i don't understand your heart, it's easier to be apart.
Title: i don’t understand your heart, it’s easier to be apart
Characters: NJBC
Rating/Word Count: T/1,345
One Line Excerpt: I miss you. -three words. eight letters. Say it. And I’m yours.
Notes: written for challenge 004 at burnthe_city
……
She buys lilies, white pristine, in full bloom and out of season.
They’re Serena’s favorite after all.
She buys Cuban cigars, illegal but still the best.
Chuck loves them.
She buys a bottle of 19 year old Saint Magdalene whisky for after dinner.
The greatest whisky in the world in Nate’s eyes.
Blair buys herself French Cigarettes.
Inhale, exhale.
Inhale, exhale.
Inhale, exhale. - the stress melts away. One breath at a time.
Just breathe.
And yet still feels the need to run around the penthouse and bark at her German maid, Hilde.
Dust this.
Scrub that.
Don’t forget to vacuum the rug.
Polish the sliver.
She finds herself unable to remember when in her attempt to please other people that she lost all those bits of herself.
She stares at her left hand, her second finger, and sighs.
She’s going to get everything she ever wanted.
Why isn’t she happier?
……
Six years ago, they graduated from high school. And saw their whole life stretched out in front of them.
Exciting and new and different and adult.
They were separating. Untangling themselves from the messy web of lies, love, trust, and friendship they’d built together since they we’re five.
Chuck was staying in New York to run Bass Industries.
Serena was going to the University of Miami to soak up the sun and drink her life away.
Nate decided to go to USC, despite what his father wanted.
And Blair was going to Paris. To see things, to build her relationship with her father, to perfect her French.
It was final and decided. Etched in stone.
She didn’t know if she and Nate are ever going to be together again.
Although she loves him.
They’re forever, she knows it.
He kisses her, champagne on his lips.
She watches Serena and Chuck.
His hand traveling up her thigh.
Although it had always been the four of them. They could always split into distinctive pairs of two.
(Math always had a basis in their world, wither it was money, or this. It had just as much importance as their last names)
………….
She dreams of scarfs and cherry stems being tied on her tongue.
She thrashes in bed and wakes up in a cold sweat.
Despite the time difference, she picks up her phone and calls Nate.
……..
After three years in Paris she picks up smoking and drinking coffee like a manic.
She doesn’t pick up the not shaving thing.
Some French boys like it. Some don’t.
She goes to a textile school and milks the “Waldorf” name for all that its worth.
She becomes sort of a spectacle and sort of a party girl.
It surprises her how much she likes it.
She unravels.
Drinks and drinks and aches for something real again.
For Nate, Serena, Chuck.
None of them really talk anymore.
She doesn’t know how you can go your whole life with three people always by your side. Supporting you and loving you and just there.
And then one day, long after high school, you become your own person. Do your own thing.
The worlds such a lonely place.
Serena gets a serious about school. (In Miami of all places!)
Chuck womanizes less, focuses on building his empire more.
Nate surfs. Thrives in the ocean. Tan and blonde and handsome.
They watch each other’s lives from the outside looking in.
Never knowing that the other three are doing the exact same thing.
I miss you. -three words. eight letters.
Say it. And I’m yours.
…………
Nate visits her Christmas of his senior year.
It’s snowy and wonderful and all wintery.
It reminds her of their winter duck feedings in the park.
She takes him to her favorite spots in the city and then the cliché tourist spots.
Which includes the Eiffel Tower.
She refuses to take him to the top. Instead stop right at the bottom and smiles shyly and gazes up at the sky.
He thinks she’s beautiful.
Snow sprinkled into her chestnut curls, her grey beret arched on her head, eggplant eyeliner on her brown eyes.
You’re different. He says bumping shoulders.
So are you.
She smiles big and so does he.
He kisses her at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower.
He tastes like New York and childhood and little blue boxes from Tiffany’s.
They become a pair of two.
A Queen and A King reunited.
…………
They return to New York a year later.
It turns out they both missed this city more than they thought they would.
Five years after high school.
Adults.
She feels wiser.
But that’s naïve.
She finds out from an old society friend that Chuck moved to Tokyo.
She ignores a pang in her chest when the words are realized.
Of course she wanted to see him, they were friends after all.
Of course. That’s all it is.
She goes home and fucks Nate on their kitchen Floor.
…………
Two months later, Serena calls.
It’s unexpected and strange and it hurts her.
Five years of hardly any contact and then the phone rings.
B.
It’s whispered out of the receiver like a prayer, one that got lost on its way to god’s ears.
I’m pregnant.
You’re what?
Pregnant.
She’s shocked and scared for her friend. Misses her, aches to give her a hug, hold her in her arms and whisper whatever words she needed in her hair.
Can I ask….who’s the father?
Silence. Quiet. Echoes in her ears.
Chuck.
Oh.
Serena tells her about Tokyo. How she got there, modeling. How they’d gotten together, meeting at a bar and having way too much to drink. To a relationship, it just happened.
I just thought you should know.
The line goes dead thirty minutes later.
A world away.
Things changed.
ChuckandSerena.
She tells Nate over dinner.
Ignores the way he inverts his eyes, gulps down his wine, and excuses himself a few minutes later.
She sits at an empty table and feels like a lost and lonely little child.
And perhaps she is.
………..
Nate finishes Law School and begins to intern for the mayor.
She supports and cheers and does all the right things to insure as Nate’s girlfriend that he gets his career in politics.
The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
Hints about marriage and decides that whatever he wants she’ll do it.
She gets a birth announcement in the mail of Serena and Chuck’s baby.
A seven pound, four ounce, baby boy named Thatcher James Bass.
He’s perfect. Dark hair, blue eyes, dimples.
She leaves it on the kitchen table goes into her bedroom and cries.
……..
Six years after graduation and she sits on her patio smoking a cigarette.
They’re having a dinner party to celebrate Chuck and Serena’s home coming back to New York.
The penthouse is clean.
The dinner cooked to perfection.
She got lilies, cigars, whiskey.
She puts on a pretty gray dress, curls her hair, and adds a yellow headband.
The doorbell rings at 7, she fumbles with Nate’s tie, and kisses his lips.
Blair opens the door.
And the past comes walking in.
………..
She twirls her engagement ring on her finger and watches Serena smooth the hair on her son’s head as he lays in her lap.
The talk and try so hard to catch up.
Six years. Six years is all it took for four people to come back into each other’s lives into those two distinct pairs.
What’s that on your finger, B?
Blair holds up her hand. The Vanderbilt diamond glittering.
My engagement ring.
Nate looks at Serena.
Chuck looks at Blair.
They ended up exactly the way they all thought they were supposed to.
With bumps along the road.
It doesn’t feel right, even now. Blair thinks it. Serena thinks it. Nate thinks it. Chuck thinks it.
Chuck raises his glass.
To Blair and Nate.
Blair smiles, and to Thatch!
The liquor goes down their throats.
What a perfect picture. - isn’t it nice to get exactly what you always wanted?
Not a single mistake or flaw.
FIN.