"Bad twin/ You're such a beautiful thing / I can't believe / You're just like me / Under your second skin"—Babybird, "Bad Twin"

At age thirteen, Chuck and Serena kiss for the first time. They are playing Seven Minutes in Heaven in Nate Archibald's bedroom closet during a party that they organized ("organized," in this context, meaning "told everyone they knew to come to Nate's apartment because they knew his parents would be out of town").

When Serena draws lots and ends up with Chuck's name, they look at each other with mild amusement, neither excited nor upset by the prospect of fooling around with each other. They set down their drinks, and stand up to go into the closet amidst cheers and jeers from their classmates.

They only stay there for three and a half minutes. Their kissing halts when a minor catastrophe occurs: Chuck cuts his upper lip on Serena's braces.

#

At age fourteen, Serena loses her virginity to a boy named Alistair Westing, whom she's been dating for approximately six weeks.

On the day in question, Lily is vacationing in Tahiti with Klaus. The maid is asleep, mouth open and snoring, in front of telenovelas in the living room. Having been ordered by Serena to stay out of her room while her boyfriend is over, Erik is sulking in his bedroom, listening to music with his headphones on.

Serena and Alastair are lying on her bed, looking into each other's eyes—tentative, excited, frightened. Half smiling, half scared, she asks him if he "wants to try it." He affirms that he does, and they proceed to have strange, clammy intercourse that is disappointing and puzzling to the both of them.

They do at least use protection, God bless them.

The next time they're alone together, it quickly becomes apparent to Serena that Alastair expects to have sex with her again. When she is hedgy, reluctant, uncomfortable with the idea, he grows frustrated.

"I don't see what the big deal is now," he says. "I mean, you've already done it once."

She has sex with him again. After he leaves, she cries.

The romance fizzles out shortly afterwards.

#

At age fourteen, Chuck learns how to perform oral sex courtesy of Giovanna, the nineteen-year-old Italian au pair.

He later spots Giovanna leaving his father's bedroom in the middle of the night

He never mentions this to anyone.

#

At age fourteen, Chuck and Serena go out clubbing with a group of friends from school. Having raided the mini-bar in his father's limo on the way, Chuck is already drunk and feeling reckless. He asks Serena to dance, then, thirty seconds into the song, reaches down and grabs her ass.

Serena pushes him away, pissed, and walks off the dance floor so quickly her high heels clack like castanets.

The next week, whenever she sees him in the hallway at school, she rolls her eyes and shakes her head. It miffs Chuck more than he would like to admit, even though he thinks it is mostly a charade for Blair's benefit.

#

A few weeks later, Serena calls Chuck in the middle of the night. She's alone, in a panic, convinced she's going to die because she's taken two OxyContin after a couple of gin-and-tonics. Chuck calms her down long enough to figure out the dosage, and then — in spite of her insistence that she can literally feel her pulse slowing down, she swears, it's just going to keep slowing down until she passes out, stops breathing and dies! — he reassures her that she isn't going to die, at least not anytime soon.

"What are you doing taking OxyContin, anyways?" he asks, curious, and lies back onto his pillows and stretches an arm over his head.

OxyContin is a prescription painkiller, but he can't imagine Serena van der Woodsen feeling any pain, much less trying to kill it.

"I thought it might help me sleep," Serena says, as if she knows how foolish that sounds.

She pauses. "I can never get to sleep," she mumbles.

Chuck can never get to sleep either. And he tells her so, just so that she won't think he has any other reason to stay on the line with her until the sun comes up, by which point she is finally convinced that she's not going to die and tells him good night—"I mean, good morning," she corrects herself, and laughs her golden laugh.

Her voice drops an octave; she suddenly sounds more serious, like someone ten years older. "Thanks, Chuck," he hears her murmur into the receiver.

"Don't mention it," he says.

"And…" She hesitates for a second. "Could you maybe not say anything to Blair?"

He doesn't. In fact, neither of them mentions it again.

#

"Chuck, hey, um…this is kind of a stupid question, but do you maybe wanna go to the Spring Fling dance with me? I mean, not as a date or anything. It's just…" The phone crackles with static when Serena sighs into it. "Nate and Blair are going together, and I'm Blair's friend, and you're Nate's friend, so…it just kind of makes sense…"

"Oh," Chuck says.

He thinks it over for a moment. He wasn't planning on going to the Spring Fling dance—school events aren't really his thing—but if Serena is there, Blair will be distracted, which means that Nate will likely be able to cut out early. Maybe they can even go check out that new strip club over in the Meatpacking district...

"Sure," he says. "You wanna pre-party at my suite?"

There is a pause on the other end of the line. "You have your own suite?"

They are already buzzed when they show up at the dance, and they sneak off several times throughout the night to drink out of Chuck's flask of scotch. With each swig Serena becomes more giggly, more animated.

When the freshmen class officers announce that Serena has been elected Spring Fling Princess, she looks at Chuck, open-mouthed, and lets out a squeal before giving him a big hug.

"Congratulations," Blair says with a tight-lipped smile when Serena returns to the dance floor amidst lingering applause.

"I didn't even know there was a Spring Fling Princess," Serena says, taking off her crown and turning it around in front of her to admire it.

Blair swallows, hard. "Some people didn't think it was fair that only juniors and seniors could be elected Spring Fling Queen," she explains. "So they petitioned to create a junior category."

"'Some people?'" Serena repeats in confusion, as applause rings out in the ballroom again. A junior named Jessica Templeton has just been named Spring Fling Queen. "What people?"

At which point Nate interrupts to offer his own congratulations.

Chuck ends up having a lot of fun, largely thanks to Serena. She is not a very good dancer, but she has a lot of enthusiasm, and her presence attracts a large number of girls to the dance floor. All Chuck has to do is stay in her general vicinity, and by the end of the night he's gotten the phone numbers of four impossibly beautiful senior girls who have never spoken to him before.

"You're much a better wingman than Nate," he tells her as she tilts his flask against her lips, turns it upside down, drains the last drop of its contents.

He isn't even annoyed when Serena vomits onto the floor of his limo on the ride home. Only mildly amused.

Blair is not.

"She's a girl, Chuck," she says, struggling to hook one of Serena's rag doll-limp arms over her shoulder. "She can't match you drink for drink."

"I dunno," Chuck says languidly. By this point he is very drunk himself. "She was doing pretty well there, for a while."

