A/N: Wow, this chapter was quite the trip to write. There's so much going on and it's a delicious challenge to pull it all together. I really hope you'll all enjoy it! And thank you, thank you as always for your kind reviews, follows, favorites and PMs! (I've tried to write each of my followers/favorite-rs a thank-you note, but I toggle between the app and the website and I'm not sure messages translate between the two mediums; at least they don't for me.) I want to let you all know that your dedication in reading and being such a supportive audience means everything to me, and I'm so grateful! =)
i.
January 17
Late afternoon
When the television screen is thirty seconds dark in shamed silence, she walks away.
Her father's hands slide over her hair and shoulders and arms, twitching like they're going to grasp at her elbows and make her stay, but he decides against it and she wheels around, first few steps small and unsteady. The television is off and there's an awful quiet that she wishes was deadly, but isn't. She swallows hard, sleeves of her blue sweater coming up to dab at her wet cheeks and avoiding her stitched cheek and lip in second nature, like she's been doing so all her life.
"I'm going upstairs," she says. She hears her mother take a step behind her, and then stop- perhaps she thinks better of it or perhaps her father holds up a hand in warning.
The silence follows her all the way up the stairs, which she ascends slowly, teeth gritting to avoid showing how much her ribs are smarting. She doesn't lock her door, acutely aware of the straining of her parents' ears toward the second floor, listening for the click.
She texts Chuck, expression flat and impassive- incongruous with the tears that begin to flow again once she shuts herself in her bedroom- as she types out the quip. She can't call him, can't call anyone like this.
She flips a movie on- selecting randomly from the queue of Audrey downloaded to her laptop- and cranks the volume.
Buzz.
Serena: I saw. Are you okay?
She lays the laptop on her vanity, close to her door. So her parents will hear it if they stop outside to listen. So they'll leave her alone.
Flips open her phone and channels her brave face once more.
ii.
"I know, but this is what happens when there's a public panic. People insist they're sure, and then the mob mentality develops and suddenly you're having citizens arrests left and right." Tyler heaves a ragged sigh. "Not that this is your problem, but it's a nightmare for dispatch."
No, it's not his problem. "Are there any other strong leads?"
A half-syllable forms and dies in Tyler's throat, then he thinks better of it. "They're pouring in now. We're just trying to keep up with evaluating every entry from the slush pile."
"Efficient." Mockery drips audibly. "And the exercise of tracing his movements by surveillance footage?"
"Lost his trail on the cameras. He was heading uptown, toward Upper East, so it's likely he's living or staying there- or maybe just that he was doing another errand after the dry cleaning. Even if he is living there, that hardly narrows it down. It's not like we can go door to door."
Chuck's hand squeezes his own leg in frustration and releases. "And why is that?"
"We're-" Tyler pulls away from the mouthpiece and responds in the affirmative to a flurry of voices on the other side. "Because we're not the Gestapo. This is already a federal manhunt and we're pulling resources from the tri-state area and beyond, but there's a limit to what even this level of staffing can do." He pauses. "We just got a promising photo from Stuytown. I have to go."
He texts Nate back, flipping over the picture of him and Serena stepping off the elevator seventeen floors below from this morning, adding it to his stack. Maybe stay out of dodge for the rest of the day.
He's getting in the shower- hot water running and steam billowing, to wash off the sweat of fevered sleep and adrenaline and if it were Lily- when his phone buzzes on the counter.
Serena: So. Bait time?
iii.
Evening
It's hours later when she awakens. Audrey has run her course and the laptop is asleep; her phone is buried in the folds of her duvet. Several seconds tick by before she's fully cognizant: first of where she is; then, of why; and last, of what woke her up.
Texts from Serena as their conversation trailed into darkness, sleep claiming her, a sharp discomfort in her side because heaving with sobs that she's desperate to conceal into her pillow is not something she should be doing with two broken ribs.
Here for you. I love you.
Do you want any company?
Just let me know. I'm free for you any time day or night.
