Warnings: This is the fluffiest, least angsty Chuck/Nate in the history of the world, which obviously means that it's OOC. Chuck is less of an asshole than he is in the series, but only a bit. Follows the end of season 2, although Vanessa (and the whole Chuck/Blair romance) is conveniently ignored.
Disclaimer: I would not want to deal with the characters in this fucked-up world with any frequency. No thank you.
Pairings/Characters: Chuck/Nate, Blair, AU characters from the "Supernatural" crowd (Dean, Sam, Jo, and Ruby)
Summary: Nate goes to work on a farm to become a better person. This would be fine, except somehow Chuck gets dragged into going along with him. Dammit.

***

Chuck's phone rings, filling the room with the dulcet tones of 30H!3's "I'm Not Your Boyfriend Baby." It's a horrible song, but it has some merit, because it warns him when a certain ice bitch is on the other end of the line, and that's good enough for him.

"Blair," he purrs into the phone. "To what do I owe this pleasure? You can't possibly be offering me your virginity, as we both know I already took it."

Blair doesn't take the bait, which means something must be very, very wrong. Sure enough, she sounds truly anxious as she says, "Chuck, it's Nate. Something's… He's not right. I think – you should come here."

"Where are you?" Chuck asks, looking around. He's in a dress shop, waiting for Serena to be finished shopping. They don't often spend time together, but he's trying to be nice to her to win back her favor after the whole… well, everything. So he and his credit card are accompanying her around the highest end boutiques in New York. He really shouldn't leave without telling her why.

Blair is pacing; Chuck can hear the clicking of her heels on marble floor. "At a church. He says he's trying to reform." The tone of her voice on that last word is pretty much the opposite of complimentary. It sounds more like she's talking about snorting cocaine or touching a toad or befriending a hobo or something.

Chuck feels much the same way. "Take him to the Palace. I'll meet you guys there in 15 minutes."

He scrawls a quick note and leaves it with an attendant to give to Serena. She'll understand.

***

"Chuck!" Nate exclaims when he enters the penthouse suite. He leaps up from his seat at the couch and makes it to Chuck's side before he's even got the door shut. "You should come with me!"

Chuck looks to Blair for enlightenment on what is going on. She's sitting on the loveseat, head in her hands, taking deep breaths. No help there.

Nate takes Chuck's shoulders in his hands and shakes him, crying out, "I'm gonna work on a farm!"

Chuck waits for a punch line. Three minutes later, it occurs to him that there isn't one coming.

"What?! Why?"

Nate gets a dreamy, faraway look in his eyes. "I'm tired of living the life that high society has set out for me. I want to prove that I can be independent, that I'm not just a rich kid who can't function on his own. I want to break the rules for once instead of living by them."

Chuck is still waiting on that punch line. "You're a regular rebel without a cause," he says, slipping off his scarf. "Isn't this a little cliché for your tastes? Wouldn't you rather try something more original? Every Richie Rich since Jackie Kennedy has gone through the same epiphany."

Nate's face shuts down, and his jaw tenses as he thinks of what to say next. "It's just…" he finally begins. "Ever since all that shit went down with my parents, and you and Blair, I want to prove to myself that I can be my own person. And if doing that means being cliché, then I'll deal with it."

Chuck winces. Dammit, Nate just has to find every opportunity to guilt-trip him, no matter how much he apologizes.

"Fine, man," he sighs, resigned. "Do what you want, even if it's insane."

Blair explodes. "You cannot be serious, Chuck," she snaps, hands on her hips as she stands. "You cannot possibly condone this ridiculous course of action!"

"It's his choice," Chuck shrugs. "It doesn't concern me."

"Oh, that's what you think," she crosses her arms over her chest.

"What?"

Nate coughs lightly. "Well, that's the thing, actually. I want you to come with me."

Oh hell no.

***

"Remind me how you managed to rope me into this?" Chuck asks despairingly, staring out the train windows at the increasingly rural view. He doesn't know exactly where they are – somewhere in Pennsylvania maybe, or possibly Iowa, or for all he knows, Montana – but anywhere that has no cell phone reception is deathly in his book.

