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"What did you do?" Blair asks knowingly as she walks down the staircase. She's dressed impeccably; her knee socks are almost blindingly white, her headband is thick and red, and the necklaces around her neck look elegant and expensive. Nate stands in the foyer, watching her and feeling like he's lived through a train wreck.
He rubs at his hair. "Told Serena about what happened at the masque ball," he confesses.
Blair sighs a long-suffering sigh as she walks over to him. "Of course you did."
He winces. "And then Dan walked over."
"Of course he did."
He pouts at her. "Do you have anything helpful to say?"
She smiles softly and moves toward the dining room, expecting him to follow. "Let's eat breakfast and I'll give you all my fabulous advice."
When they're settled at the table, Dorota uncovering trays of fruit and pastries for them, Blair turns in her chair so that her whole body is angled toward Nate's and says very seriously, "We have to put this in perspective."
He frowns at her around a mouthful of croissant. "What do you mean by that?"
"Nate!" She waves a hand toward his mouth. "How old are you?"
He holds a hand up in front of his lips to shield her from the view of half-chewed food and says cheekily, "Sixteen."
She kicks his leg. "Nate, I'm not joking. Don't you remember all of the things that happened shortly after the masque ball? With your father? With me…and Chuck? With you and me and Chuck?"
"Yes. But I still don't understand what you're suggesting."
She's relieved when he sounds like his adult self. "Your father isn't going to accept the two of us breaking up. He has too much pinned on my mother's support."
"Shit," Nate sighs, leaning back in his chair. "And he's on drugs."
Blair pops a grape into her mouth. "We have to be careful. We have to remember things."
Nate looks at the wall. "Yeah…"
"We're risking a lot of change," Blair tells him pointedly. "Things that happened – they won't happen exactly the same way. You can't recreate – "
"I know," Nate cuts her off tersely. "I'm not trying to recreate. I'm trying to…prevent."
She frowns deeply. "Why didn't you tell me that instead of ambushing me in the middle of the night? We could've gone back two weeks instead of going back over a decade!"
"Because I need to figure it out," he spits back at her, surprising them both with the vehemence of his words. "It's not so much what happened as me needing to understand what happened after."
"Nate – "
"I would have taken care of her."
"Sweetie, I know, but – "
"She didn't let me."
Blair clenches her jaw and decides that it's in her best interest to remain silent.
"We can undo it, right? We can stay here and…figure it out and then go back? I mean, we can go forward. We can go back to 2018, back to our lives as they were."
She blinks. "I didn't know that was what you wanted."
He sighs wearily. "I'd rather have her for five years that not have her at all. I don't want to change that."
She purses her lips as she regards him. "You're a little more complex than I've ever given you credit for."
Nate frowns at her, and for a moment he looks thoroughly sixteen, with his awry on his head and his St. Jude's tie loose around his neck as he pouts at her a little. "Gee, thanks."
Blair eats a pastry with a lemon-flavoured filling; her eating habits are better now than they were at sixteen. "You're welcome. I'm proud of you, Nate," she says seriously. "That's not an easy choice."
"Do you think it's the right one?"
Honestly, she tells him, "I do."
"Waldorf."
She starts when Chuck approaches her in the courtyard. It takes her only a second to regain her composure, but still, it's a second of weakness. "Bass." She scowls at him. "What do you want?"
He holds up empty hands as if to prove his innocence. "Don't get your La Perlas in a twist. I was just saying hello."
"And why would you do that?" She rakes her eyes over his face, desperately searching for signs of attraction or desire, and pretends her heart isn't pounding wildly in her chest.
Chuck smirks and sidles closer. "You're feisty today. What's wrong? Trouble in paradise?"
"You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
His smirk fades into a frown; she's confused him. "What are you saying?"
"Nothing. Nothing, I – " She pauses, embarrassed but refusing to give that away. "It doesn't matter. Nate and I are none of your business. Go smarm elsewhere."
She stalks away. She won't let him hurt her again.
He catches her in the hallway, loops an arm around her waist and tugs her into a storage closet, kicking the door closed behind them.
"Hey!" she protests, and then softens her voice when she says, "Nate, I have class."
"Screw class." He keeps his arm around her because she hasn't asked him to move it. "I want to talk."
One of her eyebrows arches. "You want to talk?"
"Yes."
"About…last night?" she asks cautiously.
"And before that."
Something flashes in her eyes, something bordering on fear, and she licks her lips. "Before," she repeats in a whisper.
"That night – "
"Nate. Don't."
"It was the best night of my life," he says smoothly, as if she hadn't spoken. He's had more years with her, he knows her better now than he did when they were kids.
Her cheeks flush. "It was a long time ago."
"S," he sighs. "I meant what I said. I can't get over you, I – "
She cuts him off, the tone of her voice alarmed, the words flying out of her mouth a little too quickly: "I have a boyfriend."
Nate shrugs. "You don't belong with him."
Her eyes widen and she looks ready to tell him off, to contradict him, but she doesn't, she just stands there and stares at him like she's waiting for more.
So he gives it to her: "I belong with you. I love you. I'm never going to love anybody else the way that I love you."
The truth is that he's still expecting her to look at him the way she look at him that night at Brandy Library, the very first time either one of them had either voice their feelings out loud; he still expects the shine of her eyes and the hint of awe in her voice. He expects reciprocation.
Instead, she says, "But…Blair."
Nate lies on the spot: "We broke up." There's a need inside of him that he can't quell, a desperate ache and a desire to fix this now, right now, as soon as possible.
Serena's voice falls open. "Because of me?" she asks in a tight whisper.