And with the sudden prickle of a fingernail scraping down her spine, she realizes how damp she is. Scalp hot, hairline saturated with sweat; back of her collar cold and wet against her nape. Small of her back staining her lounge pants with the uncomfortable chill of a frantic nightmare.
She flicks Serena away.
Chuck, hours ago: Very much intact. Considering using paparazzi for target practice. Thoughts?
She starts to smile, but shivers instead and, when she braces a hand against the mattress to maneuver out of bed, feels how clammy it is.
She texts Dorota. Pajamas. Warm and dry. Need to shower ASAP. And then: Change of sheets, too.
Her phone buzzes again as Dorota knocks with impressive punctuality, and she pauses in the middle of carefully tugging her sweater over her head, pants already stripped off and puddled behind her where she kicked them. She pauses, reminding herself not to contort against the already-aching soreness in her side, and plucks the neckline up with one hand. Even the effort of drawing her arm up is staggeringly painful, much more so than a day or two ago, but she's determined that she doesn't need Dorota to undress her anymore.
"Come in," she says triumphantly, nonetheless hissing at the final yank to get it over her head as the door opens behind her. She turns. "I'm freezing-"
It's not Dorota.
iv.
It beats on in his mind, already exhausted, a hydraulic pump that whirs and glides, never stopping.
She didn't slip away.
He thought she would have, was sure. She was supposed to.
His eyes had locked on her face, smiling up from a photo in a street-corner trash can, an insert from a newspaper that looked to have been ripped out and discarded. He only saw half of her smile at a glance but knew it at once. He knew that face, that open, pretty face. Delicate nose, wide eyes. So familiar.
He'd stopped when he saw the words around her on the page.
Wrist nonchalant on his shoulder, plastic garment covering draped over his back, walking home, he drifted to a stop. Someone jostled him from behind, "oh- sorry," and then a raw breeze whipped against his face, but everything was already going gray around him.
Stepped closer, steady, and picked it up. And turned and walked the rest of the way back, with her in his fingers.
And he stared at her, first in his kitchen and then sitting on the edge of his bed, fresh dry cleaning on the smoothed bedspread behind him, for what seemed like a few minutes but what he knew must have been longer, the sun setting and then rising again before he got the chance to get up and turn on the light.
He found himself smiling fondly at her in the dark, his anger at her for being a whore having dissipated somewhat. He'd learned about forgiveness in therapy, pleased at the release he got from forgiving himself, pleased at how gratified his therapist was to hear him say it. He'd said it over and over. I forgive myself.
He'd asked for forgiveness, been granted it. Surely he could forgive her for failing him. Maybe, like him, she needed a second chance.
v.
Earlier
Buzz-
You okay?
Of course not.
Can I call you? Or come up and see you?
Not a good time. I need to be ready in case she needs me.
How is she doing?
Looking out over Midtown, long since dark, though it's just past dinnertime. Her room faces westward; she can see the park if she cranes her head to the right.
Madison Avenue, a straight shot from here to the Waldorf penthouse. She could be in a cab in under five minutes.
She's Blair.
vi.
The sighting near Stuytown is, of course, another bust. Looking at the attachment Tyler surreptitiously sends him afterward, other than the ambiguous basics- tall, dark hair and eyebrows, average build- he sees nothing that should have incited such certainty that this was their guy.
Part of the mob mentality, Tyler tells him.
"People see what they want to see. A stranger's face, with even slightly approximated features to the ones they're looking for, morphs into a doppelganger. When people are afraid, they tend to fill unknown people and spaces with their own fears. Sort of the same way criminals don't tend to see their victims as people; they're objects, or obstacles. Expendable." Shuffling of papers; the thud of a heavy file being dropped unceremoniously on the top of a desk. "Which is why profiling is such a difficult task."
Expendable.
Rode hard and put away wet.
He glances at his reflection, distorted, in the polished chrome of his refrigerator. Dosed to kill, left to die, ribs shattered and face bleeding, exposed, vulnerable. Expendable.
His phone chimes against his ear. Her. Love it. Fire away.
vii.