"The true answer, or the one you want to hear?" Nate responds merrily, arms spread wide across the back of the plush leather seats, casual as anything.

Chuck hesitates. "The one I want to hear."

"Blackmail. Bribery. Begging. Any combination of the three." Nate answers smoothly. "I may have cried a little."

"Ah." Chuck smirks, contented. "Very good, then."

They get to the station and find a pick-up truck there waiting for them with a sign propped up on the windshield that reads "if you're a rich punk, get your ass over here." Blair's already at the farm waiting for them, so it's just Nate and Chuck that get off the train, dragging their bulky suitcases behind them. The maids packed for Chuck, so it's all very condensed and tightly rolled, and he has no idea how he's going to get it back in the baggage when he leaves in a month. He supposes that he could just abandon it here. The rednecks will certainly appreciate the clothes, as they'll be finer quality and fancier designs than anything they could even dream of.

A sandy-blond, athletically built boy is leaning against the side of the truck, smoking a cigarette. He drops it and grinds it into the pavement, then looks up and shoots the two of them a lazy smirk. "Hey," he nods once. "I'm Dean."

"Nate Archibald and Chuck Bass," Nate replies, gesturing to each of them respectively. "We're from New York."

"The city that never sleeps," Dean drawls. His eyes widen, and he looks to them in admiration. "Have you ever met a real prostitute, like in real life? I see them all the time on the telervision."

Nate and Chuck trade incredulous glances, though Chuck may be layering on a good deal more scorn than Nate. "Well, yeah," Nate finally says. "New York's kind of crawling with them."

"No shit, dickwad," Dean sneers, hefting one of their bags in each hand and tossing them casually into the bed of the truck. Chuck tries not to flinch as he thinks of his high-end clothes being banged up like that, as well as the Coach travel bags themselves. "I used to live there."

Chuck just shoots Nate a look as they slide into the dusty cab of the pick-up. Saying "I told you so" would be needlessly over-the-top. It's obvious enough already that Nate was insane to want to be here.

Of course, a few more days of this, and Chuck won't be able to help himself.

***

They pull up to a surprisingly large, modern-looking house, and Blair leans over to porch railing to call a greeting to them. When they actually get out of the car and start walking up to it, she all but runs down the steps and flings herself in Nate's arms. "Thank god you're here," she gushes in an undertone. "You wouldn't believe what it's like."

Chuck bites back another "I told you so." He's got so much willpower it scares him sometimes.

"Here's how it goes," Dean says, clearly bored and disinterested. "This is the main house. It's got the kitchen, TV, computer, books, and other entertainment things. We sleep in the cottages over there," he points to a row of tidy, tiny houses to the left of the house, "but spend most of our time in the main house. It's got air conditioning, at least, which the cottages don't."

"The plebeians don't even have air conditioning," Chuck mutters to Nate, who ignores him.

Dean pulls his box of Blacks from his back pocket – he smokes quality cigarettes, Chuck will give him that – and tips one into his mouth in one smooth move. He cups the flame of the lighter and ignites the tip, sucks in a breath, and continues, "If you need anything, Ruby's the boss around here. Her room and office are upstairs."

"What kind of farmer is named Ruby?" Chuck mutters under his breath.

Dean continues to ignore him. Chuck isn't sure whether to be grateful or annoyed.

"Alright, you all can bring your stuff over to your rooms, then I'll show you around the farm."

Blair leads them to their personal house. For all Chuck makes fun of the place, he's grateful that he doesn't have to share a building with anyone but Nate. Blair is next door, rooming with another girl named Jo, who (in Blair's words) is "too blond for her own damn good, but at least she's clean." It's a high compliment coming from her.

"It's just like Animal House," Nate says, mouth open in an attractive gape as he drags his bags to their cottage. Chuck hates that he can do that. Gapes should not be attractive. Gapes are for tourists and hillbillies and the lower-class, not stupidly good-looking lacrosse players from the Upper East Side.

"You idiot," he says, smacking the back of Nate's head. "You mean Animal Farm."

"Oh yeah."

Blair looks over her shoulder with her trademark condescending expression in full force. "Animal Farm is about pigs trying to take over the world. How is this at all like Animal Farm?"

