A/N: And here it is! I don't know how much I can really update my stories after this week…and through mid-January. XD *feels horrible about this* But I'll do the best I can! *happy noddage* And as I did with Halloween, there will definitely be a Thanksgiving oneshot. ;p I just hope you can accept if it's a week early! XD Review! =D

*I don't own "Gossip Girl", and yes I really should inform you all more often. Lol.

Ch.10—Holding It In

"Jenny."

"Eric!" she gasped, spinning around to face him sitting on a chair in the living room.

"Let me guess…looking for Serena?" he raised his eyebrows. She laughed a bit awkwardly and glanced at the floor momentarily before attempting to resolve herself.

"No one else is home?" she managed.

"Nope. Just me. Aren't you lucky," he said, moving past her towards the kitchen to fill up his water glass he had recently emptied. Jenny's face flushed red as soon as he passed her, and with a quick swallow she turned back around to him and followed the boy's shadow slowly to the kitchen.

"I'm actually looking for Chuck…"

Eric turned to face her. "Chuck," he said in disbelief.

"Yes, Chuck," she defended. "Is that so hard to believe?"

He scoffed. "Yes!"

She winced. "Okay, but really I came to see him, is he here?" she asked after a few awkward moments. Eric sighed.

"So then you weren't here to see, Serena before, am I right?"

Her eyes widened. Hadn't he seen right through her?

"You didn't know?" she gaped. He chuckled, walking back into the living room and taking a seat on one of the plush chairs. She followed after him and did the same.

"Well, yeah, I did. Though, in the future, if you're interrogated for anything really important, it's probably best to be aware that your interrogators don't know all the answers."

A quiet guilty laugh escaped her and her eyes fluttered to the floor for a moment. "I'll keep that in mind," she said, running a hand through her long blonde locks, and looking at him again.

"So," he began again, "Why do you supposedly need to see Chuck?" he took a sip of the water from his cup. "He's with Blair practically all the time these days, or have you abandoned your phone?"

She laughed nervously again. It seemed that she was really bad at acting innocent. At least with particular subject she had involved herself in. Plus, Eric had gotten to know her pretty well. He could see when she wasn't being completely honest with him. Dan probably could too, and she wondered then if he was losing his game. He hadn't even really been aware of her skipping school or this last little lie she had told…three weeks ago. Abandoning her 'master plan' for the time being had kind of set her free and she wondered what she was really doing picking it back up again. Nate's call the night before had inspired her though. She couldn't really tell him nothing was going on between her and everything going on with Serena, because that wouldn't be the truth. But in order to tell him she would stop all that she was doing involving that love letter, she would probably have to tell him most of what had lead up to that. And that shouted a guilty, criminal Jenny like none other.

She sighed.

"Jenny?" Eric asked. His eyebrows were fused when she looked back at him. Apparently she had gotten lost in her thoughts. "What's going on?" he leaned forward in his chair.

"Jenny? Is something wrong?" he leaned forward a bit as the silence grew. Her eyes flashed up to his.

"Yeah," she blinked and shook her head briefly. "Maybe this was a mistake," she muttered, sinking back into her chair. Nate looked on in worry.

"Jenny."

Her eyes zoomed back in on him.

"You should tell me. You obviously feel like you can't tell anyone else, and I want you to tell someone you can trust, who can help you if you need it. Tell me," he encouraged, offering a small smile.

"I don't wanna involve you," she breathed, gulping. Her eyes were pinned to his face which was becoming more deathly serious by the second. But she couldn't tell him. She couldn't. Involving Nate had already caused too much chaos, and he didn't know half of what was going on, half of what she was involved in.

"I'm already involved. You coming over here first for Serena and now for Chuck? That's awfully suspicious. I mean, maybe not Serena, but Chuck definitely. You're not exactly involved in his…crowd."

"And his crowd is?" she quirked an eyebrow. She figured staring at the carpet wasn't doing much for her cover.

