"Serena!" Blair called from the kitchen, "I can't find the ice cream." She was peering into the freezer, trying to find the familiar Mogenstern's container behind the trove of frozen food.
"Check behind the percebes," Serena yelled from the living room where she was setting up the home theatre.
Blair pushed aside a packet of frozen peas and finally discovered the percebes and behind them, the ice cream. It had been two weeks since Blair and Chuck had returned from the Hamptons. Not having to make the long commute to work had given Blair a lot of extra time. She had meticulously planned her work agenda keeping the commute in mind, so now that she had returned to New York, she found herself ahead of schedule in almost everything. She had even had time to keep her bi-monthly friend date with Serena that night. Now if only if she could find a subtle way to bring up Nate and find out if they were really dating.
The two girls were planning to have a cosy sleepover in Serena's brownstone, eating Morgenstern's ice cream and watching Funny Face. "It is a crime to freeze percebes like that," Blair chided, setting the bowls and spoons on Serena's coffee table, "Five percebeiros do not die harvesting them every year for you to put them so callously in your deep freezer."
"I can't help it," Serena pouted, "My client gave them to me as a gift and I don't know how to cook them!"
"Which is why most of us have personal chefs," Blair countered primly, "Speaking of chefs, can I hire you one as a belated birthday present? I could swear I saw a couple of Lunchables lurking in your kitchen cupboard."
"Ha ha," Serena intoned dryly, picking up a spoon and digging into the carton of ice cream, "I thought I told you never to mention my birthday? I'm trying to retain an air of mystery when it comes to my age."
Blair swatted Serena's spoon away from the ice cream. "Use a bowl. What are we? Neanderthals?"
Serena dodged Blair's hand and took another spoonful of blueberry labne. "Besides, you're only thirty two. I don't think you need to worry about your age yet," Blair continued, giving in and digging straight into the carton too.
"Spoken like a naïve married woman," Serena said pityingly, "You have no idea how rough the dating scene is right now, if you're over 26 you are out." She accompanied this statement with violent throat slashing motions. "All anti-ageing measures have to start early, including establishing a fake age. 10 years from now when I celebrate my '35th' birthday and gaslight everyone into believing I'm younger than I am, I don't want there to be any evidence to the contrary."
Blair laughed and grabbed the remote off the coffee table. It was the perfect opening for her to ask the question that had been plaguing her since the christening. "Oh? Why are you so concerned about dating anyway," Blair began, acting indifferent, "I thought you and Nate were together."
Serena almost choked on her ice cream. "Definitely not!" she exclaimed, "What the hell, B? Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Jenny mentioned you two had been having lunch together all summer, so I figured…" Blair gave Serena a look.
"Right, because lunch is the meal before dating?" Serena replied sarcastically, "He's a client. I'm planning the annual Spectator charity gala."
Blair blushed. When would people stop bringing up her teenage Blairisms? Leaning back into the couch, she said with exaggerated insouciance, "Yeah, but it's you and Nate, there's some kind of cosmic plan to get you two together."
"Never. Again." Serena was emphatic.
"Never say never," Blair reminded her.
"Never, ever, ever. Nate and I were over years ago," Serena said, "We don't work. We don't want to be together. I am so tired of all of you trying to gaslight me into thinking Nate and I are fate."
"What's with the 'gaslight' overuse?"
"It's on at the Davenport," Serena smiled sheepishly, "One of my clients gave me tickets."
"Is this going to be like the time you tried to get us all to start saying 'know your onions' in 8th grade? Right after you read 'The Great Gatsby?' Although, I'm pretty sure they never actually use the word gaslight in Gaslight," Blair scraped the bottom of the Morgenstern's container, trying to get the last dregs of the ice cream. She still wasn't satisfied with Serena's answers about Nate.
"When it comes to Nate and me, you certainly do not know your onions, B." Serena picked up the empty ice cream carton and took it to the kitchen to throw it away. She filled the kettle with water and offered Blair a cup of chamomile tea.
Blair declined and perched herself delicately upon one of the stools at the kitchen island. As the kettle boiled, Serena filled Blair in on her long conversation with Nate.
"I had no idea Nate could be so eloquent. Are you sure you weren't talking to Dan?" Blair joked when Serena was done.
"I was surprised too. He's changed since moving to London hasn't he?"