He sleeps, deep and furious, dreaming of dark hair and graceful features, when the sun begins to somersault again into darkness. When he wakes, still holding the photographs of her- her smile blurring, the ink beginning to rub off of the cheap newspaper onto his sweating hands- it's back up, bright and happy.
When he looks down at the now-hazy image of her smile, she looks exactly, exactly, like…
And he stills for a moment, and he's not sure why.
Because that's what he wanted. That's why she was so perfect. Made for him.
His mind echoes- Please, please, don't- and he turns the hot water in his shower all the way up, so that it hurts him when he gets in. Heat searing on his chest, his shoulders prick forward like he's going to curl up in a ball, and his lips form the words over and over, a silent scream.
viii.
Her eyes are wide with alarm. "Get out," she hisses.
He's frozen, lips parted. "Blair…" She can hear him gasping a breath as she yanks her damp sweater to cover her bare chest, the quick movement sending a jolt through her.
"Get out," she says again, voice rising. She moves then, turning away- though he can still see the horrible deep purple on her ribs, the evil black word stitched into her leg.
Why did no one tell him about that? They must know, they must-
Blair backs against the closed door of her bathroom now. "Nate, please." Her voice quavers. He gets his bearings and stumbles backward, knocking into the corner of the door that's only partly ajar, and shuts it with a soft click behind him.
He holds onto the knob for a long time, swallowing, over and over and over.
He turns and presses his own back against the wall, slides down and puts his head in his hands. "Fuck," he whispers, eyes welling with tears. The stuffed bulldog is tucked under his arm, and it slips out and slumps over onto its side, little legs splayed into the air like it's dead and rigor mortis has set in. This is sure to cheer her up, his mother had said, holding it up for him, white "Y" embroidered on the navy scarf round its neck. To keep her company.
The door opens next to him and she looks down. She's put the blue pajamas back on, and she's hugging her own waist, chin quivering from cold or misery.
"What are you doing here?" she asks at a whisper.
"I…" He holds up the bulldog, then scrambles to his feet. "I came to apologize to your parents about the tabloid spread- and bring you this."
She doesn't reach for it.
But really, those were excuses, and he knows it and she probably does too. The real reason he came here is to ask her to talk to Serena, to tell her Serena wants to help her and he thinks she can, that they're better together, they always have been.
Instead, his mouth opens and what comes out is: "I'm – I'm so sorry, Blair." And his nose grows hot and tingles and then he's crying in front of her. "I'm so sorry. Please, can you forgive me for last week, for…"
For everything. For Serena. For starting this whole mess that ended with you being alone that night.
He started it. He knows it; they all do. He may be the pretty, stupid one- he knows that- but he's not that stupid.
She swallows, eyes brimming. "Don't…"
He drops the bulldog and puts both hands on her hair, raking gently through her damp locks, withdrawing when they hit tangles. He presses a long kiss to the top of her head.
"You know I love you, right?"
She stiffens, imperceptibly, draws away. "Nate…" She's crying now, crying like she never has in front of him.
"You know, right?"
"You don't have to…"
"I love you, I always will. I never would have- I never wanted- " But he stops, because he can't say I never wanted this, because of course he didn't.
"It's okay," she whispers up at him.
He looks down, wiping his eyes distractedly. "Can I hug you?" His hands touch her elbows, tentative.
And she smiles a little, sad- he's struck by how much her half-smile looks like Serena's. Like they match up perfectly, regardless of where they are.
"You have to be careful," she murmurs.
He puts his arms around her, loose, more an encircling than an embrace, fingertips patting ever so gently at her shoulder, her hair, the back of her head. But his eyes are dark with anger, so dark that they almost miss the vase of peonies on her bedside table. Short-stemmed peonies. A hand bouquet that he did not bring.
I don't care what the tabloids say, his mother huffed at him an hour or so earlier. And you shouldn't either. They're a way of life for people like us. Are you going to let that become more important to you than supporting Blair right now?