"Nate…Blair—"

"Blair?" she asked skeptically.

"When they're not fighting, yeah."

"And when are they not fighting, Eric? When she was dating Nate?" Her mind flashed back to Nate and his angry rant at three in the morning that day. She had told him they would talk, and it was after school now and they hadn't seen each other all day. She supposed she should have tracked him down, but it was he who was so desperate to get some answers for her, so…if he really needed to he could find her. Besides his mention of Chuck and Blair's dating being completely fake inspired her to discover exactly what was going on between them. She didn't suppose Chuck would actually talk to her about what was going on with him and Blair, but it was worth a shot.

Eric's face didn't change, but he kept peering at her facial expression, noticing the changes and deciding for himself that there was some serious conflict racing through her mind.

"Chuck and Blair have been friends for a long time," he leaned back in his chair again, folding his hands in his lap. "When they fell in love with each other, it got complicated."

Jenny pouted a bit. "So, they're really dating? It's not fake?" Her eyebrows fused.

He chuckled. "Jee, you don't miss a beat, do you Jenny?"

She blushed a little. He leaned forward again.

"I told you not to assume your interrogator knew everything."

She smiled a bit. "Alright, Eric. Tell me. Are they really dating? Or is it a scheme on Blair's end to get back at Serena for unintentionally dethroning her as queen at Constance?" she quirked an eyebrow.

He grinned. "Chuck goes out with Blair almost every night, and every night he does he comes home depressed and drinks an extra couple shots of scotch."

Her lips parted.

"Do you think that'd be the case if they were for real?"

"But," her eyebrows fused again, "Wouldn't he just go back to his suite if he didn't want anyone to…know?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes I think he gets confused," he winked and her lips formed a wide, bright smile. "Come on, I'll tell you more in my room. Just in case someone comes home. We wouldn't want to look suspicious." She rolled her eyes and stood up with him, following his confident figure up the stairs and to his bedroom.

His eyes hovered over her name on the screen of his cell phone in his contacts list. He gulped. He hadn't talked to Jenny. He needed to talk to Jenny. Though, as tired as she had been when he had called her early that morning, he knew she had been telling the truth in every aspect of the word. She had forgotten about the scandal she might be unleashing, and probably didn't know any more than she had already let on. Still, Serena was spiraling and Jenny was right. He hadn't intervened. He hadn't even really talked to Serena since those last couple weeks before school started. Even then there hadn't been much interacting between them. And whether she was falling apart because of Blair or because of him or both didn't entirely matter. She was falling apart and he hadn't even tried to help in the situation.

His phone rang, and his eyes zeroed in on the name blaring across his screen, and widened.

SERENA CALLING.

He gulped, only for half a second before answering the phone in his realization that it would only ring so many times.

"Serena, hey!"

"Natie…" she drawled in a sort of sing-song voice. He closed his eyes slowly in frustration. She was drunk. And it was almost appalling since according to his watch, his cell phone, and the clock in his wall it wasn't even six o'clock yet, was hardly past four thirty. Was this how she spent every waking moment now?

"Serena," he said a little more seriously, sighing.

"Nate, what's wrong?" she pouted on the other line. "Are you sad?" she giggled, and he shook his head. She was nowhere near the right place to be talking seriously.

"Where are y—"

"You know, we haven't talked in forever!" her voice rose in pitch and he backed away from the phone momentarily, guessing it would be best if he just answered in mumbled responses and barely half-words.

"Yeah…"

"Since Blair's back-to-school party?" her eyebrows crinkled, wondering in her dizzy state if that's really what the event had been called.

"Yeah," he began, suddenly remembering how he had seen her go off with Dan into the elevator all giggly and happy, then had seen her after the lights had come back on…sad and depressed.

She sighed dramatically. "How come?" she asked, in a quiet voice. He thought she sounded every bit the cute little playmate he had grown up with, the one who was about to cry when her doll had gotten ripped away but then was completely bright-eyed and enthused by the sight of a sunflower a little ways off.

