3x07

[Saturday Night Love]

"Naaaaatie!" Her voice sounds musical as she calls out to him, stumbling through the door of their apartment. "I went shopping!"

"You did?" he asks laughingly, walking into their living room to see about eight grocery bags on the floor at her feet.

She nods, making her way through all the groceries and throwing her arms around his neck in a spontaneous hug. "Will you help me unpack all this stuff?"

"Do I have a choice?"

Grinning, she shakes her head. "Not at all."

[xo]

They stand next to one another as they regard all the food piled onto their counter, spilling out of their cupboards. Nate's got his arms crossed and Serena has her hands planted on her hips and they're wearing identical frowns.

"We have a lot of…packaged food," she muses.

"You should learn to cook."

She shoots him a look, arching one of her eyebrows. "I think you should learn to cook, so we can break some stereotypes."

"Or," Nate suggests pointedly, "we could both learn to cook."

Serena flashes him a cheeky grin as she sighs and shrugs. "I guess that would be fair."

"But for now…" He reaches into the mess of boxes and containers and cans and pulled out three. "Pop-Tarts, Eggos, or toast-able French toast?"

She shakes her head and clucks her tongue. "Natie, when will you learn?" She plucks one of the boxes out of his hands, ripping it open as she smiles at him. "All three!"

[xo]

Serena throws a pillow at him, giggling when it hits him in the face, as they settle in together on the couch amidst their school books and binders, carefully balancing their plates of Eggos, Pop-Tarts, and French toast.

"Ah," Serena sighs as she spears a piece of her syrup-covered Eggo waffle with her fork. She places her plate on her lap and pulls her hair into a messy bun, sticking a pen into it to fold it in place. She licks her lips and leans back. "This is how to live."

Nate watches her, mesmerized, feeling a little stunned as he observes her effortless way that she's so beautiful. He swallows and shakes his head a little bit to clear it and smiles at her before biting into a Pop-Tart. "Is this really how it's going to be this weekend? Serena van der Woodsen, sitting at home eating Pop-Tarts and reading actual books?" He makes a shocked face that has her rolling her eyes. "But what about the shopping? The partying? The liquor? The boys?"

She gives him her best imperious look. "For your information, Nate, I went shopping, and I bought us all this wonderful food. I can't really afford to party this weekend because I've got an essay due on Tuesday – and besides, what am I gonna do, go to the same clubs and restaurants I always have? That just seems so…high school. As far as liquor goes, we've got Pop-Tarts, and those are just so much better." She shrugs, looking over at him out of the corner of her eye. "Carter's spending time with his family this weekend since his parents descended back on Manhattan – you know what they're like. And anyway…" She gives him that damn winning smile. "I've got you, haven't I?"

The self-assured way she says that almost annoys him, because she doesn't have him, at least not in the way he'd like. But at the same time, he knows she's got a right to be cocky about it, because if there is anything true about their relationship it is that she's always had him.

"Yeah, you've got me," he agrees.

[xo]

"Give me back my pen!" she whines much later that night, well into the small hours of the morning.

"I like this pen. It writes smoothly," he says, examining it, purposefully, torturing her.

"But it's my purple pen," she huffs, slamming her book closed and giving him an irritated look. "You're ruining my system."

His eyebrows fly up, still holding the pen out of her reach. She'll have to lunge across his body to get it if she wants it. "You have a system? Oh my God. Serena van der Woodsen, are you colour-coding?!"

Serena groans, pushing her hair out of her face and grabbing a nearby tube of lip gloss. He lectures himself not to stare as she applies it and then sighs, "I am. I do. I have a system. God, I'm lame, aren't I? I am turning into a nerd."

He can't help but laugh. "Maybe a little bit. But I thought the whole nerdy thing was in."

"Not when it's this lame," she says with a shake of her head. She tosses her books are their incredibly messy living room floor and stands, stretching her arms over her head so that he can see the skin of her stomach. "Nate, you and I can't be this lame. It's two a.m. on a Saturday night and we're…here. Eating Pop-Tarts. Studying. Fighting over pens."

"Hey." He frowns playfully at her. "Don't diss the Pop-Tarts."

With a dramatic sigh, she stands in front of him and leans toward him, bracing her arms against the back of the couch. "I'm sorry," she says earnestly, even though her eyes are glittering in a way he knows means she's feeling mischievous. "The Pop-Tarts should never be dissed. You're right. The Eggos, on the other hand…" Laughing, she straightens up, planting her hands on her hips. "I want you to get ready to go."

"Excuse me?" he asks, giving her a sceptical look.

"Come on!" she cries. "Put down those Eggos." She shoots him her best smile, scrunching up her nose. "Let's go have some fun."

[xo]

"Okay, I'm sorry, didn't you say this was so high school?" he asks her when they end up in a club full of people around their age moving to the music and gulping down drinks. He has to lean close to her when he speaks and she feels a shiver run up her spine.

"So what if it is, Natie?" she laughs. Clinging to his hand, she gives him a pointed look. "At least we weren't lame in high school. And I didn't leave everything from high school behind. I've still got Pop-Tarts. And you." She scrunches up her face in that sweet way of hers that's supposed to show him that she's letting him in on a secret. "The really important stuff, y'know." She tugs on his fingers, leading him into the crowd. "Come and dance with me."

"Serena…" he sighs.