"I'm feeling much better now," Serena says in an apologetic way.

Blair clicks her tongue. "You need to be more careful."

If Blair Waldorf had a coat of arms, Chuck thinks, rolling his eyes, "be careful" would be her family motto.

Wait—she probably already has a coat of arms, he realizes. With some vengeful Latin inscribed underneath it. All the old-money families do.

He pours himself another scotch and pretends not to notice when Blair shoots him a withering look of disapproval.

"Come on," she urges Serena as the limo rolls to a stop, plainly wanting to get her away from Chuck as quickly as possible.

Nate gets out of the other side and walks around to the sidewalk. He extends his hand to Blair and helps her step out of the limo, all the while looking down at Serena with obvious concern.

"Serena," Blair says. "Come on."

Having by now grasped that she is home, Serena makes a valiant attempt to step onto the curb. She has some trouble, though, because her shoes aren't on her feet: they're dangling off of her ankles by their thin snakeskin straps, and they twist and drag along the floor behind her.

She half-falls, half-trips onto the sidewalk. Her dress rides up over her thighs, revealing a triangular swath of hot pink fabric between her legs.

"Oww," she says forlornly, looking at her scraped knees.

"Can't you help her, Nate?" Blair says, exasperated.

Looking flushed and uncomfortable, Nate pulls Serena by her hands onto her feet, and she giggles and pretends to stumble forward into his arms.

Chuck raises an eyebrow at this, but says nothing.

Nate bends down and lifts Serena over his shoulder (she squeals in surprise), tucking an arm around her thighs to lock her into place. Her mane of long blond hair hangs down nearly to the ground, and it waves back and forth as Nate slowly carries her away.

"Wee," Serena gleefully says into Nate's back. "I'm upside down!"

Her crown has fallen off her head; it is lying on the pavement behind her. Blair picks it up and looks at it. Clutches it in both hands. Then she gives her head a little shake and hurries to catch up with Serena and Nate.

"I'm sending you a cleaning bill, Van der Woodsen," Chuck calls out after them.

When Serena raises her arm and flips him off, he can't repress a chuckle.

When Blair turns around to glare at him, he shrugs and lifts his glass in an ironic toast.

#

At age fifteen (barely fifteen), Serena meets the captain of the swim team at the pool underneath St. Jude's once or twice a week. Together, they swim. Splash each other. Laugh. Take showers in the empty locker room and fuck against the tile walls.

After he graduates, he goes on a month long trip to China with his family. When he comes back to the States, he doesn't even bother to call Serena. She finds out he's back through Facebook, just like everyone else.

Shrugging off her hurt feelings, she sends him a text: hey welcome back! u wanna get together sometime this week?

He doesn't answer this text. Or the next. Or the next.

A few weeks later, she runs into him at the annual White Party at the Hamptons. She confronts him, asks him why, why did he stop talking to her, what did she do that was so wrong that he didn't even have the courtesy to break up with her?

His mouth curves into a deep frown; his eyes boggle with disbelief.

"I figured you knew," he says. "Like...I thought it was obvious."

#

At age fifteen, Chuck meets a thirty-year-old woman in a bar. After an hour of flirting (and several successful circumnavigations of every question pertaining to his age), he asks her if she wants to "go somewhere," and she agrees. Together they walk to her apartment, a small studio where the walls are lined with books and the bed folds down from a hidden compartment in the wall.

Smitten with her obvious intelligence and dark good looks, he asks for her number after they have sex, but she scoffs and says, "Why? So you can ask meto prom?" with such scorn that he is flooded with shame.

He leaves without another word.

#

At age fifteen and a half, Serena and Chuck are sophomores. Serena is failing geometry and chemistry, and she has been sent to Principal Queller's office three times this semester for wearing her tartan skirt too short. Chuck is failing everything but European History, having taken an acute interest in the Napoleonic Wars; but even in history, he has accumulated more absences and tardies than everyone else in his class combined.

One day, the photography teacher announces that he's assigned them as darkroom partners, and they glance at each other across the room, identical gleams of conspiracy in their eyes.

In the opposite corner of the classroom, sitting on the front row, Blair Waldorf almost imperceptibly frowns.

#

Serena is sitting cross-legged on the floor of the darkroom, leaning against the wall. Chuck is lying on his back, knees at an angle; his head is cradled by the supplest part of her thigh.

Serena glances up at the photos hanging on a line above the bins of stop-bath. "God, I can't believe people used to make photos like this," she sighs. "It takes forever."

She wiggles her leg slightly to nudge Chuck. "Hey. Puff, puff, pass, Bass."

Chuck passes the joint up to her without even looking. He almost hits her in the face with it.

"Watch it!" she says, laughing. "You almost took out one of my eyes."

"Sorry," he says. "My mind was elsewhere."

"Hmm," Serena remarks with a wry, knowing smile. "I wonder where."

Chuck interlocks his hands and sets them on top of his head. His expression is thoughtful.

"Who do you think the hottest girl in school is?" he asks.

"Jessica Templeton," Serena answers, setting the joint to her lips.

"Wow, you didn't even have to think about it," he says in an admiring tone. "I always suspected you had some same-sex tendencies."

Serena shoots him a mock-angry glare, but its effect is lost in the haze of smoke around her face.

"Why do you ask?" she says with a little smile, reverting to her usual teasing tone. "Is she the next item on your to-do list?"

She bounces his head with her thigh again.

"I wish," Chuck sighs. "I've already hooked up with three of her friends. I'm thinking my prospects are...questionable, at best."

Serena shakes her head. "How do you have sex with so many girls?"

"What do you mean, 'so many girls?'"

She rolls her eyes. Recites. "Ashleigh Hornsby, Zara Archanassian, Jamie Li, Anamaria Vargas. Chloe Bowie, Bethany Davis…"

"I haven't had sex with half of them," Chuck says. "I don't think I've ever even spoken to Bethany Davis."

"Still. You have a reputation for a reason."

Chuck purses his lips, conceding the point.

"How come?"

"I don't know." He thinks it over. "I guess…I know a secret other guys don't know."

"What's that?" She is curious.

He shrugs. "Girls like having sex too." He looks up at her as if he's expecting her to confirm this point.

"Doesn't mean they like having sex with you," she counters playfully.

"Judging from the racket they make, I'd say I'm doing something right," he says, leaning up slightly and reaching into his pocket.

