Okay, you guys - thank you for all your faves and alerts; it really makes me feel the love!

This chapter is a little backstory, just to make some parts make better sense. And I'll post another chapter ASAP, just because this is mostly... filler. But hopefully fun-filler.

So, enjoy!

Brutal Honesty

Chapter 10. The story of us

Nick and Harry had met in the hospital. It had been about the same time his sister came to live with Nick after having left her life and family in New York. Nick had hated her for doing that to her kids, until something changed: one day they had gotten in a man who said he didn't know what was wrong with him. Nick was in his first year residency and Harry was in his last year of college. It all seemed very timely. Until Harry's girlfriend at the time had showed up crying and asking if he was going to live or if it was going to be one of those Grey's anatomy episodes where they didn't figure it out until it was all too late...

Nick had stayed with Harry, talking to him as he examined him, noting the very good shape he was in, and that's when Harry said it.

The first thing that changed the world Nick lived in.

"She doesn't know I swing the other way yet, maybe that's what's making me cry like a little baby?"

It had been so out of the blue, Nick had just stopped what he was doing and stared at Harry. Harry had laughed, before throwing up from the intense pain in his stomach.

Three months later, Nick and Harry had become good friends. And Harry had confided in Nick that he was finally going to tell Chelsea. Nick waited by the phone all night, to find out how it had gone. But Harry hadn't called.

A week went by, and not a word had been heard from Harry. Nick was getting worried, so he decided to swing by his house. He didn't find Harry, but he did find Harry's sister, Katilin. She told him Harry had left for New York, to talk to their parents. And then she said the second thing that would change Nick's world.

"Are you Nick? Harry talks about you all the time. I think he's in love with you, he just doesn't know it yet."

Nick had stayed with Katie, since she confessed to being a little scared of being in the house all alone with her sister, whom apparently wasn't in the best of conditions.

Then, two years back, Harry had decided he wanted to do something different. He didn't want to be a teacher after all. He wanted to be in the army. He'd enlisted without telling Nick. After being together for two years, Nick and Harry broke up over that silly little thing. Not that Harry wanted to risk his life every day by being in the army.

It had been much stupider.

Because Harry hadn't told Nick before he did it. And it had been a dumb and juvenile reason. Nick had loved Harry for all those years, wondering if he was okay. He'd looked in on Katie from time to time, making sure she was okay. It had formed a beautiful friendship. And now Harry was back. And there wasn't a bone in Nick's body that wanted to fight with him, ever again.

Nate had been six years old the first time he stood on a pair of skiis. He had been with his family in Vail during some holiday or other, and his father had decided it was time he learned how to skii. Nate had been scared out of his mind when he got on the lift, the first day after all the lessons, when it was time to skii all alone. He had jumped off the lift at the top, his father along side him, encouraging him to jump.

He had never wanted to skii down the big slope. But his father wanted him to be an over achiever, so that's what he got. An over achieving son who fractured one of the bones in his right leg as he took a bad tumble down the horrible part of the slope. But Nate had been out there the next day, trying to make his father proud.

Every year up until his fourteenth birthday, Nate and his family had gone to Vail to skii. And Nate had always tried to out-do himself. But when his fifteenth year came around, skiing was put off. His father had too much to do. And so it went on. He had to go alone, if he wanted to skii.

So once, not too long ago, he had finally decided to go skiing again. And that's when he had realized how much he missed it, and how good he really was at it.

Now, standing in line for the lift somewhere in the norweigan mountains, looking at all the snow and the skiiers, something in Nate just clicked.

There had been something in the air the day Dan Humphrey first saw Serena van der Woodsen. It had been something new and exciting and to him she had been the most beautiful girl in all the world.

She simple passed him on the street one day and he couldn't stop thinking about her.

Then fate stepped in, and suddenly he was dating the gorgeous blond he had once thought would never see him. He got to kiss her and hold her and it had been like a dream. It had been like a dream all the way up until the day when it hadn't been anymore. When the dream turned into a nightmare.

For Dan, breaking up with Serena had been the worst moment of his life – until he find out the son Georgina had told him was his, wasn't actually his.

Then suddenly Serena was a distant memory that held no such pain as the new one in his heart. But she stepped back into his life, and he couldn't help it. The words "moth to a flame" seemed to be accurate in the case of Dan Humphrey. After everything he had gone through, there he was now, waiting for Serena, waiting for her to tell him he was the one she had chosen.