Blair murmured her agreement before flippantly adding, "Damn London. First it turns Jenny Humphrey into a lesbian, then it makes Nate reasonably intelligent. What next? If you move there will it turn you into a mathematician?"
"Hey, I could be a mathematician," Serena jested, "I just have to go back and pass high school trigonometry again. The right way." She winked saucily.
Blair laughed, opening the freezer door again to look for more ice cream.
"Anyway, Nate was right," Serena said, as Blair unearthed some from the bursting freezer, "Besides, it's been what, 12 years since we last dated? Does attraction even last that long?"
Blair rested her suddenly flaming cheeks against the cool freezer door. 'Yes, yes it does,' she thought, remembering their kiss.
Serena was scrabbling through the kitchen cupboard, looking for a teabag when she heard Blair say something, her voice muffled by the freezer. "What was that, B?"
Blair pulled her head out of the freezer and looked Serena nervously in the eye. "Nate kissed me," she repeated quietly.
Serena blinked at Blair for a few minutes before switching the kettle off and saying decisively, "This going to need something much stronger than chamomile tea."
Several hours later, Blair and Serena were lying side by side on Serena's king sized bed, finishing the last of their second bottle of wine. Blair had moved on from the kiss and was telling Serena how disenchanted she felt about her marriage.
"We struggled for so long to be together, S," Blair said, "Six years of games, drama and crisis after crisis. Even our wedding was interrupted by an arrest! But then I thought that would be it. Happily ever after. And then Henry was born and things got different." She took another slug of wine and told Serena how her priorities had changed after Henry was born, how motherhood put her life into perspective.
"The things I used to care about before – the scheming and gossiping – all started to seem really petty." Blair said. But she and Chuck had been happy. Blissful in fact. Even though they were steadily becoming different people and in effect growing apart, they still loved each other.
"It was during the IPO that things started going wrong," she confessed, "I'll admit, I was consumed by work. I was, in effect, the CEO but I hadn't been elected to the post. A lot of the senior members of the old team were annoyed, they thought I got the job because of nepotism."
She shrugged wearily and downed her wine. "They were partly right. They forgot the fact that mother had made me jump through flaming hoops to get the job. But at the same time a lot of candidates were more deserving than I was, they had more experience, they contributed more. So I worked my butt off to prove myself. The IPO was the culmination of my efforts, you know? After I took the company public, the shareholders voted me in as CEO. My position was legitimised. I had taken my mother's company, her legacy and turned it into my own.
"But it came at a price. I was spending long hours at the office, barely getting home in time to tuck Henry in. Most nights I'd pop in, see him for 10 minutes and then head back to work. I kind of neglected Chuck. I thought he would understand, he of all people knows what it is like to live in your parent's shadow. I mean, I've made enough sacrifices for him!" Blair's voice grew angry as she remembered the hotel deal with Jack Bass, "He tried to pimp me out in exchange for his hotel, but I understood. I forgave him. Why did he never try to understand me?"
Serena looked carefully at Blair, noting her flushed face and slightly unfocused eyes. Blair was drunk and her fury was mounting with every sentence. Serena understood the need for her friend to vent. She had been holding these emotions in check for several years, had never given so much as a hint to how she felt. All of them had sensed that the happy couple were having problems, but neither of the pair had acknowledged it.
"He didn't understand. He lived in his father's shadow, yes. But once Bart was gone, everyone looked to Chuck for leadership. I mean the only one on the board of directors who occasionally questions Chuck is your mom, but even then she prefers to stay out of most of the nitty-gritties. He doesn't have to answer to anyone, or justify his existence.
"The company was frickin' publicly held when Jack stole it from him, and then he stole it back and Lily got involved, then Bart died, then Bart came back. Did one shareholder question anything? The board of directors didn't even bat an eyelid. He can just be 'Chuck Bass' and indulge in his shady backroom deals and bribe and scheme and do whatever the hell he wants, but I can't.
"Everything about my business is legitimate. I can't even accept a gift from one of our suppliers because then the directors will say I am taking kickbacks. Everything is written down, filed away carefully. My mother ran the company like that and when I took over, I had no choice to run it the same way. But now, I don't even want to run it any other way. I love it. It gives me so much pride to achieve things through hard work alone. No shortcuts. That's what I want to teach Henry too. The joy of earning your rewards." Her voice trailed off and the two sat in a pregnant silence for a few minutes. Serena was racking her brain for a suitable reply, but she was at a loss for words.