Nate turns to look at Chuck. "I can see it," he says, cocking his head to the side to scrutinize Chuck's face.

Chuck smacks him again.

"I despair of you two," Blair says, flouncing into the house. When she gets her stiletto heels caught in the uneven wood floor, they both laugh unmercifully.

***

The first day, they get off easy. They go for a grand tour of the farm, learning the names and locations of a billion things that Chuck promptly forgets fifteen seconds later, and they meet everyone. Ruby is so terribly ineffectual at delegating that Chuck has trouble believing she has the ability to run a company. But then again, it's a farm, so it can't possibly take much thought. Jo is sweet and spunky, her sheet of golden blond hair bound up in a messy ponytail, and Chuck only catches a glimpse of this enormously tall guy named Sam before he's off to the fields. From what he gathers, it's manual labor from sunrise to sunset, with intermittent breaks to sleep and piss, and then it's back to work.

This is Chuck's idea of Hell.

It only gets worse, as he is quick to discover. Chuck Bass is not accustomed to being mocked – to his face, that is. He discovers his overpowering dislike for it when a shadow is cast over him as he kneels in the dirt the next day, a crick already developing in his back.

"When I asked you if you knew how to weed, the point wasn't for you to see if you could get away with lying, you know." Ruby says wearily, staring down at their handiwork.

"We're kind of new at this," Nate winces, and Chuck looks around. Sure, they may have ripped out just as many carrots as weeds, and the beds of plants are a bit mangled from their ungainly feet, but for a couple of rich kids from the Upper East Side, he doesn't think they're doing too badly.

"I can see that." Ruby replies.

When Dean and Jo come to pick them up in the trusty, rusty pick-up truck, they just laugh and laugh.

***

The problem isn't that Chuck can't handle the physicality of it. Even though he's not quite on par with Nate on the whole strength and valor thing, he can still manage to lift bales and carry baskets without injuring himself. The problem is, this is all so damn unfamiliar and it's fucking with his head. He's never had to work before, never had to strain himself, and now he's doing stuff that he's never even comprehended.

It starts with the weeding thing, and then it expands until he's tromping through giant pools of mud, fighting off mosquitoes, washing vegetables elbows deep in murky water, picking beans for hours on end in the sweltering heat, and worst of all: dealing with customers at their roadside stand.

After working there for three days, he can safely say that rich people suck. The normal ones just come, buy stuff, and leave, usually after smiling and thanking the cashiers. But the rich ones drive up in their Porsches and Ferraris and whine about the prices of tomatoes, then ask if they can get discounts for no reason whatsoever. They put everything in individual bags, then ask for a larger bag to hold it all anyway. They're condescending and rude, and if Chuck hadn't promised Nate that he'd behave, he'd punch them in the face the second they ask for someone to carry their bags to the car. Motherfuckers.

Anyway, it's all pretty foreign. So when they're waiting to be picked up in a dusty, thirsty heap on the side of the road and Chuck hears a familiar sound, he looks up far more eagerly than he'd like to admit.

Sure enough, it's a golf cart.

"You all have golf here?" Nate asks skeptically, standing up and padding over to the gravel road, where Dean has parked the cart.

Dean laughs. Dean likes to laugh at them. It's quite annoying.

"Nah, of course not," he drawls.

"Of course, there's no way they could handle anything that high-class," Chuck mutters under his breath, but apparently not quietly enough, because Dean shoots him a quick eyebrow-raise. Thankfully, he decides to ignore the comment.

He hops off the cart, tossing Nate the keys, and saunters to the field, saying over his shoulder, "Ruby decided you guys deserved a reward for your hard work, so that's your personal golf cart now. Makes getting places a lot faster."

Chuck mentally beams a very sincere thank you up to the sky, figuring that if there is a god, it couldn't hurt to butter him up. Walking everywhere on foot has been killer for him these past few days. He doesn't understand how Dean and the rest go everywhere barefoot. They're crazy fuckers, they are.

"Of course," Dean calls to them, smirking so hard they can hear it in his voice. "Now that you have a better way to transport vegetables, that means you'll have to pick a whole hell of a lot more of them."

Motherfucker.