And he really couldn't argue with that. Though she did seem to spend a lot of time flipping through them the last few days, for someone who didn't care, he'd thought as he kissed her on the cheek while she stood at the kitchen counter, tsk-tsking at the spread on him from this morning. Struggling up Madison toward this very building with that enormous arrangement that she'd insisted he go to pick up in person.
He closes his eyes. She's right. That's not more important than Blair is.
"Is there anything, anything, I can do to help you?"
Blair chuckles through a sob, but it turns into a cough when she inhales her own tears, and then she's holding his forearm against her side, against that spot he can't get out of his mind, and it's flexing terribly with each rack of her rib cage. She presses her face into his chest. He flattens his other palm on her back, between her shoulder blades, feeling the force of every exhalation.
All the times he's seen her legs, in shorts and bikinis and skirts, and all it took was this one glance to overwrite it all forever.
The cough subsides and she lets go of his arm. "I have to hold something against me when I cough," she mutters.
"Just tell me what I can do," he says, bending his knees a little, leaning back, so he can look in her eyes.
She clears her throat primly. "If you happen to bump into the guy, can you punch him out for me?"
He smiles. "I'd love to."
She gestures into the hallway behind him. "And give me that bulldog."
He stays with her while Dorota changes her sheets, quiet and watchful, and then she excuses herself to take a shower. On Sunday, when they did the crossword and traded sections of the paper, it settled into him uncomfortably that he'd done wrong by her, terribly, terribly wrong. Maybe he could make it up to her in some way, he thought then; maybe make her smile with the bulldog, the flowers- his mother really is better at these things than he- maybe help her talk to Serena, he thought today. Serena, who was dying without her and he was sure it was mutual. Had to be.
But the marked girl he saw when he opened the door was not Blair, and protective anger for his first kiss, his first hand-hold, his first- not everything, but many things- flooded him when she looked up and saw him, him, Nate, and backed away, almost cowering.
When she thanks him for coming, he says, "I love you, Blair," again, like he has a million times, even as the memory of the feeling of Serena's fingers and knee against his palm tells him that that's not the whole story. It never was. He knows that.
She pauses and looks at him like she knows it, too. "You, too, Archibald."
ix.
Her forehead is still resting against the glass of her window, looking uptown, up Madison where she now doesn't have the nerve to go without being asked.
She remembers how, a week ago tonight, she took the elevator up out of the freezing rain, only to be told Miss Blair hadn't come home yet.
That's okay, she said then, taking a seat on the chaise in the sitting room. I'll wait for her.
(She did not say: I'll wait all night, to tell her she's not on her own. She'll never be on her own. I'll always be here for her.)
Flicking up and down on her phone, checking for Gossip Girl blasts, double-checking for texts back. Confusion setting in as minutes, then an hour, ticked by.
Calling, at last, the one person who seemed somewhat likely to know. Going to voicemail; her subsequent calls fired straight into his mailbox, no rings. Rolling her eyes because he's obviously silenced her calls and, really, he's the one who started this whole mess.
(If you see her, or hear from her…)
Her phone buzzes, and she opens the eyes she didn't realize she closed. "Fuck," she mutters to herself, defeated, at the way her heart soars and dives when she opens it and sees who it is.
I want you to know I love you and I'm here for you.
She sighs. I know. Thank you.
Is there anything I can do?
Her mouth twists into a scowl that she knows is unfair. Unless you can find some way to hand the guy over to the NYPD, not really.
She leans her forehead back against the glass.
x.
Just past ten, there's yet another false alarm, this time on the Upper East. He doesn't even bother to sweat this time.
He's with Erik in 1812, eating room service, Erik having texted forty minutes before- Almost-brother, any chance you're free for dinner? Have to get out of here for a few.
Smirk. He bet.
Sure, if you promise to come alone.
And come alone he did, in comical fashion, a hooded cable-knit sweater with the hood pulled up as if he was traveling incognito and not taking an elevator three floors from his mother's suite to his.