"I talked to him about it, you know?" Blair suddenly said, turning to Serena and gripping her hands, wild eyes scanning Serena's face rapidly, "About needing to prove myself. But the Bass-tard just said 'Things are different now that we have Henry, you're neglecting him.' As if I wasn't tormented by that thought every day'? Of course things were different. I had a child, but did that mean I was to give up my ambition? I tried, I really tried, and I still try to be there for Henry. To spend as much time with him as I can. Now, for two months a year, and only two months, before both the New York Fashion Weeks; that's the only time that I work late. I see him off to school every morning, I attend every one of his plays and recitals." Her voice cracked, "I'm a good mother, S. Aren't I?"
Serena wrapped her arms around her best friend, rubbing her back in a soothing manner. "Of course you are," she whispered honestly. Blair was a terrific mother. She should know, having grown up with a sometimes wonderful, but horribly inconsistent mother. Their relationship had improved over the years, but Serena had never considered Lily to be a parent in the true sense of the word. Lily was like a flaky, flawed big sister that she loved unconditionally; even when Lily was trying to ruin her life. "I don't have kids, I might never have kids. I don't think I want them," she continued, "But if I did, I'd want them to be as loved as Henry evidently is. You and Chuck are great parents. You're a great mother."
Blair nodded shakily, not looking up from Serena's shoulder. She knew she was drunk and was being quite loquacious, but she needed to get this off her chest. She needed to speak candidly about her relationship to another person; to be reassured that she wasn't imagining everything, that the hurts were real. She withdrew from Serena and wiped the few tears that had slipped from her eyes before charging on, "So I was working hard for the IPO, I was neglecting Chuck. He tried to muscle in on the IPO, saying he wanted to help me. But it was obvious it was just an excuse to make me engage with him. It didn't matter. Even I wanted his help, I had to do it alone. I needed the credit, the recognition.
"He didn't understand. He sulked for weeks, but work was so taxing that I barely had any energy left to deal with him. He started to party hard again. Getting photographed with skimpily clad models week after week.
"It was clearly a cry for attention, but I had none to spare. I didn't want to spare it either. I loved him, but I didn't like how he was behaving. Like a spoilt brat throwing a temper tantrum. Remember how I said my priorities changed after Henry was born? I was suddenly longing for a quietly supportive partner. One who would listen to me, who would understand why I needed to do what I was doing.
"Chuck used to be that guy. He used to understand my drive, my goals. Sure he had always wanted my attention too, and back in those days it was easier for me to give it to him." She sighed heavily and gave a sad little smirk. "I know what the old me would have done. Created a problem for him to solve, to occupy his attention so he didn't feel ignored. But I didn't have the time, nor the desire. I wanted things to stop being so complicated. I was tired. I am tired.
"We drifted apart. Like an obnoxious toddler, Chuck began to irritate me. When the IPO was over, things between us were so strained. We barely spoke to each other. We slept in the same bed at night, but we could have been strangers for all it mattered. We didn't touch each other anymore or talk to each other. Sometimes I wondered if we even loved each other anymore. We were pleasant towards each other in public, smiling, playing our parts; but that was the extent of our relationship. It went on for years, S."
"Wait, how does Nate play into this?" Serena asked curiously.
Blair covered her face with a pillow and sighed. She felt so ashamed about her momentary lapse of control with Nate. "Chuck moved into the guest bedroom at the beginning of April this year. I think it was a last ditch attempt to force the situation." Blair mumbled, her voice muffled by the hypoallergenic polyester. "It worked. We talked. We kissed for the first time in years. We both wanted to try again, to save our marriage. We've been going to marital therapy for the last four months. I thought we were making progress… but the kiss ruined everything. I am just so consumed by shame, S. Every time I kiss Chuck, all I can think of is Nate. The guilt is crushing."
She felt the blood rush unbidden to her cheeks as it always did when she thought of her kiss with Nate and was glad that she had hidden her face beneath the pillow. That was one detail Serena did not need to know. She did not need to know that a large part of Blair's guilt came from the arousal she felt when she remembered the incident, how dirty Blair felt whenever her husband kissed her and she thought of another man.