"Because of me," Nate corrects her. "Because of how I feel about you."
When, on impulse, he leans in to kiss her, she doesn't resist it. Her fists fall against his chest, clutching at the fabric of his shirt, and when he slides his tongue over the seam of her lips she opens her mouth against his, allowing the kiss to deepen. He explores her mouth with his tongue unhurriedly and it makes him long for her, for the girl he's always loved, for the woman he married.
He tucks her hair out of her face when the kiss breaks, fingers tender across her cheeks. She's crying and it shocks him a little to see the tears that streaked down her cheeks without his noticing.
"Did you come back for me?" he whispers. She looks ready to reply so he skims his thumb over her lips – he knows the answer now, years later, but he wants her to take a moment to think about it. "Even just a little bit?"
She crushes her mouth against his again instead of responding and he slips his arms around her, hands splayed over the small of her back. Her lips taste like strawberries and salt.
Blair has just glanced up from the barrage of texts Nate has sent her in the last half hour, all of which say we need to talk asap in some variation, when she sees Serena approaching her determinedly.
It is obvious that her best friend has been crying – so obvious, in fact, that Blair panics for a full thirty seconds, remembering the last time she saw Serena cry, before it occurs to her that they're in the past, that they're still kids, that their lives are barely messy yet.
"S," she says quietly, standing up from the bench she's sitting on. "What's wrong?"
Serena's fingers close around her wrist and she tugs Blair back down on the bench to sit.
"Nate told me," Serena breathes.
Blair blinks and arches her eyes. She doesn't understand. And then she remembers all those texts from Nate and sighs, closing her eyes for a moment.
"B – "
"What did Nate tell you?" she asks calmly, slowly.
Serena fidgets. "That you two broke up."
"Oh." Blair pays great attention to the task of smoothing out her skirt in order to give herself time to think. "Well, yes. We did."
"He told me why," Serena continues edgily.
"And why would that be?"
Serena looks confused by her own words when she says, "He told me…he loved me." She's not looking at Blair anymore; her gaze is turned fully inward. More quietly, she says, "Loves me."
Blair clucks her tongue impatiently. "Because he does."
And Serena stares at her as though she's speaking Japanese.
For a split second and only a split second, Blair allows herself to think of a time when Nate and Blair ended not because of Serena but because of Chuck. But the second passes and she says, "Listen, S, I'm sure you could be happy with Brooklyn. Actually, I know you could be happy with Brooklyn. You could fall in love with him. But it's going to be hard and it's going to hurt. It'll be the kind of love that demands you do things you should never have to do, especially not for someone who's supposed to love you." Blair swallows and tells herself not to think of the things she was willing to do, of the darkest thought you've ever had. She forces herself to smile. "And look at Nate. He told you the truth, he loves you. He loves you even when you're fighting tooth and nail not to love him back."
Serena gapes at her, looking a little stunned – Blair knows this isn't the reaction she was expecting but she's not in the mood to trigger a useless fight between them. "I'm sorry, B," she whispers. "About what happened with Nate before I left. You know how sorry I am. And I'm trying…to be different."
"Why?" Blair demands. "Why would you do that when there's someone who wants you as you are?"
The blonde keeps staring at her. "You're not…mad."
Blair shrugs and stands up, slipping her hands into her lightweight gloves. "I have to go, S. You have my blessing, if that's what you need."
She walks about a block before her footsteps slow and she holds up an arm to hail a cab. "Twenty-twenty hindsight," she whispers with a slight smirk, letting the soft autumn wind carry her words away. How different their lives could have been.
Serena is sitting on the edge of his bed when he gets home, wrapped up in one of his monogrammed blue towels, her hair wet and loose and dripping onto her shoulders. Her face is scrubbed, her cheeks pink, and her lips curl into a half-smile when she sees him.
Nate feels his body react to the sight of her like a sixteen year old boy's.
"Hi," she says faintly.
He drops his schoolbag and toes off his shoes and loosens the knot in his tie so that he can yank it over his head. "Hey," he replies.
"I used your shower," she explains needlessly. "I was waiting for you and I got restless so I showered. And then I realize that I didn't have clothes to change into."
"I can give you something to wear," he offers, but makes no move to do so. "You were…waiting for me?" he wonders.
"Yeah." She bows her head. "You said all that stuff today."
He almost smiles, moving closer to her. "I remember."
She tilts her chin up to look at him. "You love me," she says carefully.
He keeps their eyes locked, knowing that she'll be able to see that it's true if she looks at him for long enough.
Moments pass and then she exhales sharply and licks her lips. "Kiss me," she whispers.
Nate doesn't need to be told twice. He braces his hands on either side of her and leans over her, presses his mouth to hers.
She falls back onto the bed and he follows her, moving his lips down the line of her throat. One of her feet, still damp, runs up his calf. Her hands are tugging at him and he doesn't resist, just settles his body over hers.
It's easy, really. After all these years he knows her body so well, and to her sixteen-year-old self, it's been over a years since they've done this. He kneads one of her breasts through his towel and covers her mouth with his, kisses her hot and deep and that's all it takes to have her back arching up off his mattress and her head falling back. "Nate, please," she gasps.
He chuckles softly. "Don't need to ask, S…"
She looks at him with hazy blue eyes and he works slowly at un-knotting her towel where it's secured just under one of her arms.
"Fuck," he whispers, kissing right beneath her ear. "I missed you."
Serena shivers a little underneath him and he buries his face against her neck.
He wakes at around two in the morning. His sheets are cold.
All traces of her are gone.
tbc.
