CLUNK

Reviews make me want to write more. So you keep reviewing, and I'll keep writing. It's not my favourite chapter of the story for various reasons but it's still important. Enjoy! (:

CLUNK. Nate Archibald literally rolled out of his bed onto the floor and his head was pounding like nothing normal. He rubbed his eyes and wondered what the hell he was doing in his…parent's townhouse? He turned around to find a snoring, snugly relaxed Serena on the other side of the bed. Oh shit. The thought raced through his mind. You'd think Nate would be used to this, considering him and Serena had these one night trysts before. Although, he had to admit she always looked beautiful in the mornings. So he decided for a while, instead of thinking about Blair and everything else…he would just lay back and watch Serena for a while. He just stared at her for a while, and came to conclusion that the mornings always did seem better waking up seeing things through a curtain of Serena's blond hair.

Blair's head was also throbbing uncontrollably. She just wanted to grab her eyes and stick them in and ice cold glass of water, but what are the chances of that? She saw a slumped Dan Humphrey in a chair and Vanessa Abram's lying on the floor. She raised an eyebrow in complete confusion. What the hell were they doing here? She struggled to recall anything from the night before. Poor girl never could hold her liquor. Had someone died? Had something terrible happened? For all Blair could tell she had invited them over to engage in some weird threesome. She petrified herself with that thought and made her way into the master bedroom, where she would find Nate. She stumbled into the room and looked at the perfectly made bed. So maybe Nate wasn't here. She turned around and Vanessa stood behind her and Blair jumped.

"Jesus!" Blair screamed shrilly.

"What? What the hell is it?" Dan replied falling out of the chair.

"He's not here, he went with Serena last night, remember?" Vanessa said sadly.

Oh yes. It was all coming back to Blair now. The look on his face when he saw Serena last night. Chuck Bass. Chuck Bass, Chuck fucking Bass. He just had to rear his head.

"Yeah…I remember." Blair shoved her way past Vanessa and started preparing breakfast. "So you're both coming to brunch?" Blair suggested.

"I think I'm full from last night." Dan said fixing his tie.

"Last night was pretty rough, Blair you should just take a rest from your social life today, don't you think?" Vanessa replied.

"It's brunch, Vanessa." Blair stated like it was some universal rule that one simply must attend.

"It's your eyes, Blair." Vanessa said pulling out her compact and placing it front her eyes. The bags were so big they deserved their own zip code and they were all bloodshot.

"Great. Fucking fabulous. Please tell me what happened last night?"

"Um…" Vanessa didn't know where to start.

"Spit it out, Abrams. Why the hell did Nate and Serena leave in the first place? I don't even know where he is."

"You and Chuck seemed too friendly for his liking." Dan said smiling. Vanessa shoved her elbow into his stomach.

"We're gonna leave you to it. You know, give you some time to yourself and all." Vanessa added hastily. She felt like she had wasted enough of her precious time with Dan on this petty high school drama. Blair looked sad, why was everybody leaving her?

"Show yourselves out then." Blair said coldly. Vanessa couldn't help but feel guilt overcome her.

"I'll come by later, okay?" Vanessa said timidly.

"Don't bother." Blair said surreptitiously sipping from her coffee.

"Creep," Serena said playfully, "watching me sleep." Nate smiled back, handing her a brownie from the tray on his bedside. "Brownies for breakfast, I like the way you think." Serena smiled back; she was clearly basking in the afterglow.

"So…last night- Nate began

"We slept together." Serena said matter of factly.

"Yeah." Nate said running his hands through his hair.

Serena looked at Nate for a while. There was just silence. She was waiting for him to finally show some emotion, something, just something.

"I told you everything, right?" Nate queried.

"You tell me." Serena mused, kissing him on the cheek.

"I told you about how I was going to propose to you?" Nate asked.

"Yeah…you did." Serena said with joy lining her tone.

"You know, I never stop thinking about that day. Things could have been so much different from how they are now." He said with desperation.

"Hey, they still can be. Nate you don't have to get married to her." Serena said, afraid.

"Sometimes I just think that's the way it's meant to be. Me and Blair. I mean, there has to be a reason why the box just dropped onto her lap." Nate mused. "It's like its fate."

"No." Serena said holding back tears. "No, Nate you can't do this to me, again. I can't be a mistake."

"Serena, you're not a mistake. It's just whenever we're together it's always been behind Blair's back." He said.

"Do think that's part of it?" She questioned, tucking a blond strand behind her ear. "It being wrong…somehow it makes it feel deeper."

Nate stood up.

"I should go." He said.

"Look, Nate you have a choice right now, it's me or her. I don't care how the hell you do it, but just make up your mind. If you go to her now, we're done, over." Serena said sternly, a single tear rolling down her right cheek. Nate dried it away and kissed it. Serena took his hand. "All you have to do is tell her, Nate." Her voice cracked and almost inaudible. "It's your choice…it's always been your choice."

"Serena I'm engaged." He said huskily.