"Where are you?" he asked, when the silence had lasted a significant amount of time and he figured it was safe to answer in more than one or two words. He heard her yawn, and restrained the sigh seeping through his closed lips.

"Hmm?" she asked, almost in full consciousness to his question. His eyes searched the empty space in front of him. All he could think about these last few weeks was her and if she was okay, if it was really anything to worry himself over or if it was just Gossip Girl and her rumors.

"Where are you?" he repeated, figuring now was not the best time to bring up any serious topics. She would have forgotten by the moment, and he was so concerned in worry for her that he couldn't let his curiosity over what the heck they were take over his system.

"I'm…lost," she giggled, and he could imagine just how her fingers would dance on the edge of her bottom lip.

His lips pursed. The statement was all too true for both of them he guessed, especially in regards to their possibly romantic relationship, or lack thereof.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

His eyebrows furrowed and he found himself at a loss for words.

"Nate?"

She didn't even sound drunk anymore, and he wondered for a second if he had imagined her whole spiral to begin with and this was just a conversation to catch up on the last month or so that they had lost touch.

"Uh, I—I'm here," he stuttered over his words and she didn't even giggle. Something was up. Something had to be.

She sighed and burst into giggles that transferred into crying and then she burped—small but still very evident. He shook his head. It had been a mere breath of sanity. He recalled a time or two when she had been right in front of him and drunk and asking the most serious things and you honestly thought maybe she was drifting out of drunkenness. Her facial expressions always gave it away though, and now he had to decipher how she really was without that helpful tool guiding him. It used to be so easy. But somehow they had gotten lost in the last six months…they had lost each other.

"Serena, please just tell me where you are." He was more demanding this time around, and he definitely didn't want to be. He hated talking harsh to her. But he needed to find out where she was. If she was really as tipsy as she sounded over the phone, he needed to find her and get her out of there.

"Victrola…" she sighed contently, and he could hear her as she nearly fell off the barstool she was no doubt on and some guy steadied her back to the position she had been in. She mumbled a bit in way of gratitude again and then he heard her steady, but giggly sigh draining back into the phone.

"Victrola?" he asked confused, "And Chuck isn't there?" If he had been, Nate was pretty sure he wouldn't let Serena get to the state she was at—he had been rescuing her every day she got herself wasted in the last three weeks and it was an even more painful reminder that he hadn't jumped in to help her as well.

"Not that I saw…" she mumbled, "I brought the girls here so Penelope could seduce Chuck, since I guess he wasn't here yesterday either, but…" she exhaled, for a considerably long time.

"Serena?"

"They left," she confirmed. He sighed.

"Stay put," he said, and her eyebrows furrowed.

"Are you leaving me?" her eyes watered.

"No, never. Just stay put. I'm…coming to see you."

"Oh, yay!" she cheered.

Click.

Ten minutes later he was in a cab, informing the driver of his immediate destination. He had been out of her life for too long, even if it had been only a month, and he was going to change that.

Seven o' clock.

Blair glared at her alarm clock, draping a soft headband over its numbers. Everything had been so stressful this last month. Everything with Chuck and Serena and living the artificial Blair. Usually when she was being fake and pretending everything was perfect there was at least one person she could go to, be it Chuck or Serena or whoever else, and that person made it all better and like she didn't have to be fake anymore. At least not with them. Well, there was none of that. She had blocked her feelings for Chuck away because if she actually left herself feel for him again, she would be even more crushed when he tossed her away as soon as things were back to normal with her and Serena. It almost gave her motivation to avoid Serena all together. Chuck was clearly frustrated by her fake demeanor, but at least she had him on some sort of leash until this was all over. Now she didn't know if she really wanted it to be over or not. She may have not really been showing it on the outside but on the inside she was bursting with warmth and butterflies whenever he wrapped his arm around her waist or kissed her the sake of a far-off camera phone.