This motion hitches Serena's skirt up a couple of inches. She thinks about tugging it back down, but for some reason, unknown even to herself, she doesn't bother.

"So what are you doing this weekend?" Chuck asks her after relighting the joint and passing it back to her.

"Going out to Georgina's."

"Oh, riiight," Chuck drawls. "Remind me why you're friends with her again?"

Serena frowns slightly. "I don't know," she mumbles in a way that suggests that she does know.

She ashes the joint in a film canister by her knee. "It's just..." She hesitates; tries to figure out how to say what she means. "There are certain things...I can't talk about with Blair. You know?"

"Things like...penises?"

She smacks him.

He chuckles. "I thought so."

"It's not just that," she says. "When I'm with Georgina, she doesn't expect things from me. She doesn't want me to wear a certain type of clothes, or act a certain way. She doesn't want me to be..."

She thinks it over for a moment. "Anything but fun," she finishes. "And I like being fun, so..."

There is a pause.

"Do you have the lighter?" she asks him. "The joint's gone out again."

Chuck fishes in his pants pocket and hands it to her. Glances up at her as she turns its flint wheel with her thumb.

In the warm light of the flickering flame, her face is especially beautiful.

"Hey—is it true that you're seeing Matt Archer?" he asks, looking at his fingernails in order to give the impression of complete nonchalance. "I overheard that in the courtyard today."

Serena shrugs as she blows out a stream of smoke. "I guess," she says without much enthusiasm. "Sort of-kind of."

"You know, it's funny, I never took you for the lacrosstitute type."

"Don't be a dick, Chuck," she interrupts him, raising her eyebrows in warning.

"Maybe because you're not," he replies, raising his eyebrows back at her. "So...what exactly sparked your interest in Matt, if I may ask? I'm guessing it wasn't his scintillating conversation skills."

Serena doesn't answer.

"Let me guess—Blair set you up."

Serena blows out a sigh through her nose.

"Well, that's hardly a surprise," Chuck says, looking at his fingernails again. "She wants you hanging out with someone more respectable than Georgina." He pauses. "And me," he adds.

"She does think you're a bad influence on me," Serena admits.

Chuck isn't remotely surprised by this. "Am I?" he wants to know.

"Yeah. But only about as much as I am on you."

This makes him smile.

"Your hair's getting really long," she says, brushing back his bangs with her fingers. He looks very handsome in the red cast of the darkroom lights. "I'd say it's time for a haircut."

"No way," he returns saucily, reaching up to take the joint from her other hand. "Girls love my hair. It gives them something to hold on to."

Serena stops playing with his hair. Needing something else to do with her hands, she reaches into her purse beside her and pulls out her cell phone.

"What are you doing that for?" Chuck says. "You know there's no reception in here."

"I'm bored," she declares with far more force than necessary.

After trying and failing for approximately the hundredth time to get a signal, she gives up and tosses her phone back into her bag with a theatrical sigh.

She turns and looks up at the clock on the wall, and then down at Chuck, who is busying himself repairing a run in the joint with a dab of spit.

She bites her lip. "Do you wanna like, make out or something?" she asks, a little too casually. "I mean, like—just for the hell of it."

Chuck cranes his head back until he's looking up at her. Tries to determine whether she's serious or not.

When several seconds have gone by and she hasn't yet cracked a smile, he shrugs. "Okay."

He pushes himself up to a sitting position. "Just promise me it won't be like last time," he says, playfully referencing the time when they were thirteen and he cut his lip on her braces.

"You know what—never mind," Serena says, already having second thoughts.

"No, no, wait," Chuck says, and, pinching the joint and lifting it to his lips, he takes one last mighty drag. The joint crackles and hisses as fire consumes it, transforms it from solid to smoke.

"Breathe in through my mouth," he says, gulping back the smoke in his lungs, and leans forward to set his mouth against hers.

Their lips dovetail like two halves of a whole. He exhales and she inhales, pulls the smoke out of his body and into her body, and she is shocked by how intimate it feels, sharing a breath with someone else.

Pulling away from him, she exhales a vast cloud of smoke that whirls and curls around both of their faces. Half-dizzy, heads hazy, they look at each other through the arabesque patterns that twist in the air between them.

They smile, lean forward. Their lips coalesce in a kiss.

They are immediately enveloped by intense sensations. The syrupy, earthy notes of marijuana. The heat of their meeting mouths. The gentle motion of the other's tongue. The blood surging through their bodies, pumping through pulse points.

She curves her legs over his legs and on either side of his torso, and he sticks his hands into her hair and guides her into deeper, more vigorous kisses. They rock back and forth like a ship on the sea, making soft, approving sounds against each other's mouths.

When the bell rings a few minutes later, they startle, breaking the kiss. They look at each other. For a moment it seems like no one's going to say anything.

"You're a much better kisser than you used to be," Chuck finally says.

Serena gapes at him.

"What? You used to be terrible," he says.

"Fuck you, Chuck," she says with a roll of her eyes, and stands up, shaking her head.

Smirking, Chuck gets up jerkily and makes an adjustment in the front of his trousers.

He looks at Serena with newly piqued interest. She is unclipping the photographs hanging on the line. His eyes glide over her back, her waist, the curve of her backside.

"Hey," he says in his most persuasive voice, reaching out and touching her at the hip. "How about we continue where we left off, some other time?"

Serena twitches her hips away. "This was a one-time deal kind of thing, Chuck," she says, sliding the photos into a folder.

The words don't sound convincing, even to her.

"How about this weekend?" Chuck suggests, undeterred. "Maybe over at Georgina's?"

"I thought you hated Georgina."

He shrugs. "Doesn't mean I can't crash her party."

"Besides—" Serena flips her hair over her shoulder. "I'm supposed to meet up with Matt."

"Oh, Matt," Chuck returns in a mocking tone. "How could I forget. Maybe because he's utterly forgettable in every possible way."

She shrugs. "He's got a really nice body."

"Doesn't get your motor running, though. Does he?"

She turns and stares at him. "When did you suddenly start caring about my love life?" she asks sharply.

"I don't,"he immediately replies. "Did you bring the Febreze this time? Or did you forget, again?"

Serena pulls a spray bottle out of her bag and shakes it at him like what.

""Arms out!" she orders him, and he complies. She sprays his uniform down, back and front, then hands him the bottle.

"Man, it's like those movies where people go to prison and they have to get deloused," he remarks as he sprays down her back.

