Disclaimer: If I owned the greatness that is Gossip Girl, Chuck and Blair would have their own show, but I don't and so they can't :(

This is my first full-length Gossip Girl fic, and as you might have guessed, it takes place in College. Just to give you a little heads up on what's been going on with our favourite UE-siders, Chuck and Blair remained friends after he cheated on her with Amelia. Nate is single, as are Blair, Chuck, Dan, Serena etc. Any questions, just ask :)

This is just the prologue to kind of give you a little more background on where the characters are, so hope you enjoy :)

Five Doors Down

Prologue

College life suits Blair Waldorf. And even though Yale isn't far away from her home on the Upper East Side, it's far enough away so that she's not plagued by rumours from Gossip Girl to ruin her freshman year.

They're a few weeks into their first semester, and it had taken as long (and will still most probably take longer) for Blair to adjust to sharing her living space with another girl who isn't, yet acts in every way the same as Serena.

Blair's blonde best friend had chosen to study across the country in California – Berkeley to be exact, and while Blair could think of nothing worse than the four seasons of each year rolling into one big summer, she knew Serena would thrive there, with her sunny disposition and seemingly natural California-type looks.

Dan had settled at Brown, and though Blair never had (and never would) speak to him directly via her cell, she had heard from Serena that the two of them were still close, and talked "virtually every day." What anybody could possibly talk to Dan Humphrey about on a regular basis was beyond Blair, but as long as there was no Dan/Serena drama in the offing, she was happy.

Blair/Nate drama however, would prove to be a different matter.

The brunette herself had been somewhat disappointed to discover that Nate too, would be studying at Yale, having picked the school mostly for its athletics programme and opportunities, as well as for the anthropology course he wished to major in. Blair had found this choice a little surprising, considering that Nate had never been a particularly good judge of character, and had almost shied away from heavy forms of social activity. Still, she had chosen economics which had hardly been her favourite subject back in high school.

Her roommate Cassandra (Cassie for short), a Connecticut native, had showed Blair around the city of New Haven, pointing out the best places to eat, the best nail salons, the bars with the best selection of Scotch in town...

Scotch.

That had been her first real reminder of high school and the life she'd left behind. Scotch reminded her of Chuck and Chuck...well he was at Duke majoring in history, though why he had chosen that was unknown to Blair. Still, she had no place to question his choices and had settled on the day they'd all said their goodbyes, on an offer of well-wishing, and a slightly lingering kiss on the cheek.

They'd messaged a couple times, though about nothing important, and Blair was beginning to sense that everything or anything she and Chuck had once had, was now so far behind them that they'd probably be unable to remember what things had been like.

So she'd shrugged Cassie's comment off, told her that actually, she preferred a more sophisticated glass of rosé or a drop of Moët and Chandon and asked whether there was somewhere classy they could go to enjoy such tipples?

As it turned out, there was, and for the past few weeks, the girls had enjoyed nights at Scoozzi, chatting over wines in the bar's pretty garden, complete with picture-perfect fairy lights before moving on to one of the city's clubs.

It was different to Blair's life in Manhattan, but good different, and having Nate around had proved to be more beneficial than she had initially thought. Her ex-boyfriend was understanding when a couple girls in one of Blair's classes had passed comment on her designer wardrobe, and had told her that she didn't need to change who she was to fit in with everybody else. She did fit, she was popular, and if those girls had been back in Constance Billiard, Blair would have squashed them there and then.

So when one of the girls had had the misfortune to bump into Blair while wearing last season's Prada, the brunette had offered advice about waiting at least a decade or so before trying to make tweed retro, before continuing on her way. And so after only a few weeks, Blair had managed to bump up her power status and establish herself as Queen B, at least among her classmates.

Nate had congratulated her, and when it was his birthday, a couple days after the incident, Blair had taken him out for dinner, presenting him with a new sweater as his gift. It was a comfortable friendship they had fallen into, and one Blair intended to maintain as part of her 'I am a new person' mantra. Ignoring Cassie's comments of "It looks like more than just friends to me", Blair had decided to be herself around the boy who broke her heart a long time ago because, well, it was a long time ago and the fact that without everyone else from the Upper East Side around them, they had been able to slip into their newfound friendship remarkably easily, actually proved that they were good friends before the whole Serena/Chuck-thing happened.

She had the freedom to be who she wanted, to see who she wanted and to leave the upper class bitch image behind. Nate blended into the jock scene too easily to be mistaken as a high society rich kid who relied on his parents' money, and as Blair was primarily associated with him (having formed a friendship group with his buddies and Cassie), she too, was widely accepted by her classmates and fellow college students.

Had Blair known what (or who) was around the corner however, she might not have been so sure that her newfound freedom couldn't be shattered.

Continue? xxx