Lily wouldn't let him visit her, Erik explained. She thought it would be too hard for him. Mess him up in some way. "As if it's not messing me up just knowing what happened to her," Erik says, not lifting his gaze as he cuts his steak.
Spearing a bite with a slice of roasted carrot: Serena feels helpless- it's obvious, she's barely sat still all day- and she hates feeling helpless. She'd get like this, when they were younger, every time Lily got serious with a guy.
Erik- he hushes his voice at this, draining the splash of red he agreed to, since it paired so well with the filet- always thought his mom sort of wished Serena would be more like Blair.
Chuck nods confidentially, thinking that most mothers of girls like Serena probably want their daughters to be more like Blair.
Erik, patting at his mouth with his napkin, always… always thought of her as a sister. You know?- Well- (with a chuckle and a flippant hand gesture) maybe you don't think of most girls like sisters.
One corner of Chuck's mouth curves up and then settles, remembering how limp she was in his arms, how small in her hospital bed; how soft and quiet, patting her duvet with her bandaged hand while he tugged at his tie.
"No, I guess not," he agrees.
Erik pushes his plate away, inclining his head toward his older almost-brother, dark brown eyes- so like Lily's; Serena must have gotten her father's eyes- resting without hesitation on Chuck's face. Not flitting away.
"And how are you doing with all this?"
xi.
Time slides away, lost in the pounding of the water (one of the things he loves about living in the city is that the hot water never seems to run out), and when he finally steps out he's stinging and raw and his hands are shaky. But he shaves anyway, wiping away the steam on the mirror over and over as it re-fogs. He cuts himself and pauses to watch the blood trickle down his neck.
He's not sure if what he hears is her voice, or his.
And he can't understand, no matter how hard he listens, if the voice is requesting- please, please, I'm begging you, I'll do anything- for it to stop or for it to keep going.
He always- he loved it- and so did she- she just wasn't- she was a whore- so she wasn't the right- she must have loved it- he- didn't he?-
He drops the razor and sinks to his knees, shaving cream dripping in the damp air, head resting on the bathroom counter.
That smile, wide brown eyes…
Whose? Whose…? He can't-
And it cracks through him then, louder, his own voice- stop, please, please, stop-
And his own, again, deeper, sharper-
You love it. You whore. WHORE.
Panicked, spiking in a squeal, breath taut in small lungs: Please, please, don't, I'm begging you-
He covers his ears and stays there, curled on the floor, until it stops.
xii.
He and Erik part ways at the elevator bank just before midnight, and he's barely taken a sip of his Scotch when he hears a familiar click-clack.
"Good evening, Charles. I thought I might find you here." Lily slides easily next to him, holding up an oversized dossier. "I was hoping I could prevail upon you to grace me with your good taste once more."
"I'd be delighted."
She flips it open and there is the copper-and-celadon bathroom.
He snickers and takes a thoughtful sip. "That was fast."
"Any project connected with your father commands a certain amount of urgency," she agrees. To Andrew, who's on the bar tonight: "Hot water with lemon, please."
"Make that two," he adds with a tilt of his head.
Lily's hand covers his, the one that's loosely palming his Scotch. He looks up. "I want you to know you're more than welcome to stay with us," she says, smooth and warm, eyes never leaving his. The steadiness focused upon him by two brown sets of Van der Woodsen eyes in as many hours is unnerving. "I don't think any of us should be alone right now. Your father insists on staying in the penthouse, but perhaps not all Bass men are so stubborn."
He licks his lips, taken aback. "That's very kind of you, Lily, I appreciate it- "
She squeezes. "I know you've been on your own a while, and I'm not suggesting you can't manage, but maybe- just since we've all been through a difficult time. We have a spare bedroom and I'd be thrilled if you'd join us." She pauses, and then: "And furthermore, I very much hope you'll move into the penthouse with all of us after the wedding."
Her offer is so tender and sincere that it almost overwrites the irony that he doesn't live in the penthouse now, with his own father- as all logic would dictate- and hasn't for a few years.
