it's not that i keep coming back to you, it's that we keep coming back to each other

serena/chuck. The aftermath of 3x22. "It starts like this."

His summer starts like this:

he gets shot.

::

Hers starts like this: she hears the ringing in her purse and she answers her phone.

"Hello?" Serena says, bright red lips purse near the speaker. Her voice is light, airy.

"Charles has been shot." Lily says, and then it's like this,

"Oh."

And not much else. Not really.

::

Their lives have always intersected, intertwined- it is how it is. Serena sits by Chuck's bed because Blair won't.

(I can't go there I won't you can't make me Serena, you don't understand)

(serena you DON'T understand, serena you DON'T, SERENA you DON'T UNDERSTAND.

And so on and so on and so on. She's always that one, isn't she, the one who won't understand.

Oh don't bother, she won't get it.

Serena, can't you just

YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND)

So it goes.

::

She holds Chuck's hand once.

It's only once though, so afterwards she pulls a Blair and acts like it never happened, acts like it wasn't oddly nice having his hand curled around hers, his ripped up nails (usually perfectly manicured, of course, chuck bass, you get it) mingling with her light pink ones.

She watches him for days and days after, when everyone leaves she still sits there, waiting.

She doesn't know what she waits for, only that something pulls at her, every time she wants to leave something turns her around, whispers stay.

Two black eyes form on his battered face. Perfect symmetry.

::

She sits there for three months. It's boring. There's... not much to say. Serena's never liked hospitals.

::

Serena's smile rings true when he first opens his eyes, and all he can see is her brilliant smile and her hair and blueblueblue and something in him, stops, pauses.

He wants to ask why but feels it would be tacky so he settles for a disgusting comment about sponge baths.

She doesn't laugh, but it's a start.

::

(before, she would have been a whore and he would have been a bastard and they would have had sex on his hospital bed and he would have grabbed her ass and she would have pushed something off the bedside table and neither of them would have cared, about the table, about anything.

Now, she's a new version and so is he and they're both in love with other people but they sit there in this white room, and have no one but each other and his voice is raspy and hers is clear and she held his hand once but she never told him.

It's different, too different, so when he looks at her for too long or her hand rests on his arm for a moment, they brush it off because it's different, they're different but some things are still the same and they don't like talking about feelings so they just... don't.)

::

"You stayed with me for three months."

"Mhm."

"Sis, I knew you loved me but I had no idea it went this deep."

"You're an ass."

"I'm well aware."

His hand reaches for hers underneath the whitewhitewhite sheet and their fingers tangle, chipped pink nail polish wrapped around bruised skin.

::

(and so on and so on and so on.)

::

fin.