She sighed.

Waking up that morning with a temperature of 101.4 and an overwhelming nauseous feeling had not been a part of the plan. Neither had been the intense dizziness when she tried to walk from her bed to the bathroom in order to purge her dinner from the night before, not that she had really eaten that much anyways. She had been eating even less than usual, and that very well could have been the cause too. That and probably the hangover she had gotten from last night's drunken fest. She hated that Chuck had started to see through her. It made her cry that he might be figuring her out after all these weeks. Then he would want to be rid of her sooner. She was just lucky he had bought into her need for him to dispose of his call girls for the sake of their agreement. Every time before that she had to fight back the tears of thinking who he had been screwing the night before. Now she could at least partially believe herself when Gossip Girl had boasted of his continuous faithfulness and proof of it too. Luckily for her, half the girls who had sent tips to Gossip Girl about their days outside and being all cutesy had been set up by Blair herself. After all, you can't count on these girls to always be where you're at with your fake boyfriend when you were at where you planned to be. Even they didn't know it was a fake relationship though, and Blair really wished it wasn't. But she had already risked too much. She had slept with him again, she had confessed she loved him and he didn't say or do anything in return. Just like before. So this was what she resorted to: her fake, snide self—the self without Serena and Chuck in the genuine flesh, heart and soul. At least when she had one of them—which she usually always did—she didn't have to be so…not herself. Not all the time.

Apparently her body hated her for this transformation though. She grumbled, holding her hand tight against her stomach, begging for the pain to go away. Sounds erupted from the skin beneath her hand and she grumbled. Her stomach was awfully hungry for a body part that insisted on throwing up after even a hint of a crumb, even water was sketchy.

"Well, well, Waldorf, it appears you're actually sick."

She exhaled for a long time, knowing full well who that voice belonged to. There, looking as smug as the Basstard everyone knew him to be, was Chuck Bass, soup, Advil and jewelry in hand. He smirked, laying the items on the first flat surface he found on way to her bed. She whined, turning to face the other direction.

"Go away, Bass, I don't want you here," she coughed.

He continued to smirk. "Now, now, what kind of boyfriend would I be if I didn't keep my sick girlfriend company?"

She huffed, sitting up in her bed suddenly and though doing nothing about it, was now very aware of how messy her hair must look and how much she didn't want Chuck Bass to see it.

"Dorota!" she called, her voice hoarse. Apparently throughout the day she had developed a cold too. Maybe it wasn't just a hangover. "Mr. Chuck," she mocked her maid's title for the boy before her, "won't leave!" she shouted.

Chuck took another couple steps towards her, and in a rush she pulled the blankets higher up around her. "I sent her out. There's nobody here."

Blair gaped. "You, what?" she whispered incredulously.

He smirked and walked the remaining distance to her bed, sitting about three-fourths of the way down. "I gave her a list of your most desired birthday gifts. There wasn't even a second look before she was bustling out the door."

She was still gaping, rather irritated at that constant smug smirk on his face. "Of course, I also offered to take care of you," he leaned towards her, but she pushed him away, scoffing as she did. "She wanted you in good hands, with you being sick and all." He winked.

She coughed, reaching for a tissue and sneezing into it. God, this is so embarrassing. He reached for an additional tissue and offered it to her, but she refused it. Only taking it from him when a sneeze seemed inevitably approaching. She sighed, agonizingly, once her sneezes had completed themselves, and slouched against the wall her bed was up against.

"Go home, Bass," she said, nasally.

He shook his head at her. "Not until we come to an agreement."

Her tired, weary, almost red eyes slowly made their way to his. "What about?" She was hardly in the mood for puffing up her fake, 'in-charge' demeanor and she knew he could tell. She cursed herself for being so vulnerable at this moment because that probably meant he would hold this against her and demand she not be so fake, at least around him, and she couldn't give that up.