"I think we should discuss that with my father," he says, carefully. His father "surprised" him with his own suite for his birthday one year, not long after- well, one particularly emphatic disappointment- and deciding to reverse that decision without his input is probably not a wise idea.
Lily just blinks through her smile and releases his hand. "Happy to. You think about both. Your father is accompanying me to the designer tomorrow. He wants to go with me every time I leave the building until that- man- is caught. And we're stopping by the Waldorfs' on the way back, since they're practically under house arrest. But I won't speak a word to your father until you've thought about it."
His heart aches, not for the first time, at the way she talks to him and looks at him. He nudges away his Scotch when the hot water with lemon comes. "Thank you," is all he can think to say.
"Nonsense."
She turns a page and lays one perfectly manicured red fingernail in the middle of the page. "Now, let's talk about these sconces. I had envisioned copper, but now I look at it all laid out, I'm worried the presence of the metal might be overpowering because-" she breaks off and chuckles, plucking the lemon wedge from its perch on the rim of her teacup and squeezing the juice in. Unlike her daughter, she doesn't lick her fingers clean, just subtly presses them into the linen napkin Andrew laid out for her. "Well, because look at how big that bathtub is."
He shakes his head, blowing steam across the surface of his cup. "I'm the wrong person to ask. I dislike sconces. They always seem like clutter to me. I prefer recessed lighting."
She laughs, a real laugh, and nudges him with her elbow, lowering her voice like she's about to tell him a secret. "When you're my age, you won't want overhead lighting, Charles- trust me on this."
"Recessed lighting can be employed horizontally, around the mirror, like so," he points out, tracing his finger on the page. "More thoughtfully done, subtle, and flattering."
Lily taps her lips with one finger. "You might be onto something," she allows, hesitant to give up on the sconces. "They'd have to be spaced just right-"
Buzz.
They both reach for their pockets.
"And," she says as she digs in the folds of her oversized sweater, "we'd have to think about the rest of the bathroom- all recessed lighting, or- ?"
It's him.
It's Blair.
He inclines the phone toward her, and she stills, seeing the illuminated name. "Take it," she says at once.
"I'm so sorry."
"Not at all."
"Hello?"
"Hi." Blair sounds small and strangled. "Are you busy?"
His eyes meet Lily's. Without a word, she flips the dossier shut.
"No," he says.
"What are you doing?"
"Having a drink." He punctuates it with a sip of hot water, which she'll probably think is Scotch.
"I'm jealous." It's almost a whisper, and then nothing.
Beside him, Lily has gotten to her feet, swallowing the last of the hot water, which surely burned her throat. She gestures upward, indicating their suite, and makes a careless beckoning motion with one hand, You're welcome to come up.
He smiles and nods.
"Ask Dorota," he suggests to Blair, and then is caught off guard when Lily's hand cups his head, ruffling his hair like she's done before, and she kisses him on the brow.
"Goodnight, darling," she whispers, before hurrying away.
He watches after her, thinking how lucky Eric and Serena are to have a parent who has even the capacity, let alone the inclination, to pour warmth like that.
"I actually…" Blair is saying, then pausing, and then a little firmer: "I actually wanted to ask you."
"You want me to bring you a drink?" he teases. "I'm sure your kitchen is fully stocked- or are you requesting my mixology expertise?"
"No, I…"
His smirk freezes, because her tone is flat and low and urgent.
"I was wondering- do you have anything stronger?"
He drains his teacup and reaches for his half-full Scotch. "Like what?"
"Like, anything that could… put me to sleep."
He blinks. "No," he lies.
She pauses. "You don't have anything that could knock me out?"
"I do."
"But?"
"But I can't give you sleeping pills. You're injured…"
It sounds like she's cupping her hand around the phone. "And it's keeping me from sleeping."
"Then you should call your doctor." Blair doesn't take pills. She never has. He's not going to be the person that gives her pills. And certainly not like this.
"They won't give me anything," she complains, her eyeroll almost audible, like when she whined about her blankets being too hot as her temperature normalized in the ER. "They're a bunch of quacks."