Some nights had been like a small piece of forever for Blair; lying in bed alone was her worst nightmare after her break-up with Chuck and those nights seemed never ending half the time. Paris was her favorite place, apart from New York, and she loved being back in Paris, walking down the streets she adored, seeing the people, smalling the freshly baked bread and even seeing people fall in love under the summer sun had been a great distraction.

The moment she had seen Chuck there, in the midst of Paris, with his cain and his hair tussled and he looked nothing like the Chuck Bass she remembered – and it stung so bad she had barely been able to tear her eyes from him. Yet she managed. He had looked as stunned to see her as she was to see him, but she didn't want to admit that to herself. Instead she claimed he had come to fight for her, to get her back.

But she'd been wrong.

Upon returning to New York Blair had learned what had happened and she had hid in her room, crying her heart out hoping he would never have to go through anything like that again. No wonder she had felt like a piece of her was dying, if he had really been that badly hurt. Finally she had managed to drive a wedge between and the french girl that had saved him, she had fled from New York and an angry Bass had awoken. To that, she was both thrilled and scared. Seeing Chuck back in his ruthless patterns, was refreshing. Seeing him in his ruthless patterns out to destroy her, made her knees weak with fear.

Thought she would never admit it to anyone. Least of all herself.

So when Katie had blown into town, Blair had been sure Chuck would stand by her side in the fight against her and Jenny, taking them both down. But no. No he had turned on her again, not quite as ruthless as before, but he had sided with Nate and in that he had also been on a date with the horrid girl! Nothing would have Blair more in a fit of anger than Chuck turning his loyalties against her. But now, looking at him, remembering the first time he had told her he loved her, their first kiss, her first time, everything that had happened between them had led up to that single point in time. And despite Katie and her Hudson-honesty, Chuck was here, in her house, with her, lying on her bed, naked with the sheets tangled around him.

Blair knew Chuck had chosen her, yet again, over any other girl. Only this time she wasn't so sure there was ever going to be a forever between her and Chuck.

Katie, two years younger and two years more innocent, had met Danny right after her brother had left for Iraq. She had been young, innocent, tired and vulnerable as well as more brutal than normal in her honesty. When she met the young english man, she first of all pointed out how ridiculous his accent was. He just laughed at her and told her he couldn't help it, but he would have if he could have.

They had met in line for a coffeeshop during one of the off-chance weekends Katie actually spent with her parents. In tabloids she was always assumed to be some random woman in the vicinity of the famous people, or another assistent for the day. Katie had never minded this, she had never even minded being called "daughter of the help" because it meant she was safe. But meeting Danny in the line that day made everything harder. She could no longer lie about why she was in New York, or with whom. That night they had their first date – dinner with her parents.

Her whole relationship with Danny had been zero to a hundred in no time at all, and she had found herself missing him more and more each minute the first couple of weeks they were apart. So he started coming up to Hudson when he could, stayed in the guestroom when he had days off and she loved not being alone. She loved the way he talked to her, like she mattered, and how he always made her feel smarter than she was.

Honest, yes. Ph. D? Not likely.

One weekend Katie had gone to New York to see him at school, and had been blown away by the crazy world some people seemed to live in. She heard about Gossip Girl, about what a 'blast' was and Danny had told her all about the vain elite of Manhattan's Upper East Side. She had sworn to him to never become anything like them, even if she had the means to be.

On a crazy rainy night, she and Danny and ducked into a little restaurant. In a corner she had seen a man she knew her father knew well, he was a Bass, she remembered. Which one, she couldn't say, since there were two of the older generation after all. One of them had been in business with her father only a year back, but something had gone wrong. Neither of the men had lost money, which in itself had been a miracle.

But that night, Katie sat down and watched and older Bass talk to a young man, who had his eyes at the table, his posture was frozen in place and Katie felt for him as she watched his shame. Then Danny had leaned in "That's Chuck Bass," he said pointing at the younger of the two men.

"But he looks so..."

"Innocent," Danny had filled in, and Katie had nodded.

When Jenny had told Katie all about her and the Upper East Side, as well as the affair with Chuck, Katie had felt a familiar empathy – the same feeling she had had for Chuck in that restaurant she now directed at the young vulnerable girl that had managed to leave it all behind. Katie wasn't so sure she should have left Chuck and Jenny in the claws of Manhattan. On the other hand, being in her own bed listening to Harry and Nick talking about their issues downstairs, might be the better choice.

Still. Katie wasn't sure, so she picked up her phone, and dialed the number she knew would lead her to the phone of one miss Jennifer Humphrey.