She also did not need to know that she had tried to crush these feelings and sleep with Chuck the night of the christening. The thought of Serena and Nate dating had rattled her. He had clearly moved on, and she was married to someone else. Someone she had a child with, and she owed it to her son to make her marriage work.
She had thought that their all-consuming chemistry would overwhelm everything else, but it had felt like touching a stranger. She knew Chuck's body like the back of her hand, knew where every mole was and the constellations that they made. She knew which area of his body would elicit a specific response. The contours on the map in her head had not changed, but the familiar chemistry that fizzed underneath its surface did not come.
Of course Chuck knew her body as well as she did his, and he drew her to a quick climax just as he had always done. But there had been something mechanical about the encounter, an emotional disconnect. She knew he had felt it too, seen it in his eyes as he had rolled off her, his sweat soaked hair plastered to his forehead. It had been empty, meaningless. Visibly shaken, Chuck had left the bedroom wordlessly and returned to the guest bedroom. They had skirted the issue every time they had spoken since.
Serena lifted the pillow off Blair's face, studying her confused, defeated expression. "Are you going to tell Chuck?" she asked.
"No!" Blair sat bolt upright in bed, "Can you imagine how he would react? No, don't imagine it. It's too horrible. I've read enough Greek tragedies to know what the betrayed husband does to the lover."
"Calm down," Serena laughed despite the severity of the situation, "Nate isn't your lover. It was just one mistimed kiss."
"Do you think I should tell him?" Blair asked plaintively as she lay back down.
Serena considered the question for a moment, twirling Blair's mahogany locks around her finger. "I'm a firm believer in honesty in relationships," she said. Blair gulped anxiously.
"But sometimes honesty just makes things worse," Serena continued, "If it really was meaningless – why risk everything that you have with Chuck over it? You say Nate has forgotten all about it. You will too. Just stop obsessing over it, that's just your conscience pricking you. Besides, it's not like you're planning to do it again, are you?"
Blair shook her head vehemently, "Definitely not." But later that night, long after Serena was asleep, she found herself wondering if that was really true.
Nate was early to work that morning; his game of basketball with Chuck Bass having finished quicker than he had anticipated. He had been both surprised and apprehensive when Chuck had called him the previous night to suggest it. Ever since Nate had left the Upper East Side, he and Chuck had barely kept in touch. Their friendship had faded completely. Their previous meetings since he had returned held no animosity, but they held no warmth either. They were just acquaintances now. Why would Chuck call him?
His first thought had been of Blair. Had she confessed the kiss to Chuck? Was it going to be a 'pistols at dawn' kind of scenario? He knew Chuck was more than capable of such a thing, though perhaps buying the Spectator and publically humiliating Nate at the Spectator charity gala was more his scene.
However, Chuck had shown no signs that anything was out of the ordinary. He seemed to genuinely want to rekindle their friendship. Nate idly speculated, if Chuck had any other friends, mentally running through a list of candidates. As he entered the Spectator building Nate reflected on how awkward the meeting had been. He had heard the stories, about how childhood friends could meet after several years and just fall into their old friendship. But that hadn't happened. They had been tense and uncomfortable; their friendship had been based on privilege, power and proximity. Now, like so many once inseparable childhood friends, they had drifted apart.
Nate was also surprised by his lack of guilt. He had met the man whose wife he had kissed and he had felt no remorse. He briefly wondered if this made him a sociopath and then rejected the thought. It was strange how separate he considered Blair and Chuck to be now. At one point, all those many years ago, they had been a single entity. Practically conjoined. Their interests had been the same, personalities so similar that Nate could have called them twin halves of the same soul. But now, even when they were together Nate felt a difference between them. A kind of unbridgeable gap. He wondered if he was the only one who thought so, or if his recent history with Blair shaded his perspective.
Nate tried to dismiss the thought and focus on his work, but it lurked in the back of his mind all morning. He was relieved when it was lunchtime. Perhaps Serena would provide adequate distraction from his current line of thinking.
He was unpleasantly surprised when he entered the deli and saw Serena with a dark look on her face. "You!" she said ominously, the accusation clear in her voice.
'Oh boy,' Nate thought nervously, 'what have I done now?'
