of falling off the planet."

Jenny was sighing now too – her, in disbelieving exasperation. "We live in the twenty-first century, Eric."

… as well as the van der Bilt polo match madness …

"Hey, Rory, there's someone I want you to meet."

"Wait a second, is that –"

"Grandfather."

"Nathaniel. So nice to see you."

"You too."

"And who is – Rory, how lovely to see you."

"You know my grandfather?"

"Mr van der Bilt is your grandfather?"

"How many times have I told you, my dear, it's William."

"My grandfather is William?"

"He comes to my grandparents' Christmas parties."

… and a Bree Buckley-esque interrogation at Golden Unicorn Restaurant from Blair …

"… in Connecticut, like Lyme disease. You ever had Lyme disease, Rory?"

"It's always been your dream to travel the world, has it? That's wonderful. Have you ever thought about travelling – somewhere very far away?"

"Trust me, Nate. I know women, and none of us are that nice."

… but my lazy won out. View this as a snapshot in time. Anybody's welcome to pick it apart for their own purposes and/or finish it, themselves.