He takes his last sip of Scotch and gestures thanks to Andrew, thinking she sounds like her mother and knowing better than to say it.
"I can't."
"Please?" It's so plaintive and bald that it tugs at his conscience. "Painkillers, tranquilizers- anything? I'll take a small dose." She pauses. "It really hurts."
It doesn't, really. Not that much. If it did, she'd get them from a doctor.
She just wants to leave this world behind, if even for a few hours.
"Blair…" He's halfway across the floor of Divine now, phone held to his ear carefully, like he's holding her in his hands.
"I can't sleep. I can't fall asleep." There's a little gasp; maybe she's shifted positions and hurt herself. "I need to sleep- I really need to just sleep," she implores.
She was having a nightmare…
"Tranquilizers don't guarantee sound sleep," he tells her. He knows from personal experience: they don't block everything out.
"I can't even shut my eyes long enough to fall asleep when it's dark out."
I'm surprised how nervous I am, knowing he's here.
"Want me to come over? I'll sleep outside your bedroom door."
She scoffs, at last. "I don't think that's necessary."
He pushes the Up button. "In the elevator?"
There's a soft puff of air, an exhalation more than a chuckle. "… Can you just make it go away? The… manhunt, I mean. Just… go away?"
I'm trying.
"Sniper army is all over it," he says as the golden doors close in front of him.
"Can you send them home? Just call it off? I'll pay a premium." Finally, a tease.
"We can negotiate something. I accept cash or credit card; no personal checks."
"Don't forget to add the reimbursement for your Prada shoes that got ruined the other day," she fires back.
"Bill's already in the mail."
She lets out a peal of laughter that cuts off abruptly after two seconds. He remembers the way her breath hissed into the phone while they watched the NYPD close in on the guy on the train.
He's badging into 1812 when she says, "You know…"
He pauses just over the threshold, holding the door open, not wanting to break the pause with the click of the door.
"He could slip away, any time. He could have gone down to the seaport and gotten on a boat days ago. He could have- dyed his hair and put on a… you know, one of those ugly knitted caps and a pair of glasses…"
He lets the door swing as close to shut as he can without making any noise.
"And he'd look completely different. He could have walked over a bridge and gotten onto a bus in New Jersey and be in one of the square states by now. Or jumped into the East River and his body won't wash up for months."
That should be a delicious thought, the guy's body floating in that toxic runoff from God knows where, but it's nowhere near enough for him. Nowhere near enough.
He shuts the door.
"He could have."
"Do you know anything?"
He lays his badge on the bar and kicks off his shoes. "No. If I did, I'd tell you."
His phone chimes, and he sees Nate's name and turns his ring on silent.
"Really?" The vulnerability, the hope, is raw in her voice. She wants him to know something, wants him to have something to tell her.
"There are tons of leads," he tries. "If he's here, they'll find him."
She sucks in a breath. "And if he's left?"
I'll find him.
"He's not going to hurt you again," he tells her, low, cradling the phone on his shoulder and stripping out of his trousers, then unbuttoning his shirt.
Her voice is so quiet he has to strain to hear her. "I can't hide in here forever. What if they can't find him? What would I do then? How can things go back to normal? Ever?"
He runs a hand through his hair and leans on his pillows, gaze tilting up at the juncture of ceiling and wall he was looking at when he said, if it were Lily?
It will never go back to normal. Ever. They both know that. They all do.
He's quiet for too long.
"It could be weeks, or months… or never." Her voice cracks, fatigue and anxiety splintering through reason.
He clenches his teeth. "It's not going to be never. Except never will he come near you again." He sounds annoyingly like a protective boyfriend, but she takes another pained-sounding breath, and there's a gulp like she's swallowing back tears, and he doesn't care.
"Oh, God." She breathes in and out, in and out. "Say something funny."
He flourishes his free hand, rolling his eyes heavenward. " 'Knock-off Hermes.' "
She snorts, then winces.
It's worth it.