Blair was in a good mood. Unburdening herself to Serena had been exactly what she needed. Her problems didn't weigh so heavily on her mind anymore. She flicked on the espresso machine in her office kitchen, enjoying the silence of the early morning and the empty office. Sometime in July she had forced one of the interns to teach her how to work the appliance, deciding that it was embarrassing not to know how to use the simple mechanism. She took the steaming cup into her office and soon lost herself in her designs.
She was surprised a few hours later when her secretary, Letitia, buzzed in an unexpected visitor. Clearing away her sketches quickly, she stood up and pasted a welcoming smile on her face. "I didn't realise we had an appointment," she said politely to her company's financial director, Clive Rosenberg. She didn't like the man, he was one of her harshest critics. He had opposed her appointment as CEO from the start. However, she knew he was loyal to the company and to her mother, and after witnessing Blair successfully handling the IPO he had developed a grudging respect for her.
"I'll keep this short," he said without preamble, "someone has been buying up Waldorf Designs' stock. They've been using a variety of shell companies to make the purchases, but I did some investigating – the main parent company is called 'Tiller Inc.'."
Tiller Inc. had bought up 12% of Waldorf Designs' stock over the last three months. Blair and Eleanor together owned 51% of the stock, so an insignificant 12% would not have bothered her normally. However, one did not 'normally' purchase a company's stock through various shell companies. Someone was trying to hide what they were doing and it made it very fishy indeed.
Blair thanked him for bringing the issue to her notice. Before he left he gave her a significant look. The words 'If you hadn't been distracted with your personal problems you would have known sooner,' were left unspoken in the air between them.
She ran her hands through her hair exasperatedly. He was right. She should have started monitoring this company the minute they bought up 5% and the SEC had sent notice. Instead she'd been too distracted with her failing marriage. How could she think that she would be allowed to have it all? Of course life would throw some fresh challenge in her way.
The controlling interest in the company was hers so there could be no hostile takeover, but there were still many things someone could do to harm Waldorf Designs if they wanted to. The stock purchase would just be the first step. She needed to find out who owned this Tiller Inc. and what they planned to do with their W.D. shares. She also needed to figure out what she could do to stop them from buying more.
All morning the problem nagged at her. She set her P.I. to work at once, but it would take a while for her to dig up the information. Until then, she had no choice but to twiddle her thumbs and wait.
She was looking out of office window, pondering the problem, when she heard her office door crash open behind her. 'What the hell?' she thought. Who would barge into her office like this? Where was her secretary? The annoyed frown that furrowed her eyebrows disappeared into shock as she swivelled around and came face to face with a thunderous looking Nate.
She noticed her secretary standing diminutively behind him, having tried in vain to prevent him from entering. "You can't just charge in without an appointment, sir," she said, trying desperately to inject a note of authority into her voice, "Ma'am, I tried to stop him but he just pushed past m-"
Blair raised a hand, cutting her off. "It's perfectly alright, Letitia. Leave us."
Nate was still glaring at her angrily, and the minute the door clicked shut behind Blair's secretary he hissed, "You told Serena. What the hell were you thinking?"
His combative tone immediately put Blair on the back foot. Hackles rising, she replied defensively, "She's my best friend, I tell her everything."
"Some best friend if it took you three months to do it," Nate sneered, watching Blair as she rose from behind her desk.
"What did she say?" Blair asked quietly, ignoring his barb, coming to a stop in front of her desk and leaning on it. She tried to feign nonchalance but did not think she was succeeding.
"What do you think? 'How could you kiss Blair? Don't you know she's married? You idiot!' etc. Funny how she thought it was all my fault, she didn't seem to know that you kissed me back," Nate answered furiously.
Blair flushed with annoyance. Stupid Serena, making a mess of things as usual. "Of course she knows that! You can't hold me responsible for Serena's misguided actions."
"No, but I can hold you responsible for yours," Nate said sharply, "Who else did you tell? Your husband? He didn't seem to know about it when we played basketball together this morning, but I don't know, maybe you two are playing one of your bloody games again."
The blood drained from Blair's face. "You spoke to Chuck?" she asked nervously, before realising that there was no way Chuck knew anything about it. Her anger returned in full force, "What the hell were you thinking? Do you get some sort of perverse pleasure from hanging out with the man you cuckolded?"
Nate took a step towards her before checking himself. Sometimes she made him so mad. He ran a hand through his hair, feeling frustrated. "Did. You. Tell. Him?" he bit out angrily.