***

It turns out they do have golf after all. But not with golf balls, of course. That would be too normal.

Dean pulls up next to them in the pick-up truck (which, for some godforsaken reason, he has named Impala) as they're finishing unloading their golf cart's contents into the cooler. "Get in, losers," he calls, smirking (as always). "We're going golfing."

They find themselves at the very edge of the very furthest field, staring out over the development site next door. Bulldozers and heavy machinery are methodically ripping apart long rows of peach trees and replacing them with giant cookie-cutter mansions, and for some reason, the sight is somewhat painful to Chuck. He's not usually a nature-oriented guy, but… he can't bear to see this happen.

"We know the values of letting off steam here," Dean says, jaw tensed. "Thus… golf."

He sets a plum down on the ground and deals it a good whack with his nine iron, and they watch as it soars into the development, landing in the newly-installed pool in one of the new mansions' yards. They pick up their own clubs and get to work.

They hit plums for a solid half hour, aiming for windows and buildings and occasionally hitting cars and people, and even Chuck has to admit that there's something inherently satisfying about it. It's nice, getting out your anger that way. Usually he's a more mental, less physical type, but there's something to be said for seeing your adversary get clonked in the temple with a plum, seeing the liquid spray off of him and the goop stick in his hair.

It's good.

Peach baseball is even better. They actually have a field set up for that one. It's three on three, which makes it harder but a lot more competitive, and the farmers have kindly leant Sam to Nate and Chuck, so their team isn't half bad.

Chuck has to duck back as Sam swings the bat and connects with the peach with a crack, sending peach pulp flying through the air, and he almost cheers as the tall boy rounds the bases, but doesn't. It's not like anyone would be able to hear him anyway, what with Dean screaming cuss words at the top of his lungs, but it's the principle of the matter that counts.

Chuck's not one of these people, and he doesn't even know if he wants to be.

***

If Chuck doesn't fit it, then Blair is so far out of the group that she's started a campaign against them. Figuratively speaking. Ruby doesn't even make her do anything manual – she works at the stand, selling stuff, and sometimes shows up to bunch flowers or sort vegetables, but she isn't doing the barn-building, fence-pounding, hole-digging, mulch-heaving work that the boys have been subjected to. And yet, the way she talks, she's being forced to do the worst jobs imaginable.

She's diplomatic, of course. She's eloquent. She doesn't whine, or bitch, or complain. She's just… too good for it. And so's Chuck, of course, but even he doesn't put on the airs that she so carefully cultivates.

He doesn't really know why she's there, except for Nate, but that whole quest isn't going anywhere fast. Nate's not paying attention to her except to thank her for bringing him water or to ask her what's for dinner.

Apparently that's what she does. She sits in the house and cooks. And as grateful as Chuck is that she's learning, he wishes that he didn't have to be her test subject. Blair is the worst cook ever. She's never had to try before, always having chefs and cooks and nannies and maids to do it for her, and it shows.

It strikes him, watching Blair, that this is what other people think of him. Smart, gorgeous, but totally dependent on other people. Witty, charming, but inept and incompetent. Totally incapable of performing simple household tasks. Too stupid to do his own laundry. Too spoiled to cook his own meals. Too arrogant to do a day's work.

And that's really what makes him understand why Nate wanted to be here.

So he doesn't complain.

Out loud, at least.

***

Chuck gets revenge for everything – everything – Nate's ever done to him, better than him, or against him, in the chicken coop. It turns out Nate's afraid of chickens, and it's fucking hilarious.

"Go in there and collect the eggs," Dean said. "You carry the bucket in one hand and pick up the eggs with the other," Dean said. "If the chicken's sitting on them, just reach under it and take them," Dean said.

Nate can't get within three feet of a chicken without becoming three shades paler and quivering uncontrollably. It's really quite an easy task. The chickens are more annoying than threatening, and Chuck has no problem elbowing and shoving them out of his way, so he's deft and quick at grabbing eggs, and it's kind of fun finding them in all the corners and nooks and crannies of the cook.

Nate cowers in the corner the whole time.

"Dude, you are pathetic," Chuck smirks. "Did you have some traumatic experience with chickens in your youth that makes you terrified to go near them?"