They stay on the phone another hour, two hours, conversation swelling and fading into silence, until she murmurs, "I think I can fall asleep now."
"I can stay up," he offers, though he's struggling to keep his eyes open.
"With all the lights on, like a little girl," she mutters disdainfully.
He turns on his side, like he did in this very same spot when she came back to bed that night, hem of his gray sweater brushing her thighs and slipping over one shoulder. It's cold.
"Sleep now. No one's going to hurt you." More promises- these ones, he's keeping.
She'd woken up a few hours later, chilled past comfort, and snuggled even closer to him. Come here, he'd murmured, sleepy, wrapping the blankets tighter and tucking them underneath them both, slipping both arms around her back, tangling their legs. Neither of them had suggested turning up the thermostat.
"Call me if you hear anything," she murmurs, sleepy, and he hears the rustling of her duvet.
xiii.
New York City is known worldwide as "the city that never sleeps." And so it is.
Tonight, it's a city that's lit up like a Christmas tree, more so than usual, even as its surrounding boroughs are not yet fully recovered from last week's power outage. Floodlights, streetlights, lights in residences and offices and even parking garages seem brighter and more expansive than normal.
It's a city whose king sits awake in his penthouse, in one of the most luxurious hotels on the island, favorite armchair drawn up to the floor-to-ceiling windows in his upstairs study, drinking a tall glass of water he poured himself from his kitchen tap and massaging his temples with two fingers, cell phone tucked away in his bedside drawer next to the long-empty perfume bottle of the wife whose vacant side of the bed he can't quite give up yet- not for a few more months.
It's a city whose soon-to-be queen consort also sits awake, thirty four floors below, tailored jeans and chic oversized sweater and the obligatory bottle of wine that she didn't want her future stepson to see quite yet- let him think she's as classy and refined and in control, in total, complete control, as the kind of woman that his father ought to be marrying- bare feet pulled close under her knees, just one tear now and again, nose running clear liquid that she occasionally wipes, with a dip of her head, on her denim.
It's a city whose It Girl braids and re-braids her hair, organizes her nail polish colors, rearranges her shoe collection, cleans her earrings, untangles her necklaces, matches up pairs in her disaster of a sock drawer, and even dusts her dust-free shelves and television with a Kleenex that she tosses away proudly as though she's just restored an abandoned Victorian mansion, before sticking her head around her brother's door and blowing him a kiss, which he pantomimes catching in his palm and flicking back at her before she closes his door behind her.
It's a city whose one-time old-money power couple manages to find their way back to each other in the middle of the night: former husband finding his way to former wife with the carafe of Colombian dark roast left on the kitchen counter, on a tray set with two coffee cups, without comment or notice; pajamas under robes, window seat of the sitting room, no makeup on her face, no socks on his feet; a passing smile as they settle, tray between them, into silence, looking out over the unusually luminous city that still feels, to both of them, like a shell of their former life.
It's a city whose fallen princess drifts, at long last, into sleep, lights on, deadbolt turned, books stacked inside both doorways so the crash will alert her if they're opened, cell phone clutched in her palm, duvet tucked around her, snug and warm.
It's a city whose peasants (read: Brooklynites) say goodnight at least four times, and retire to their beds with the door open between them tonight, only for the blonde one to start awake with more fear than she'd admit when she senses a shift in the floor boards, a presence drawing near; just me- what are you doing?- I'm going to stay over here tonight- you can't sleep on the floor- it's just this once- you're being ridiculous- go back to sleep- you go back to bed- do you want to wake up Dad?!- and reach a hand down when the dark-haired one settles himself, rolled in the quilt from his bed and pillow mashed against her nightstand, and squeeze his wrist, eliciting a smile from him, while he replays, over and over, in his mind, Unless you can find some way to hand the guy over to the NYPD… and thinks, listening to his sister's breathing even and slow, seeing the raw pink edges that peeked out from the black-stitched lines of Blair Waldorf's face, what he wouldn't give to have this guy locked up forever.
What he wouldn't give.
XOXO.