"Of course not! Do you take me for a fool? I'm sure he doesn't know."
"Maybe someone saw us that day. Or recorded us. It has happened before."
Blair laughed cruelly. "Do you think I didn't check? The first thing I did was ask the doorman if he had let anyone else in after you. No one was here. There's nothing on the security cameras either. No one else knows," she said before adding snidely, "You left the Upper East Side a long time ago Nate, so it probably didn't occur to you to do so. This place is still a hotbed of scandal and gossip and unlike you, I'm not a naïve idiot."
She saw hurt flash momentarily across his eyes before Nate recovered and replied coldly, "Do you want to know why I left the Upper East Side Blair?"
Blair made no move to respond. They had been talking about something else entirely, the abrupt change in subject put her on edge. Where was he going with this?
"This," Nate continued, his voice rising in anger, "Exactly this. It doesn't matter what I do, to you people I will always be the naïve idiot, the one who always gets taken advantage of, the weak link. I'm not stupid, Blair. I haven't been for a long time, and I am so tired of having to prove myself, over and over to you. To Grandfather.
"I grew the Spectator from a struggling business into a multimillion dollar newspaper. Me. Single-handedly. I thought it would make you think of me differently, make you realise that I am worthy of respect. But it doesn't matter what I achieve. I will always be the dumb one, the floozy, the boy who whored his way through half the Upper East Side. That's why I left. Do you know what it feels like? To have the people you love continually underestimate you? To seek validation from perfect strangers because no one in your life recognises that you have value?
"Nothing I ever accomplish will make you or anyone else see me as anything more than a moron. Nothing I ever do will make me good enough. Nothing. And you know what? I'm done trying." He thrust his trembling, clenched fists into his pockets, upset at himself for losing his temper.
He was about to make an excuse and leave when Blair said softly, "You're right."
She was standing beside her desk, clutching it to steady her trembling legs. Nate's rage had been both terrifying and awe-some to behold. Her knees felt weak, like they were about to buckle. She took a deep breath to compose herself. "You are right. I haven't been fair to you," she said, not meeting his eye, "I keep looking at you and seeing the boy I knew at 16, keep judging you based on who you used to be. And that isn't right. I know how much I hate it when people still treat me like the biggest bitch in high school, but it never occurred to me that you… that you felt it too."
Blair looked up at Nate earnestly, "You are a great guy Nate. You've achieved a lot. I would say I'm proud of you, but I have no ownership in your work. No credit to claim. It was all you. You did everything on your own. And I respect you for that. You are a remarkable person."
Nate felt the fight drain out of him. He didn't want to argue with Blair, really. He wasn't angry that she told Serena either. He had just used it as an opportunity to air out the old grievances and past hurts that had surfaced since he had returned. Or so he told himself. Deep down, so deep that Nate didn't dare to look, he knew that it had all just been an excuse to see her. His anger a camouflage for his real feelings.
He took a few steps toward her. He had been lost the last few months without her. He needed her. Her guidance, her friendship. "I've missed you," he said simply.
"I've missed you too," she replied. "I'm sorry about everything. Everything. I haven't been a very good friend." Her face broke into a tentative smile.
"I haven't either, I'm sorry." He held his arms open to her and she took the two steps required to close the gap between them. As they shared a warm, friendly hug, Blair felt happy. For the first time since she had kissed him all those weeks ago, she was at peace.
The muffled arguing coming from Blair's office fell silent. Letitia strained her ears and cursed once more the thick walls in the building. She hadn't been able to hear a single word they had said. Still, it didn't matter, she was sure the incident itself would be worth something. She slipped her mobile out of her pocket and dialled a number.
"Hello?" she said to the voice on the other end, "I have some information on Ms. Waldorf and I think you might be interested in hearing it. It has to do with Nathaniel Archibald."
A/N: Gah, I've been working on this chapter all week and it just isn't getting any better. I'm suffering from some form of writer's block, except it's more like writer's disjointedness.
Am upping the rating on this fic to M. Not because it contains any lemons or limes, but because acc to FFN rules any allusion to sexual situations requires an M rating. Don't personally agree with this, but hey, rules are rules. So. :)
Anyway, please read and review! I will try to do better next time, xoxo.