This tickles Serena's funny bone and she giggles for a while. "Except we have to get de-stanked," she says, whirling around so that he can spray her front. "Did you remember the Clear-eyes?"

He did. They both squirt a couple of drops into their eyes, blink for a few moments, and then check their reflections in the mirror on the wall behind the bins of developer.

"Your eyes are still totally half-mast," Serena reports.

"So are yours," Chuck says, eyeing both of their reflections. "We both look stoned as shit."

They look at each other and erupt into snickers.

"Which means," he continues, inspired, "that we should probably just skip sixth period and go get truffle fries at Gilt."

"Oh my God," Serena says with wide eyes. "That is the best idea you've EVER had."

"Come on," he says, slinging his book bag over his shoulder. "Let's take the back stairwell. Maybe we can catch Nate before he goes to gym."

"I'll text Blair," she says as they step out into the hallway.

Chuck snorts. "Why?"

"To ask if she wants to come."

"She's not going to come."

"She might."

"You know, I can't even decide what's less likely," he says as they quickly move down the stairs, hopping down two steps at a time. "Blair Waldorf cutting chem lab or Blair Waldorf eating a potato."

"Hey," Serena says, with playful warning in her tone. "She did eat ONE French fry off my plate that one—"

He suddenly stops on the landing, pulls her towards him by the waist, and kisses her again. She kisses him back for a moment, mostly out of surprise, but then she breaks away.

"Chuck—" she warily begins.

"So I'll see you this weekend, right?" he cuts her off. His eyes dance over her face, searching for signs of acquiescence.

Serena makes a scoffing noise. It is meant to communicate the unlikelihood of this scenario but actually signals the opposite.

"You are way too cocky, Bass," she says.

He opens his mouth to reply, but she immediately sets her hand over his mouth.

"Please forget I just said that," she says, her face twinging with disgust, and continues down the stairs.

Smirking, Chuck rolls his lower lip over between his teeth.

#

Georgina's parents went abroad three weeks ago—and so did she, supposedly, to go do outreach work in a favela in Rio. Instead, she's been holding an epic bender at the Sparks's country estate, and even Chuck is astonished at its debauchery.

The house is wrecked. There is broken glass everywhere; graffiti is scrawled on the walls. Drunk, stoned and otherwise fucked-up people sprawl on the furniture, lie passed-out on the floors. They line the hallways, yelling at each other over the thumping bass coming from another room, where couples dry-hump on a makeshift dance floor with an overhead black-light that reveals far more than Chuck really needed to know.

The acrid smell of spilled liquor and chemical odor of crack linger in the air.

With a great deal of excitement and a little apprehension, Chuck explores the house room by room. In an upstairs bedroom, he meets an Asian girl with freckles whom he's sure he's seen in magazine ads, and they end up doing line after line and babbling at each other for over a half an hour before he realizes that he slept with her six months earlier, at which point he mumbles an excuse, and leaves.

He is wandering around the house, outrageously high, when it occurs to him to check the Baroque gardens out back. There he finds a small crowd of people gathered around a keg next to a bubbling, three-tiered fountain. Standing in the water—her little white dress drenched, transparent, clinging to her body—is Serena.

When Chuck sees her, he is seized by a desire that the cocaine in his system magnifies into something almost mythological. He feels like a Greek god, come down to earth to take whatever mortal woman he chooses and fuck her into oblivion.

"Chuck!" Serena squeals, and drunkenly wobbles back and forth on her feet. "Come play in the water." She twirls around; she laughs.

"You'll have to make it worth my while," he tells her.

Serena beams. Eyes glazed over, in an intoxicated trance, she slowly lifts the skirt of her dress up by the hem, revealing her thighs, her silken slip, her stomach. Her breasts, still wet with water from the fountain and gleaming in the moonlight.

Hypnotized, Chuck walks towards her.

"Oh, fuck you, Quinn!" Serena suddenly curses at a boy to her right who is holding up a cell phone to take a picture of her, and tugs her dress down over her body again.

She yelps when Chuck takes her by the hand and pulls her dripping wet body down over his shoulder. Amidst insinuating jeers from the crowd by the fountain, he carries her away.

"Where are we going?" she asks him, swinging her feet playfully.

"Here looks pretty good," he says.

He stops behind a cluster of trees and sets her on her feet. Looks at her for a moment, his breathing ragged with the effort of having carried her. His clothes are soaked through from their contact with her wet body.

"You did that on purpose," he says.

"Did what?"

He takes her hand and places it over his crotch.

"Oh," she says, eyes wide, mouth round.

She draws back her hand. Scans his face, sees the hard look in his eyes.

"Chuck, you're high," she says in excuse.

"And you're drunk," he counters, trailing his finger up her neck. His voice is throaty with lust. "Let's make a mistake."

Serena has seen Chuck do this before. On numerous occasions, with numerous girls. She's watched him stand close to them, too close, and drop his voice to a low rasp. Stroke them down the length of their arms, just barely touching them, with the back of his hand.

She's seen them shift their posture, angle their bodies towards him. Grow flushed as their lips part, as they breathe more heavily. She's seen the look of slow surrender in their faces, the tinge of fear in their eyes—fear not of Chuck, but of themselves, what they were capable of, after only a few moments of him whispering startlingly arousing things into their ears.

She never quite understood it before, this strange power he possesses. She always wondered why so many girls fell for it. Why they trusted someone so obviously untrustworthy.

Now she knows. The attraction isn't based on trust, isn't based on intimacy. It's the opposite. It's like they're strangers to each other. Like there won't be any consequences—no.

Like the consequences just don't matter.

She twines her arms around Chuck's shoulders and wrenches his body towards hers. Pulls him into an open-mouthed kiss.

Caught off balance, he takes a couple of staggering steps forward, and she lets out a startled noise when she feels her back slam against a trunk of a tree.

As soon as their feet are firmly planted on the ground, they are kissing again. Sloppily, with lots of tongue. With the kind of unreserved enthusiasm that belongs only to the young and intoxicate.

His hands rove, slide under her dress. His fingers dig into her thighs; they hook on the side-seams of her panties. He tugs at them, trying to force them down, but they are wet from her earlier splashing in the fountain. They cling stubbornly to her flesh.

"Serena?" a voice calls out somewhere in the darkness behind them.

They freeze.

"Shit," Serena says under her breath, and shoves Chuck away.

A figure emerges out of the darkness—a tall, well-built boy who, aside from his reddish hair, bears a striking resemblance to Nate Archibald.