"I'm not scared," Nate stammers, and Chuck nudges one towards him with the toe of his boot.

Nate shrieks like a little girl.

It's fucking hilarious.

"Fine, whatever," Nate says, blushing. "It's just… look at them! With their sharp beaks and talons and those beady little eyes."

He shudders.

Chuck snickers and plots evil plots to himself.

***

Ruby isn't cruel enough to make them work in the hottest hours of the day, so Chuck and Nate are gratefully strewn across the mismatched living room furniture, chugging glasses of sugary iced tea, when Blair comes tripping daintily downstairs with her baggage thumping down the steps behind her.

"Where are you going?" Nate rouses himself to say, and Chuck lolls his head to the side in a show of mild curiosity.

"I got a call from Mother saying she wanted me to come home," Blair answers distractedly, messing with her hair. "So I'm going to call a taxi to go to the airport. Will you tell Ruby that I've gone?"

Nate pauses long enough for Chuck to be forced to fill in, "Sure," and wave her away. Minutes later, she's gone, only the cloying scent of expensive perfume proof that she was ever there.

Nate rolls over, craning his head to face Chuck. "There's no way she has reception all the way out here."

"Nope," Chuck agrees placidly.

Another pause.

"Heh." Nate finally breaks the silence. "Should have known she wouldn't be able to make it."

"She's a princess through and through."

"It's funny though," Nate muses aloud, sitting up so he can see Chuck better. "I would have thought you'd have bailed in the first week. There's nothing forcing you to stay here."

Chuck flicks his gaze over to Nate. Nate, who has halos in his hair from the sunlight streaming through the window. Nate, whose teeth are shaded purple with blackberry juice. Nate, who looks more at ease here than he's ever seen him in the Upper East Side, burdened and badgered by the expectations laid out for him by a hypocritical, asshole father and a pathetic, spineless mother. Nate, who looks happy.

"I guess not," Chuck says, and they leave it at that.

***

They're chilling in the house, lazily playing games on Nate's iPhone, when Dean ambles in – they can hear him all the way down the hall from the clicking of his shoes on the hardwood floor. He's wearing cowboy boots with jeans tucked into them, a plaid flannel shirt, and a cowboy hat, and he's got a stalk of grass dangling from his lips.

"Howdy," he says.

Nate looks amused and slightly confused, but Chuck knows he's mocking them by playing up the role they expected him to fulfill. Dean's a dick like that.

"Well, git a move on, little dogies," he tells them in an over-the-top Texas drawl. "We got work t'do, y'all."

They follow him outside and swing into the back of the pick-up truck, gazing disinterestedly over the sides as they pass the now-familiar fields full of familiar vegetables. They pull up in front of a huge field full of giant leaves, covering some as-of-yet unknown produce, and find Jo and Sam already there tossing something into a bin.

"Alright, here's the deal," Jo says, clapping her hands together enthusiastically. "We have to get these melons into the bin" – sure enough, Chuck lifts up a leaf to find a watermelon nestled underneath – "Any way we can. The quickest way is to line up and pass them from person to person from the plant to the bin, but–"

"Head's up!" Dean yells as a melon plummets through the air towards them. Sam catches it and tosses it into the bin.

"We don't always do it that way," Jo finishes wryly, shaking her head in mild exasperation at the boys.

Chuck and Nate look at each other, then Nate heads out into the depths of the field where Dean is, picks up a watermelon, and flings it like a discus at Chuck, who catches it by his fingertips and lands it in the bin. Jo sighs and goes back to work.

They pick watermelons all afternoon. Every so often, Sam will swap out the full bins with empty ones using a machine that looks like a bulldozer, and they spend that break time drinking water and chatting. Dean and Nate like being out in the fields the most, varying their throws from football passes to baseball pitches to tomahawk slams, and Sam and Chuck indulge them by staying by the bins and dropping the melons in. Every so often, they'll miss – usually on purpose, but don't tell Ruby – and the watermelons will shatter upon impact of the ground. They'll sit in a circle, scooping out the dripping wet, delightfully sweet insides with their bare hands, and have seed spitting competitions. Chuck turns out to be some kind of prodigy at it, and he finds great joy in nailing Dean between the eyes over and over again.

