I've been wanting to write this for a while. It's basically a rationalization of NV, one of my favorite pairings. I just couldn't think of a theme. When the ship in a bottle thing finally occurred to me, I got excited, sat down, and typed this out in about fifteen minutes.

xxx

white sails

i.

nate

Vanessa Abrams stands five feet five inches exactly. Her hair is wavy and curly, but not sleek like Blair's or model-esque like Serena's. He thinks, maybe it's plain and ordinary, but that's discounting the way it feels running through his fingers.

She's always wearing loose-fitting blouses with flowers and jeans and buttons (he hates those buttons, he wants to rip them out and pull her towards him), hats and barrettes, but she'd never dream of headbands.

She doesn't walk with her shoulders back and her chin aloft, but she carries herself with a kind of pride that's mesmerizing, and he just can't seem to look away.

ii.

vanessa

She's not sure she wants to know Nate Archibald. He's prim and proper in crisp hundred-dollar shirts, with golden-blonde hair and green eyes—

(she hates those eyes; they're so traitorously enrapturing)

He runs in velour suits that cost more than her apartment, and is so stiff and stifled its as if he's been squeezed into a bottle, a glorious battle ship trapped within the glass. Just a pretty thing with no real use or purpose.

That's what she thinks when she sees him, his green eyes and ship-in-a-bottle expression, but for some reason she just can't seem to look away.

iii.

nate

Hot breath on skin, cherry lips pressed against shoulder blades, dark hair curled between his fingers—these are the dreams he would gladly toss away, but they haunt him day and night and he feels like a stalker following her home, so one day he finally decides to speak up.

("do you want to go out sometime?" he says. They're not terribly exciting words, and he can see her mulling it over, but finally when she says yes, it's all worth it).

iv.

vanessa

She's not a sex-on-the-first-date kind of girl, but she makes an exception this time, because she's not able to refuse the look in his green eyes and the feeling of his lips on her, and—

(she really wants to want to slow things down and be the proud girl she thinks she is, but clothes are coming off quickly and there's not a single thing she can say to stop it)

But it could never go further than this, she reasons with herself. After all, they're from different worlds; she's on the outside looking through the glass at his masts and white sails.

v.

nate

It's on the third or fourth date that he realizes that he loves her. Really loves her. He loves her floral prints and weird tastes in movies and holier-than-thou lectures, everything about her, and even though Chuck sneers and Blair rolls her eyes and looks away, his thoughts are on the way she licks her lips after taking a sip of her coffee.

(he tells her "i love you" and she starts to cry, and he's afraid he's said it at the wrong time. But he's not; halfway through saying "i'm sorry," she stops, and writes her apologies on his skin with her cherry lips instead)

vi.

vanessa

And then it's like that—back and forth and here and there, makeups and breakups and half-being together, but not really. But she remembers all the kisses and whispers-in-ears ("no! i want to be with you!") and it hurts her heart when she has to lie and close the door.

Now the kisses don't feel like they're forever against glass; they're real and have a chance now. Now she can shatter the glass and set him free, sails unfurling and he can ride the waves like he's supposed to.

But ships-in-bottles were never really meant to sail the open sea, and they stand no chance against the roaring waves. Eventually he has to retreat to his world, but now that he's been unfurled and opened up to taste freedom, he can't be forced back inside again.

vii.

nate

It all comes down, he thinks, to understanding. To appreciating. To realizing that a girl from Brooklyn isn't a dangerous creature from another world (Brooklyn's in New York, after all), and a boy from the Upper East Side isn't as delicate and precarious as a pretty piece of glass.

All this talk about understanding, and finally he does. Not like x + 2 = 4 understanding, but like a lightbulb going off over his head when he finally gets it.

(it wasn't about status or fake smiles or flashing lights. it never was.)

xxx

I, uh, hope you've enjoyed my attempt to rationalize the Nate x Vanessa relationship which, honestly, is one of my favorites in the show. I don't think they're going to end up together, but Vanessa was important to his character development, I think. She showed him an outside world. Anyway, that's enough of my rambling. Review!