"Hey," he says to Serena, sounding more than a little pissy. "I've been looking all over for you."

He looks her up and down. "How did you get so wet?" he asks.

Chuck can't hold back an ironic laugh.

All of the people to interrupt them, it just hadto be Matt Archer. Who resembles Nate but lacks all of his redeeming qualities. Who treats him, at best, as utterly incidental. Who outweighs him by a good thirty pounds of solid muscle, and whom even a kilo of coke couldn't convince him to take in a fight.

"Matty!" Serena sounds almost genuinely happy to see him. She jogs over to him, throws her arms around his shoulders and stands on tippy-toe to kiss him. "I was beginning to think you weren't coming."

Matt looks over her shoulder, eyes narrowing at Chuck, who is lingering in the darkness underneath the trees. "What have you been doing out here?" he asks, suspicious.

"Playing hide and seek," Serena answers. "But now you've found me, so..."

She trails off, looking up at him with the sweetest expression she can summon. Then she takes him by the hand and leads him away.

Like the big, dumb ox that he is, Chuck thinks with a scowl, tugging his clinging-wet shirt away from his body.

#

Serena is still holding Matt Archer's hand when she walks into the courtyard Monday morning. Catching sight of Chuck and Nate sitting on the stairway, she smiles and gives them a little wave.

Nate returns her wave with a small smile of his own. Chuck just stares at her, his expression surly, until her eyes shift guiltily away.

He watches her go, eyeing the shortness of her skirt, the motion of her tanned thighs. Thighs that he'd grabbed on Saturday night, kneaded between his fingers.

"I bet you'll anything Serena gets sent home again today," he confides.

Nate looks at him as if he doesn't understand.

"Didn't you see the skirt she was wearing? It was cut right up to her pussy."

"Jesus, Chuck," Nate says, disgusted.

"Oh, come on. Like you didn't notice."

"No—I didn't, as a matter of fact," Nate testily replies. "I don't look at Serena that way."

Chuck stares at him. "Seriously?" he says, raising his eyebrows.

Nate shakes his head.

"Not even once?"

"What did I just say, man? No."

Chuck laughs. "You're full of shit," he says, looking away.

"Look—did it ever cross your mind that I'm just not like you?"

"What do you mean, 'like me?'"

Nate shrugs, irritated. "I don't know. Trying to get laid all the time, and it doesn't even matter who it's with."

"Ouch," Chuck says, setting his hand against his heart as if he's wounded by Nate's words. "Someone's feeling snippy."

He lowers his voice to a gravelly whisper. "Blair still hasn't uncrossed her legs yet, huh?"

When Nate's eyes widen, Chuck immediately realizes that he's broken a clause in their implicit friendship contract. One that states that there are certain things you just can't say out loud.

"Sorry," he says in a mock-conciliatory tone. "I didn't realize it was…" He pauses. "An issue."

Nate's posture relaxes slightly. He looks down at his feet. Nudges a twig off the stairs with his toe.

"Blair's my girlfriend, and Serena's her best friend," he says. "And that's..."

He raises his head, looks off into the distance. Presses his lips together, shakes his head.

"That's just the way it is," he finishes.

#

"Van der Woodsen, I have news," Chuck says a few days later. "You are officially my soul mate."

"In your dreams, Bass," Serena skeptically replies.

She and Blair are sitting on the Met steps. Two lattes and two cups of strawberry yogurt sit by their feet; a copy of the latest Vogue is draped over both their laps.

Their minions are nowhere to be found. On Friday afternoons the Met steps are reserved for Blair and Serena alone.

"What are you talking about?" Blair wants to know.

"Gossip Girl just released the superlatives for our class," Chuck reports, sitting down two steps beneath them. "Serena and I won the same category."

"What's that?"

He hands Blair his phone.

"'Most likely to get sent to reform school next year?'" she reads, raising her eyebrows. "How…admirable."

"Ugh, I totally don't deserve that!" Serena protests, taking the phone from Blair. "I guarantee you Deirdre Baizen has an eight ball in her locker right now."

"See, the fact that you know that tells me that there's probably a reason you won," Blair says in a crisp voice, plucking the phone out of Serena's hand again.

"I think it was probably that fountain stunt last weekend that gave you the winning edge," Chuck says, staring off into space as if conjuring up the image in his memory. "It was rather memorable. The moonlight glistening on your wet, naked—"

"Shut up, Chuck," Serena warns him. "Did you get anything, Blair?

"Yeah." Blair is looking down at the phone. "'Most likely to get married first.'" A smile quirks the corners of her mouth. "Nate's my male counterpart, of course," she gushes, and girlishly nudges Serena with her shoulder.

"Why are you so happy about that?" Chuck asks with evident distaste. "News flash: people think you're boring."

Twin wrinkles appear between Blair's eyebrows. "I am not boring."

"Not as boring as you pretend to be," he concedes. "All this society princess bullshit. I know you better, Waldorf."

"Oh, really?" Blair is unconvinced. "What superlative would you give me?"

Chuck thinks it over for a moment.

"Most likely to become dictator of a small Central American country," he decides.

"Ha!" Blair pretends otherwise, but she is obviously pleased. "Nice try, Bass, but I don't even speak Spanish."

"No matter. I'm sure you're a very cunning linguist…"

The girls groan.

"Go away, Chuck!" they yell in unison.

"Fine," Chuck says, annoyed, and takes his phone from Blair. "Aren't you coming to photo lab?" he says to Serena.

"In a minute, I wanna finish my yogurt," Serena says, stirring it with her spoon.

After a split-second's hesitation, Chuck slings his rucksack over his shoulder and stalks off towards the school, and Blair follows his retreating form with curious, calculating eyes.

She licks her lips. Thinks over her next sentence for a moment or two.

"Aren't you worried Matt's going to find out?" she says to Serena in a low, sly voice.

"Find out what?" Serena says through a mouthful of yogurt, flipping over to the next page of Vogue.

"You know." Blair nudges her, drops her voice to its lowest register. "You. Chuck. The darkroom. And I'm not talking about your weekly indulgence in herbal therapy."

Serena's jaw drops. "He told you?"

Blair lets out a little laugh.

"No," she says, triumph in her tone. "But youjustdid."

Serena plants her face into her hands. "How did you figure it out?"