It's oddly cathartic, farming.

***

They're late for dinner. Nate – the twit – got so caught up picking blackberries that it took Chuck ten minutes to track him down, and when they're late for dinner, Ruby takes away his beer privileges. Chuck does not want to be late for dinner.

"C'mon, man, let's just cut through this field," Chuck suggests, seeing an empty pasture to his left. "It's a straight path to the house."

"I dunno, man," Nate hesitates, squinting at the empty grass. "I don't think that's a good idea."

Chuck hops the fence easily, tossing a smirk over his shoulder. "Pansy."

Nate's face hardens determinedly and he clambers over the fence, graceful as a ballerina – if a ballerina had to worry about getting her nuts caught in barbed wire.

Two minutes later, they're running for their lives from a large, angry bull.

"I will kill you!" Nate screams, managing to pull ahead of Chuck. Chuck blames it on the excessive lacrosse playing on Nate's part and not the excessive smoking on his own. It would be terribly ironic if his cigarette-induced death was due to impeded lung capacity instead of cancer or something. "I. Will. Kill. You!"

If there's anything Chuck hates worse than no beer privileges, it's when Nate's right about stuff.

"Jesus fuck!" Chuck manages to get out before he hits the ground as he trips over his own feet.

Nate looks over his shoulder and swears, doubling back to pull Chuck to his feet and drag him away from the bull. Chuck carefully and deliberately is not looking over his shoulder. He's afraid of finding that the snorting and heavy breathing is a lot closer than he thinks.

"Take off your jacket," Nate pants, yanking at the buttons on Chuck's coat. Chuck can see where the idea came from – his Armani blazer is a deep maroon, and according to myth, bulls don't like red, but he doesn't have enough breath to tell Nate why that's a bad idea.

"Bad idea," Chuck breathes out, but it's too late, and his blazer gets ripped off his shoulders, baring his crimson vest for the already angry bull to see.

"What the hell?!" Nate screams bloody murder, almost flying from the speed of his running. "Why are you even wearing that?"

They make it over the fence, and there's a loud thud behind them as the bull collides with it head-on. Chuck isn't going to turn around to check.

"Well, that was fun," he grins brightly, which would have come off a lot more nonchalant if he hadn't been doubled over, wheezing. "Fuck, that pasture was big."

Nate doesn't let him have any pie that night.

Jesus fuck.

***

There are not many things that Nate is better than Chuck at. It galls him that driving a stick-shift is one of them.

The thing is, the rest of Nate's talents are virtually useless. They range from being nice to playing lacrosse to being pretty to… well, that's about it. He isn't really functional in real society. Except for this.

"God dammit!" Chuck snaps as the truck shudders and jerks, stalling for the millionth time.

Nate laughs like the horrible friend he is. "Dude, just ease your foot off the clutch," he encourages, wearing this smug grin that Chuck would judge him for if it weren't like looking in a mirror. "Not so fast."

Chuck eases his foot off the clutch. The truck jumps forward – his hopes soar – and then spasms to a stop – his hopes plummet – sending his head slamming back into the headrest. Nate cracks up next to him.

God dammit.

***

Nate has a deep tan developing across his shoulders and on the back of his neck. His hair is bleached from the sunlight, and his hands have developed calluses from the handles of hoes and shovels. His eyes stand out starkly blue on his sun-darkened face, and Chuck wants nothing more than to lick him. Like, all over.

It's odd, how well suited for this farm thing Nate has become. Not that he doesn't fit in at the Hamptons, or the lacrosse fields, or St. Jude, or anything, but he's adaptable or something, because he… he's good here. Chuck doesn't have that. He burns rather than tanning – thankfully, he doesn't freckle either, god forbid – and his muscles don't flex and tone the way Nate's do when he's hefting something heavy.

It's hard enough to stop from staring at Nate when they're back in the Upper East Side, when they're both fully clad in their school uniforms or whatever, but here, with sweat trickling down his back and his ass so perfectly framed in those shorts, Chuck can't bring himself to look away.

It's annoying.