Three hours and twenty minutes later Blair Waldorf jumped into her limo and commanded the driver "Serena's, you know where it is." She decided to confront Serena about this and finally figure everything out. Blair's eyes were still puffy and she was as white as a ghost. She was wearing her Gucci sunglasses and almost fell asleep again in the limo when it abruptly stopped. "Here we are." The driver said. Blair shot him a dirty look on her way out. "Fucking drivers." She muttered to herself. She made her way up to Serena's apartment. Like her parents before her, Serena owned half the block, all for herself and her model friends to party mindlessly in. Blair knocked on the door three times and it revealed Serena.

"Hi." Blair stated.

"Hey."

"Am I invited in?"

Serena made a waving gesture with her arm; Blair took it as a yes.

"So…I'm sorry for last night's debacle." Blair began earnestly.

"I'm not." Serena shot back.

"Vanessa told me that you and Nate left together."

"She did?"

"Yeah. And something tells me that's not the whole story." Blair said cheekily. "I mean, it never is with you two."

Serena frowned. "Okay, Blair, what did you expect me to do? Last night you invited me over to this weird, totally awkward dinner, you start flirting with Chuck Bass, oh and did I mention you still haven't told Nate all the things you told me?" Serena lost her temper. Van der Woodsen's were the type of people who never lost their cool. Then again all these things seemed to fly out the window when it concerned Nate.

"If it's so fucking important to you, why haven't you told him?" Blair shouted. It certainly made Serena a lot quieter.

After a few minutes of silence, Serena decided to break it.

"Because, Blair, when you told me that you weren't going to marry him, when you told me you could never go ahead with it, and when you told me that me and Nate were meant for each other, I actually thought for the first time you were letting go. And you never could do that before. I want you to let go Blair, so that when you do finally let go of him, I can have him. Have him completely." Serena sighed at the end of her heartfelt speech. Blair looked straight into her soul; she could tell Serena meant every single word.

"I can't let go of him. I've tried, S I really have. Then every time I look at him I just…I just can't."

"I slept with him last night." Serena said honestly, Blair flinched. No matter how many times Blair known it happened, like the time Nate told her that they had lost their virginity to each other all those years ago, the time when she caught both of them half naked in the bathtub after she found out she was going to Yale, or the time she had found the letter Serena had wrote to him. The pain still stung.

"Then we talked. He said that you two were fate." Serena said sadly, hoping Blair would disagree, but what were the chances of that?

"He said that?" Blair asked cheerily. Serena shrugged.

"Look Blair. You can go back to him now, but you should know that I'm not just letting you have him this time." Serena said cunningly.

"What do you mean by that?" Blair replied viciously.

"I mean I'm going to fight for him."

Nate was strolling down fifth avenue when his eyes diverted to little Jenny Humphrey sitting all by herself at a quaint café sipping coffee looking bored out of her skull. He decided to join her.

"Hey, jenny." He greeted her warmly.

"Hi, Nate." She said. He looked as beautiful as he always did, his red Ralph Lauren sweater made the blond highlights in his hair stand out even more.

"So we didn't really get to catch up last night." He said. "Everything's just been so hectic."

"Oh yeah, Nate Archibald's love life moves pretty fast. Tomorrow it'll be Vanessa, right?" Jenny said playfully. Nate chuckled.

"I've just been so stupid." He said. "I don't know what I'm doing with my life; I don't even have a job."

"Then get a job." Jenny said like it was the most obvious thing.

"You know something? All my friends are doers. They just do stuff. Chuck and Serena are models, Blair works for vogue, Dan…well I don't know what he does, writing poetry or whatever and Vanessa is probably making some film-

"She's still at NYU." Jenny interjected.

"All I do is watch. And ruin Blair and Serena's friendship."

"Serena loves you, you know that right?" Jenny said. Nate nodded.

"Blair loves me." He said.

"But the question is, Nate who do you love?" Jenny asked intently.

Nate made his way up to the penthouse hurriedly. He found Chuck Bass sitting on the floor, outside Blair's door.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Nate asked.

"Waiting for the place to blow up. Who the hell do you think I'm waiting for Archibald?" He replied.

"You should go. I and Blair have to talk."

"I have to talk to Blair too."

"Don't you think you talked to her enough last night?"

"Nope. Nathaniel we barely got started."

"What is with you and Blair anyway?"

"The same thing that's with you and Serena." Chuck replied cryptically. That shut Nate up. Nate knocked on the door only to hear Blair's voice shout "Fuck off, Bass!"

"It's me, Nate!" He called. The door slowly opened.

"Blair, we need to talk- Chuck began

"Go away Chuck, not tonight okay?" She said pleadingly. Chuck looked at her longingly as Nate shit the door. Blair certainly was not going to let go of Nate, not tonight.

Chuck decided it was about time him and Serena hatched a plan.

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I know that chapter was sucky for NS, but there will be plenty of flashbacks and CB next chapter.