"Oh, come on." She shakes her head fondly. "You know you want to." Playfully, she reaches out to touch his arms, then his hips, then his shoulders, trying to make him move.

"Okay, okay," he finally concedes with a teasingly huffy sigh, gently moving her hands from his body. She needs to stop touching him like that. "You drive me insane, you know that?"

"Whatever!" she laughs, her smile wide. "Nate, you know you love me."

She couldn't have picked a worse time to say those words. It's the exact moment when the music changes and a slower song comes on, and it feels awful, the way they're suddenly stuck in limbo, like they're at a sixth-grade dance or something. They could stop right now, they could go get a drink, they could laugh it off. She almost wants that, but the way he's looking at her makes her feel like she can't breathe, and she realizes she doesn't want to laugh it off. She's tired of laughing it off.

His hands land softly on her hips, hesitantly, but he pulls her close to him with that quiet, sexy confidence he's always possessed. He doesn't break eye contact and he nods at her as she slips her arms around his neck. "That I do," he agrees softly, and he could mean those words in so many ways that it makes her head spin.

As they dance, her hands move almost on their own accord. One rests on the back of his neck, her fingers slipping into the hair at the nape of his neck, and the other moves occasionally over his shoulder and his back as she steps the smallest bit closer, tucking her body into his a little more. He feels good and he smells good and she finds herself remembering what it's like to love him.

When she moves closer to him he holds her just a little tighter, like he completely understands. They know each other so well, so intimately. Her endings and his beginnings have been merged together over the years so that they can't keep track any longer. She's so grateful in that moment that she chose not to go to Brown, that she chose to live with him, that she chose to drag him out into the world for some fun tonight. She realizes, startlingly, that in the simplest way, it all comes down to the fact that she chose him. She chooses him. She always has, and she probably always will. Always.

Their same-shade blue eyes stay locked as she exhales. "This kinda does feel like high school," she murmurs, because she feels like she might burst if she doesn't do something, and speaking is the safest bet.

Nate grins like he can read her mind. "And that's a bad thing?"

"Not right now," she says, her voice dropping even lower. "Not at all."

"Yeah," he agrees, and his eyes break from hers, his gaze landing on her lips.

They loved each other. They hid it and they feared it and they denied it, but they both know that they started and ended high school loving one another, and those phases blend together the same way their very selves do.

She's breathless and it feels like she's magnetically drawn to him. She stops thinking as she presses her body even further against his. They're breathing the same air, inhale and exhale; quick, unsteady breaths of anticipation. She swallows and her lips part slightly and their mouths could meet right here, right now. His nose brushes against hers in the sweetest, most tender way, and she lets her eyes flutter closed.

He gets it together just before they kiss. He reminds himself that this is wrong. They've done this before and it's not fair to anyone, they live together and it'll be awkward, they've had and lost their chances, they've established such a good friendship… Sighing, he steps away from her abruptly, looking away and running a hand through his hair. She opens her eyes, staring at him in shock, almost like she's hurt. He wants to say don't give me that face and he also just wants to kiss those lips. He clears his throat in this horribly awkward way that he knows for a fact she'd mock him for mercilessly under any other circumstances and mutters, "…sorry."

Serena blinks at him, trying to get her bearings. When he stepped away she felt like she lost a little bit of herself. She mirrors him unintentionally, sweeping a hand through her hair and pressing her lips together. "Don't be," she murmurs in reply.

It's only then that she realizes why he's apologizing. He's apologizing because she's got a boyfriend. She's got a boyfriend and it's not him. She bites her bottom lip and feels a rush of guilt. She regrets almost kissing Nate, but she also regrets not kissing him, and it makes her all teary-eyed and hopelessly confused.

He touches her elbow, a gesture that's almost protective, as another upbeat song begins to play. "We should go, right?" he asks, mouth close to her ear, but he avoids touching any other parts of her. "Let's go…okay?"

Serena nods, managing a smile. "Yeah. Let's go."

She doesn't reach for his hand as they slip back out into the night, and he doesn't make eye contact with her the whole time they're in the cab.

[xo]

Nate clears his throat in that awkward way again as he pulls off his coat once they enter their apartment. She shoots him a cute, baffled look and he feels a surge of relief – they're alright. Of course they are. They always make it okay somehow.

"So, uh…" He nods toward the clock, which tells them that it's nearly four-thirty in the morning. "Pulling an all-nighter two days before you have an essay due may not have been the best idea, huh?"

She shrugs and rolls her eyes. "It's no big deal. That's what college is about, right? And are you forgetting that it was my idea?" She laughs. Just barely, but it's genuine and it makes him smile.

"Still," he says. "I'm sorry."

Serena pauses in the doorway of her room, shaking her head slightly. She grabs one of the many opened boxes of Pop-Tarts, smirking softly as she thinks about all the times they ate those together, sitting on his kitchen counter. "Hey, Natie?" When he turns to him she throws him a silvery-wrapped package and gives him a gentle smile. "I don't want you to be sorry."

He looks at her for a long moment, his heart warming after she called him Natie. "I…I'm not," he finally admits, carefully because he's not sure what comes next, but easily, because it's the truth. "I'm not sorry. Though I am kinda sorry for not being sorry…"

"Nate," she breathes, a grin springing to her lips.

He chuckles. "Sorry," he teases, and then says earnestly, "Really. I'm…not sorry."

Just before she closes her door, she nods as well, looking satisfied.

"Neither am I," she says.