***

Chuck is completely sacked out. If there's anything good about working on the farm, it's that he's never gotten sleep as refreshing as this before. It's nice. So he's conked out on his bunk, about as inert as it's possible to be. When someone claps a hand over his mouth and drags him out of bed, he doesn't even wake up until he's hit the floor.

"What the fuck?" He tries to shout, but it's muffled in the callused hand still clamped over his mouth.

The assailant shushes him and drags him, stumbling and weaving, outside. Whoever it is can maneuver easily in the blackness of the room, effortlessly sidestepping obstacles, so Chuck figures it's someone native to the farm and stops struggling.

Sure enough, when they get outside and are hit by the powerful beams of three different flashlights, he finds Dean in front of him wearing a mischievous grin. "Hey there, Chuckleberry Finn," he whispers. "You're coming with us."

Everything is a blur for a while, and only when Chuck is firmly seated on a log in front of a roaring bonfire does he take the time to look around and figure out what's going on. Chuck doesn't wake up very quickly.

Jo, Sam, Dean and Nate are all seated around the campfire with him. Jo and Sam share a log on his left, with Dean to his right, and he can see Nate across the fire, his beautiful face cast into flickering shadows. He's staring around with just as much bafflement as Chuck feels, which is a relief. For a second, Chuck was worried that he'd been attending this middle-of-the-night soirees without him, and it didn't feel good.

"So what's this, then?" He finally asks, feeling himself awake enough to keep up with whatever explanation they provide.

Sam pulls something out from a pack he's got slung over his back, and Chuck swears he has never loved anyone as much as he loves Sam at that moment. "We've got Patrón, Cristal, and Cognac," Sam says, hefting the bottles of tequila, champagne, and brandy before passing them around the group. "Pick your poison."

"It's your initiation." Jo explains, pulling a corkscrew out of nowhere to open the bottles.

Dean grins, eyes glinting in the light. "We decided that you're finally cool enough to spend time with us."

Chuck scoffs, and Nate gives a short bark of laughter before taking a swing of the Cognac.

"It's not that," Jo scolds Dean, looking like she'd like to elbow him, which may have been why he chose the seat across from her. "It's just, before, you didn't really… fit in, y'know? But today, we finally felt that you guys are getting into the groove of it. Y'all are true farmers now."

"What makes you say that?" Nate asks, tossing the bottle over the flames for Chuck to catch.

Sam laughs, fiddling with something he pulled from his pocket, but Chuck can't be bothered to investigate what. "You, Sir Nathansworth, mulched compost for nine hours without complaint. And Chuckles over there sold a live chicken today. Walked into a coop littered with chicken shit, caught it, tied its legs and stuffed it in a box without flinching. If those aren't the marks of a real farmer, I don't know what is."

Chuck thinks back to it and pales. Oh God, he did that? Was he drunk? If so, not nearly enough.

"In that case," Nate says softly, "To us."

He raises his bottle in a wordless toast, and they all follow suit, passing the bottles to the drink-less others once they swallow their fill.

It goes great until Chuck sees what Sam had been messing with. Then it's effing fantastic.

Chuck takes a deep drag of the joint as it is passed to him, almost moaning in ecstasy. Damn, but it's been too long. He'd smoked all of his in the first week of being there, leaving him substance-less for the remainder of their time at the farm. And he's missed it so very, very much.

"This is good shit," he murmurs approvingly, blowing out hazy smoke rings. "I'm surprised."

Jo giggles while Dean just shakes his head. "You are so damn arrogant, Chuckery," he drawls. "You seriously think of us as this classless group of redneck hicks who have sex with farm animals, don't you?"

Chuck doesn't bother denying it.

"Dude, do you even know who they are?" Jo asks, eyes flicking pointedly from Dean to Chuck to Sam and back.

"Shuddup," Sam groans, and Nate looks curious.

"Who are they?"

"He goes by Sam," Jo starts, indicating Sam, but he slaps a hand over her mouth to keep her from continuing.

Unfortunately for him, Dean has no qualms about telling them, "But his real name is Samuel Campbell Winchester. And I'm John Dean Winchester."

"Wait, what?" Nate gapes, astonished. "You're Campbell and John Winchester? Of Winchester Corp.? Didn't your dad like, save the world or something?"