"Before you say anything—" she sniffled as his lips parted in preparation of speech. Her raised his eyebrows. "I want you to know that whatever I say tonight can be taken back in the near future."

He sighed, and shook his head at her. "I'm going to ignore that," he said, and she rolled her eyes.

"What, then, Bass?"

"You need to stop being such a fake bitch," he spat, and she was taken aback by his sudden shift in attitude and tone of voice.

"What?" she asked, incredulously. She sat up against the wall again. He had no right to talk this way to her. She was sick!

"You know what I'm referring to, and unless you alter the deal to make it somewhat enjoyable for me, then I'm out. You've got nothing hanging over my head and I can just as easily build Serena's reign back up so it's just about impossible for you to take back."

"I'm not sleeping with y—"

"I didn't say anything about sex, though…if the opportunity presents itself—"

"Chuck."

He rolled his eyes. "I just want you to be real with me, Blair. It's me. Not Nate or your superficial minions." Her heart warmed at his stating of the minions being hers and not Serena's, but a sharp pain shot through her at his pleading for her discarding of the mask she had built up so well.

Panic.

Her eyes narrowed though and she coughed. "Fine," she sniffed. His eyes stayed pinned to her and it made her feel even worse. This day could not get any worse. Now she would lose him for sure, and much sooner than she had hoped. A breath caught in her throat, but for some reason he could not speak. He had gotten what he wanted out of her, and regardless of her prior statement he knew she would keep this admission. He just didn't think it would come so easily. He didn't think the first vulnerable moment he'd walked in on in weeks would end so well on his part, not at first at least.

"Now go," she demanded, barely holding in her tears, barely holding herself together. The whole sick factor was not making matters any better.

He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off and looked away towards the window.

"You got what you came for. I'm sure Gossip Girl will find this allotted time more than enough to prove yourself a faithful boyfriend," she spat, nasally voice accommodating her speech. He could not even laugh. He saw those tears she was holding back. She wasn't even letting him in all the way and it wasn't just the sickness that had gotten her so emotional. Something had happened the night before, and something was happening now. But staying here and trying to figure it out would not help anything. If anything it would make matters worse. So, slowly he stood to his feet and backed away to the door. Just before leaving he turned back to her.

"I'll call Dorota. Tell her to come back."

Blair nodded softly, unsteadily continuing to breathe. It was all killing him so much but he left the room and closed the door, calling Dorota on the way out.

"Jenny."

"Dan!" she said in surprise, closing her laptop immediately and pushing it off to the side. He zoned in on it before registering his eyes back on her face. He was dead serious and he knew something and he knew she knew something he didn't. And he knew she had lied.

She gulped.

"That laptop was open and you were working on it and you pushed it away just like you did now…three weeks ago, and then the week before that. What's going on Jen?" he asked, taking a step closer to her and settling uneasily on the edge of her bed.

"Dan, there is a such thing as facebook and homework," she avoided his gaze, trying to bring humor into her response with a lazy gesture of her hand.

"That's not it. You lied to me." He walked the rest of the distance towards her and sat on her bed. "What's going on?"

"Dan—" her eyebrows fused. This had come out of nowhere. Sure, she was guilty, but where were his sources coming from? Were they even legitimate?

"Show me what's on that laptop."

She reached for it and hugged it close to your chest. "I don't have to show you anything. Besides there's nothing suspicious on here."

"Really?" he asked. He was not only skeptical but now she was certain he knew something she didn't…by someone she wasn't aware of. "So, if I looked at whatever you're working on showing on your computer screen, it wouldn't have anything to do with Nate and Serena?"

Her eyes widened, and he scoffed, standing to his feet and making to leave her room.

"That's all the proof I need."

"No, no, no, Dan! You don't understand! I didn't even say anything!" she nearly shrieked, stopping him before he could leave. He sighed harshly.

"Jenny—"

"Dan."

He pursed his lips and then opened them in way of explaining himself. "I saw the letter."

Her eyebrows narrowed and she folded her arms across her chest. "The letter."