Blair shrugs; licks yogurt off of the back of her spoon. "I dunno. Just a hunch. You'd just better hope that I'm the only one who knows. Because unlike some people—" (she shoots Serena a pointed look) "—I know how to keep a secret."

She drops her voice again. "Like you cheating on your boyfriend. You know—Matt Archer?"

"God, Blair, I made out with him, once!" Serena protests, unintentionally omitting the incident at Georgina's party. "That doesn't count as cheating."

Blair's eyebrows contort. "In what twisted world does making out not count as cheating? You know what," she interrupts as Serena is opening her mouth, "never mind. Let me ask a far more important question: in what twisted world would you actually want to make out with Chuck Bass?"

"I dunno," Serena replies, uncomfortable. "We were stuck in the darkroom together. We were stoned. We were bored. It was just...something to do."

Blair regards her skeptically.

"Don't look at me like that, Blair."

Blair continues to look at her like that.

"I'm not going to have sex with him."

Blair raises her non-fat sugar-free caramel no-whip latte to her lips.

"I'm not!" Serena insists at a higher pitch.

"S, you're playing with fire and you know it." Blair stands up, shaking her head, and starts to gather her things together. "God, I can't believe you're sabotaging your relationship with Matt Archer to swap spit with Chuck, of all people."

The disgust in her voice is palpable.

"I'm not sabotaging anything!" Serena angrily retorts, tossing the Vogue into her hobo bag. "What we have going on is totally chill."

"Serena, it's Chuck," Blair reminds her as they make their way down the stairs. "How long do you really think you're going to be able to keep it PG-rated?"

"What, you think I'm like…unable to resist him? Come on."

"He's the same way with every single girl he goes after," Blair protests. "He doesn't stop harassing them until he gets what he wants. And afterwards, you'd better believe that he'll act like a total pig and pretend it never happened."

They stop and wait for the signal to turn at the crosswalk in front of the Met.

"Don't you even remember Sophie Madison?" Blair asks.

Serena searches her memory. "The virgin?" she guesses.

"The ex-virgin!" Blair cries. "It only took him a week. And she had to ask Harvard for her early decision application essay back, because it was entitled 'Why I'm Waiting, and Why It's a Feminist Choice.'"

"I'm nothing like Sophie Madison, Blair," Serena says with considerable force as they're crossing the street. "Or you. I can handle myself."

Blair recoils from her.

"Oh?" she says, eyebrows raised. "Is that why you blew off chem lab last Friday? Because you were handling yourself?" Her voice drops with derision; her eyes narrow. "And here I thought it was because you had a rabid case of the munchies."

Serena sucks in her cheeks, settles into a sullen silence. Begins to walk more briskly, hoping to outpace Blair with her longer legs on the way back to school.

"Serena," Blair calls out behind her, and hearing a plaintive note in her voice, Serena sighs and slows down.

Blair raises her hands helplessly and lets them fall again. "I can't believe I even have to say this…but here it is. There is no absolutely way in hell this is going to end well. I mean, Chuck's my friend and all, but he's a total perv. And you two—you two are just bad for each other. If you keep carrying on with him, you WILL end up in reform school, and..."

She struggles to formulate her next sentence.

"Blair!" Serena is shocked. "Is that what you're worried about? Honestly—the class superlatives?"

Blair bites her lip. Doesn't say anything.

"They don't mean anything," Serena says, squeezing her shoulder. "I'm not going to reform school."

"You'd better not," Blair says sullenly. "You'd better...you know."

She pauses. "Be careful," she says with great emphasis.

It has never been in Serena van Woodsen's disposition to be careful. This is something of which Blair is highly aware. But she is hoping against hope that the words that she's spoken so many times before will finally sink in this time, finally take effect.

But Serena answers her too quickly, too readily.

"I will," she says, as if she's telling the truth, and Blair's face falls, knowing that she isn't.

Suddenly, Nate steps out onto the sidewalk in front of them.

"Oh my God," he says, like he's stunned by some epic coincidence. "It's the two most beautiful girls at school."

Serena smiles at him—naturally, beautifully. Like the sun just dawning over the horizon.

"Hey, Nate," she says softly as he approaches Blair, sets his arm around her shoulders.

"Nate!" Blair protests, ducking out from underneath his arm. "You're mussing my curls." She pouts as she pats at her hair with her hand.

Nate turns around and makes a monkey face at Serena behind Blair's back, and she sets her hand over her mouth to hold back a snicker.

"Aren't you running kind of late?" he asks Blair. "I usually don't see you on my way to lunch."

"What?" Blair says, and turns over her wrist to look at her watch. "Shit!" she cries, and beelines towards the school entrance.

Nate watches her go, his eyebrows furrowing. "She's so high-strung sometimes," he says with an uncomprehending sigh.

Serena shifts her weight from foot to foot.

She tells herself to say goodbye to Nate. To go back to school, to follow Blair. But there is already a swarm of anguished, ecstatic hormones buzzing through her body—a reaction she has had, without fail, over the past eight months, whenever her best friend's boyfriend is standing within a twenty-foot radius.

"I should go too," she finally says with some effort.

"Don't you have photo lab fifth period Fridays?" Nate asks. "Chuck told me you finished your project last week."

He smiles. "Come have lunch with me," he says, gesturing with his head away from the school. "I could use some company."

Serena looks at Nate, eyes wide, mouth slightly open.

"I..." She swallows. "I can't, Nate. I have to—"

She steadies her bag on her shoulder, takes a few backwards steps away from him. "I really should go," she says.

"Oh, okay," Nate says, trying not to sound disappointed. "Maybe...some other time?"

But Serena's only answer is a regretful smile.

She doesn't make it through the school entrance in time to see Blair's collision with the dark-haired boy at the foot of the grand stairway. Only its aftermath.

"Ugh!" Blair is exclaiming in disgust. She looks down at her latte-drenched blazer, and then at the dark-haired boy, who is squatting down in front of her, gathering up his papers from the cobblestones. "When did they start letting ANYONE into this school?"

She tosses her head like a filly and stomps off to the nearest ladies' room.

Serena hurries to catch up with her; hesitates as she's passing by the dark-haired boy. Stops.

"Sorry about my friend," she says to the top of his head. "She's...well. She's…"

"She's a bitch," he declares to the ground as he finishes stacking his papers. "That's…yeah. That's what she is," he mutters.

"You just have to get to know her, I guess," Serena offers lamely.

