Jenny Humphrey was in the kitchen. Jenny was in Chuck's kitchen. Jenny was standing in front of him. Something chirping in the back of his mind was telling him this should probably be some profound, movie-esque scene where two friends are reunited after a lengthy separation and music crescendos as they finally makeup. Except Nate still couldn't seem to do anything but stare. He ground his teeth together in frustration but coherent speech escaped him. He was thrilled when she spoke first, until the words that came out of her mouth involved his best friend's name.
"Chuck," Nathaniel thought viciously, a million and a half accusations on the tip of his tongue. Out loud he replied, "With Blair." And he watched her. Watched her face change, watched her unusually fragile façade flicker.
"I just, I didn't know you'd be here." She uttered, and Nate's stomach roiled. "I didn't know you'd be here," echoed in his head. The realization that she came for Chuck, that she needed something, anything, and she came to see Chuck Bass first, to see him at all—
He stepped forward to place the glass he held on the counter before he inadvertently shattered it and Jenny shoved clumsily away from him. He heard more than saw her stumble; caught the interruption in the typically steady, confident, 1, 2 footfalls of her walk. The heavy-lidded eyes, the disjointed movement, the labored breathing, the fine sheen of drug-induced sweat; Nate had been friends with Chuck long enough to know the signs.
"What are you doing here?" he spat, when what he really wanted to ask was, "Are you high?"
Her answer was an acid taunt. She wound her tongue around each syllable in his name, dragging out, "Nathaniel" in breathy punishment. He barely caught her next slurred command, looked away as she let herself into Chuck's bedroom with the ease of familiarity, bit the inside of his cheek, drew on the pain to ward off the chaos swirling in his mind.
The rattle of the vanity mirror against the bedroom wall almost propelled him across the open space of the living room. A thousand worst-case scenarios flitted through his head; she fell into the glass, or the mirror fell on her, or she shattered her reflection into a hundred shards and she's bleeding all over the carpet and "why haven't you moved your feet yet Nate?"
He starts when the bedroom door meets the frame with a resounding 'slam'. It echoes, reverberates through the heavy silence that drapes the suite. He strains his ears to hear something, anything to quiet those nagging 'what ifs' and the voice that mocks when it reminds him he gave up worrying about Little Jenny Humphrey a lifetime ago. There is a faint rustling, images of silk on skin torture him, then nothing. Incessant nothing. He remembers that he doesn't care, remembers deciding he wouldn't care, reasons that he doesn't have to care to want to avoid Dan's wrath for killing his baby sister; justifies to himself feeling like a crazy person that Dan would, in fact, be pissed if he let her die, then finds his hand on the brass door handle of its own volition.