"The letter," he repeated. "From Serena to Nate on the day I told her I loved her."

"You went digging through my stuff?" she asked incredulously.

"I didn't have to, it was right out in the open!"

"What?"

He rolled his eyes and pointed to where it now lie on top of her dresser. "I came in to see if you were here the other day so we could go out for ice-cream and talk about whatever, since things seemed to be calming down, at least between us and at school, for the most part, not regarding Serena…"

She listened as she walked slowly towards her dresser and spotted the letter that she had safely tucked away in the midst of her clothes three drawers down. "You wanted an escape," she said, her voice far-off.

"Well, that too," he shrugged. "I guess things really aren't super great again, just not tense with you and me…I thought." He was growing angry again until she turned around.

"No, that's not what I meant," her voice strained itself. His eyebrows morphed a different degree. He was confused now until she offered up the unfolded pages of the letter before her. "I never opened this, Dan. You did."

He looked down at the pages before her and was close to touching it when she pulled it away, folded it and tucked it back into the depths of her drawers. "You wanted an escape," she murmured, repeating the words from just a few moments ago.

"Jenny…" he took a step towards her, hesitant as to what he could even say that would redeem his place in the conversation. Sure, she was doing something behind his back, but he should never have invaded her privacy—not like this.

"That's what I saw just now, glancing at the top of the page of what you most likely read thoroughly," she spun towards him. "Why would you go through my stuff?"

"It was out in the open, I said!"

"And so naturally you felt the need to take it and read it through," she scoffed. He shook his head.

"No, no, Jenny, that's not what it was like," he said.

"Have you told anyone?" she raised her eyebrows. "About the letter?"

His mouth snapped shut and she felt like she wanted to scream. She had been trying so hard to keep this away from everybody. She thought Nate should know since he was just as involved as Serena most likely, but Dan? She had been trying to protect him from this madness! From these hidden feelings! Now the day he thought he'd remember fondly forever would be tainted by marks of his previously current girlfriend being in love with the guy he'd thought he'd won her from.

"Nate needed to know," he insisted. His eyes fell into the deepest dark brown she'd seen and her own were set ablaze.

"I already talked to him. He said he didn't know anything about it—"

"And then he called at three in the morning last night."

Thick, hazy silence fell between them and neither could speak. Neither could move either and it was only the ringing of Jenny's phone that snapped them out of their daze. Jenny turned to where the noise was coming from and followed after it, picking her phone up on instant.

"Hello?" she sighed, "Yeah, dad, Dan and I are both home and doing are homework," she forced a smile into her voice and in moments she was off the phone. When she turned back around her brother had almost reached her computer and once again she sprung to him before he could get to close.

"What's on it, Jen?" he demanded, more than a little suspicious now.

"Nothing," her eyes narrowed.

"So, you're not scheming anything? No plots? No nothing?"

"Nothing."

He sighed, shaking his head and looking to the floor, if only for a moment. "Somehow I feel like you're not telling the truth." He looked at her hard in those fiery blue eyes and turned away, slamming the door behind him. Jenny's eyes shut slowly and with shaky hands she fell back onto her bed. He shouldn't have gone through her stuff, but she was so positive she hadn't left it out in the open. After all, that was how Serena got her letter stolen to begin with.

She groaned stretching out across her covered mattress. It didn't all have to be a secret, did it? Couldn't she just hope for the best…that Serena and Blair would work things out, and she could somehow slide that letter back under Serena's bed and forget it had happened at all?

No. Serena and Blair were still fighting, and still spiraling, both of them—in one way or another—and it wasn't getting any better.

Serena's letter was no longer known just to her, but to Nate and Dan now. Even Eric was skeptical to her random occurrences at his house and the probably unintentional hints she had thrown him earlier in the day.

It was too late to put away this secret.

"If you wanna be part of this world, Jenny, people will talk. Eventually. And you need to decide if all this? …is worth it."

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