"Shuddup," Sam repeats, pouting.

Jo knocks his hand away. "John Winchester Sr. was a really famous bodyguard for the British Prime Minister, yeah. And he once discovered a bomb threat in New York that could potentially have leveled two city blocks that was planted in Times Square."

"So you're as rich as we are," Nate says, gesturing to indicate him and Chuck, and Chuck just takes another drag from the joint and watching the events unfold.

Dean shrugs. "Whatever, man. It's not a big deal."

"But, why – Why do you do this, then?"

"Why do you?" Dean retorts, then sighs. "I dunno, man. I just wanted to do something new. I got so bored with the socialite bullshit and drama. I wanted to take my life in a whole new direction – of my choosing. And this is where I ended up."

Sam nods, shooting Dean an affectionate look.

Nate takes a deep drag from the joint and smiles.

Chuck looks at him and feels like he's home.

***

Chuck heard what Jo said, but he doesn't really believe it until two days later. After all, Chuck Bass? A true farmer? Bullshit. Chuck Bass is a schemer, a lover, a businessman, an entrepreneur… not a god-damned bean-picking field-hoeing carrot-weeding chicken-selling redneck hick. Jesus Christ.

But two days later, he and Nate are sorting vegetables in the storage cooler. They're sitting directly on the gravel ground, buckets and baskets and boxes of tomatoes and potatoes and okra and squash surrounding them, and they're examining each single vegetable individually and putting it in the 'good,' 'half-price,' and 'garbage' pile according to its ripeness to rottenness ratio.

Chuck, reaching for a tomato at the bottom of the box, accidentally impales his finger in one. It pierces the skin and keeps going, diving deep into the fleshy, pulpy core of the fruit. He pulls it out quickly and makes a face, revolted.

"God, that's disgusting."

"I'll do you one worse," Nate says, frowning. "Ever stick your thumb in a rotten potato?"

"Can't be worse than this," Chuck says, hefting the half-dissolved tomato in his hand. It looks like it'll fall to pieces any second.

Nate looks down at the potato and then up at Chuck, a wicked glint in his blue eyes. "Wanna bet?"

To be fair, Chuck doesn't really know what he is getting into when he nods yes.

A second later, he is splattered with potato mush, pelted over and over again by the rotten vegetables that Nate pulled from the garbage pile.

He gives an indignant cry and lets the tomato fly, where it explodes in a satisfyingly goopy mess on Nate's hair. Then the game is on. Nate gets a handful of slimy okra and rubs it on Chuck's shirt, and Chuck has so many bruised, gunky tomatoes in his arsenal that he doesn't need to search for anything more.

Within minutes, they're covered in smelly, oozing liquid rot, laughing so hard they can't breathe. It's quite disgusting, really. Ruby gives them an amused look and the rest of the day off, and they take showers so long that the seeds and gunk melt off their bodies.

True farmers?

Maybe.

***

In the end, it's very anticlimactic how it happens.

Chuck is lying awake in his bunk, staring at the ceiling, and he hears rustling across the room from him. Two seconds later, there are quiet footsteps, and then wood creaking as a body hoists itself into his bed.

He inches over to make room.

Nate lies in the darkness next to him, just breathing, for a couple minutes. Chuck closes his eyes and concentrates. He can feel the heat emanating off of Nate's body. He can hear the quiet inhale-exhale of breath from his lips. He can imagine the blue eyes focused on him, straining to make out his features in the dim light.

A warm, large hand slips down his body and under the band of his boxers.

Chuck abruptly thanks every god in existence that it's too hot to sleep with sheets and blankets and heavier clothing, because the boxers plus Nate's hand are enough to make him sweat.

He doesn't say anything, and neither does Nate, but the choppy quality of the hot breath by his ear tells him enough. And when Chuck rolls over and returns the favor, sliding one hand into Nate's boxers and the other around his neck to pull him so that their foreheads are pressed together, he infers from Nate's grin against his lips that he feels the same way.

Chuck is so disconcertingly happy he doesn't quite know what to do with himself. He'll just follow Nate's lead, he supposes.

He's becoming quite good at that, and he doesn't mind at all.