"Yeah, well, I, uh, have absolutely no desire to do that, so…"

He rises to his feet, finally sees the girl he's talking to. His eyes widen in recognition; his mouth drops open.

She raises her eyebrows, waiting for him to speak.

After a prolonged pause, the dark-haired boy finally raises his hand in an awkward salute. "Have a good one," he says heartily, and walks from her away very quickly.

What a weird guy, Serena thinks.

#

"Heyyy," Chuck drawls. He is sitting on the floor of the darkroom; he is running his tongue along the seam of a joint. "I wasn't sure you'd show."

"Why wouldn't I?" Serena says as she shuts the door behind her.

Chuck shrugs, toasts the joint with back-and-forth swipes of the lighter. "Maybe because you've been avoiding me all week."

"Have I?"

He lets out a little laugh. "Playing coy isn't your strong suit, Serena."

Serena leans back against the counter. Crosses her arms over her chest.

"Chuck, I was really, really drunk on Saturday night," she begins.

"Is that right," he answers, pulling himself to his feet. He tucks the joint behind his ear; takes a couple of slow, sauntering steps towards her. "What about last Friday?"

"I was stoned," she says. "And bored," she adds for good measure.

He takes another two steps towards her. "What about now?" he says, touching the side of her waist.

Serena curves her body away from his hand like a parenthesis. "Chuck, this isn't a good idea."

"I never claimed it was a good idea," he counters.

"Would you stop being so weird about this?" she says, getting frustrated. "We were just having some fun."

"We could be having a lot more fun."

"I have plenty of fun with Matt, thanks."

"Really," Chuck says. The word is heavily ladled with skepticism.

He sets his hands on the counter on either side of her, boxing her in with his arms. He's so close that she can feel the heat of his skin. His expensive cologne whirls in her nose.

She immediately assumes a look of impatience to disguise the way she actually feels. Slightly panicked. Slightly aroused.

Chuck looks into her eyes. "Does he go down on you?" he says in a low purr.

A spark of desire ignites between Serena's thighs. Her lips part; she feels her cheeks flush red-hot.

"I do," he continues, steadily gazing at her, and lifts one hand to idly graze his fingertip up the inside of her thigh. "I like doing it."

"Stop it, Chuck," she says in a wary voice as she pushes his hand away.

"Make me," he says, and leans forward to kiss her.

She pushes him away again.

"Make me," he insists, cradling her face with his hands, and kisses her again.

The spark flares, and, after a moment of external and internal struggle, she yields. Kisses him back with reluctant passion as he presses his body hard against hers.

When he breaks the kiss, they set their foreheads together and let out synchronous sighs.

"Stop thinking about what's a good idea, what's not," he murmurs to her, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. "Do what you want to do." He kisses her again. "What we both want to do."

As he speaks, an unsettling feeling washes over Serena. She lowers her head; sets her forehead against his shoulder to avoid his gaze.

"Why are you being like this?" she mumbles miserably.

"Like what?" he asks in an even tone. He is already unbuttoning her shirt.

"Like we're not even friends."

His fingers falter on a button, and stop. "Of course we're friends," he says.

"Then why are you treating me like you barely know me?" she says. There is pain in her voice. "It's like everything between us changed the moment you decided you could fuck me."

Chuck's expression immediately changes. His face suddenly looks younger, uncharacteristically so.

"That's not—" he starts to say.

He flounders for his next words for a moment.

"I just thought—" he tries again, with no more success than before.

He falls silent, and for a moment Serena feels almost sorry for him, because he really does look confused.

"Thought what?" she prods him.

"That…" He licks his lips. "We get each other."

He shrugs. "We know how to keep sex separate from everything else. We don't have hang-ups, like other people do. We know how to let loose. Have fun."

He leans forward to kiss her neck, whispers against her skin: "Let's just have some fun, okay?"

It's the sadness in his voice that finally seduces her. Because she knows that he knows in his heart of hearts that it's not "just some fun."

Intoxication is not the same thing as fun. It doesn't make you feel good. It just keeps out all the bad, for a little while.

Coming home to a quiet apartment. Her mother gone, her brother locked in his bedroom. The predatory eyes of the men passing her by in the street. The exasperated looks on her teachers' faces when she tells them she left the homework assignment in her locker again.

Blair rolling her eyes at something improper she's said.

Midnight on her birthday, and her father hasn't called.

Every step she takes away from Nate.

Serena sighs in comprehension, in sadness, in relief. Her arms encircle Chuck's body, her hands clench the fabric of his shirt behind his shoulder blades.

"Okay," she whispers to him, and then his mouth is on hers again.

"Just...promise you won't tell anyone," she says as he finishes unbuttoning her shirt, pushes the white cotton fabric aside, pulls her towards him by the waist. His hands are burning hot against the coolness of her flesh.

"Okay," he says, bending down to kiss her just beneath the collarbone. His hands slip under the cups of her bra; his fingertips gently massage the nipples crowning her breasts.

She closes her eyes, wanting to relish this moment of forgetting. "Not even Nate," she says in a soft, breathy voice.

"...Okay," he says again, but this time she catches the hesitation in his voice, and her eyes snap open.

"Did you already tell him?" she says with a tinge of panic, pulling back to look at him.

"No," he exclaims, letting his hands fall away from her."Why? What do you care?"

"I don't."

"Good," he throws back.

They are still looking at each other suspiciously when they hear a shuffling noise outside the darkroom, and then a series of sharp knocks upon the door.

"We've got the darkroom until sixth," Chuck yells towards the door.

"Mr. Rosenthal told us we could use it," says a contrary voice outside.

"Well, he's full of shit. This is our hour."

"Uh, well," says another voice, a male one, after a short pause. "He told us that you already turned in your last project and he's pretty sure you're, quote, 'just putzing around in there,' end quote. But I could go ask him to give us the key, if you want."

Chuck looks at Serena and expels a frustrated sigh.

"Skip the rest of the day," he pleads. "I'll text Arthur to come pick us up."

Serena shakes her head. "I have to go to chem lab, Chuck. It's so not even negotiable."

"Then come over tonight."

"I can't," she throws back. "I'm sleeping over at Blair's."

"Tell her something came up."

Serena shakes her head again.

"Why not?"

"Because she'll know why, that's why."

Another series of knocks at the door, and she barely even notices. The way that Chuck is looking at her right now makes her feel ashamed. But ashamed of what? Choosing Blair over him?

"You told her?" he says, incredulous.

"Of course not!" Serena is quick to return. "She just...figured it out. You know how she is."

Chuck runs his hand over his face. "Saturday night, then. After the—"

But Serena is already shaking her head again. "I'm going with Matt," she says.

"God-fucking-dammit, Serena," Chuck says, plainly out of patience. "Just dump him already. You don't even like him."

"HEY," says the voice outside. "ANY DAY NOW."

"We're coming out now, ASSHOLE!" Chuck yells back. "Keep your fucking shirt on."

He looks at Serena, who is quickly re-buttoning her shirt. For a moment it seems as though he's going to say something, but he doesn't. Just slings his bag over his shoulder and opens the door.

The dark-haired boy and a bespectacled girl are waiting in the hallway.

"Your majesties," Chuck says to them venomously, flourishing his arm towards the darkroom.

"Thank you," the dark-haired boy says icily.

As he walks out of the darkroom, Chuck hits his shoulder hard against the dark-haired boy's. A camera hits the floor behind him with an ugly clank.

"Sorry," Chuck says over his shoulder lazily, not sounding remotely sorry, and continues down the hallway.

The dark-haired boy sighs, and bends down to pick up his camera. The lens is still intact, but the impact has caused its back panel to crack open, exposing the strip of negative to light.

"Sorry about that," Serena says, lingering behind. "Chuck—well. He's just—"

"An asshole," the dark-haired boy says, locking the panel back into place. "That's what he is."

He looks up at her. "Oh, it's—"

He stands up; coughs. "It's you. You, uh...you always go around apologizing for your friends?"

"No," Serena replies. She thinks for a moment, and then lets out a self-deprecating laugh. "Actually, it's usually the other way around," she admits.

"Huh," the dark-haired boy says. "Y'know, I find that—um. Kinda hard to believe."

He stands there, looking at her, and Serena sees herself reflected in his eyes. Her image is floating, suspended in space. Like a girl he's imagining into existence.

Beside him, Nelly Yuki clears her throat impatiently.

He opens his mouth and points at the darkroom door. "We're just going to—" He presses his lips together. "Yeah."

And with that, he disappears into the darkroom.

#

When Serena comes out of the bathroom stall, Blair is retouching her mascara at the mirror, dotting the wand down onto her lower lashes.

"I missed a pop quiz in Pre-Cal," she informs Serena in a glum voice. "My six-week average will probably drop to a B+."

She shudders.

Serena, for whom a B+ would be a godsend, doesn't reply right away. She turns on the faucet, squirts soap into her palms.

"I'm sure you can strong-arm Ms. Thompson into a retake," she finally tells her. "You are Blair Waldorf, after all."

A smile plays around Blair's mouth for a moment. "Hmm," she hums in acknowledgment.

Then her eyes flick up to Serena's face reflected in the mirror.

"So," she says. "How was Chuck in photo lab? Has he found some other poor girl to harass yet?"

She leans forward, applies mascara to her other set of eyelashes. "Or is he still stuck on you?"

Bubbles emerge between Serena's fingers as she rubs her hands together. She stares down at them. Considers how to answer.

What is she supposed to say to Blair? Oh, our mutual friend Chuck? I'm planning on fucking him as soon as possible. Not because I like him, not because I have any romantic interest in him, not even because I don't believe every single word that you've said about him, because I do.

As much as I hate to admit it, you tend to be right about this kind of thing. You know how people are. You know their weaknesses.

But you don't know me. Because if you did, you'd turn your back on me and never look back. The truth is that I'm fucked up. I know you don't believe it, Blair. I know you think I'm Sunshine Barbie. But I'm not.

Because whenever I'm around your boyfriend, I'm thinking about fucking him. And Chuck is the only guy I know who might actually be able to make me forget about Nate, make me forget about my family—sorry, my non-family, my pretense of a family.

Make me forget about how to get from party to party, from weekend to weekend, without completely falling apart.

Not that you would know anything about that, B. Now would you?

"Oh," Serena hears herself say. "I told him I thought it was a bad idea…and that was that."

She finishes drying her hands. Balls up the paper towel and tosses it into the trash.

Blair raises her eyebrows. "And he was cool with it?"

"Uh, yeah," Serena says. She is looking at herself in the mirror, fluffing her hair with her fingers. "I told you. It was a total non-event."

Blair blinks twice. Then she reaches out and begins to unbutton Serena's shirt.

"B, what are you d—" Serena cuts herself off when she realizes that Blair is, in fact, re-buttoning her shirt. Straightening it. With each button matching the buttonhole opposite.

Blair finishes and looks up at her, her brown eyes all-knowing. "You were saying?" she asks.

It's impossible for Serena to tell which makes her feel worse. The disappointment in Blair's voice, or its complete lack of surprise.

"I'm not going to tell you I told you so," Blair says.

"Well. You kind of just did, B," Serena bitterly replies.

Blair shakes her head. "No. I meant when this comes back to bite you in the ass. Which it will."

"You know what, Blair?" Serena shoots back after a loaded pause. "Let's play a game. It's called 'you mind your own business, and I'll mind mine.'"

She slings her bag over her shoulder and stalks out of the bathroom, and Blair stares after her for a moment or two.

Then reaches into her purse and pulls out her phone.

#

When the blast drops twenty minutes later, Chuck is sitting in European History. He is thinking about Serena—or, more accurately, he is thinking about her body, and what he is going to do to it as soon as he gets her alone and flat on her back.

He is pulling off her panties. Running his hands up her thighs.

Chuck sticks his thumb in the corner of his mouth, bites it between his molars. His eyes glaze over. Somewhere far away, the teacher is lecturing about 18th century military equipment.

He is going down on her. She is writhing underneath him, her thighs jostling against the sides of his face.

His phone brrngs in his pocket, jolting him back to reality. Everyone in the class bends down to examine their cells in synchrony.

Constance-B's It-girl has only been dating Matt Archer a couple of weeks, but she's already fooling around on the sly. Serena Van der Woodsen...or Venereal disease for-Good-sen? You decide!

Chuck fights to keep his face neutral.

"Yo, Bass!" Quinn turns around, lifts his phone up to display the screen. "This has gotta be you, right?"

"...What?" Chuck replies, as if he's a bit slow on the uptake. It is a strategical move. He needs a few extra seconds to think, and Quinn is far too stupid to notice that he's stalling.

"Come on. I saw the way you two were acting on Saturday night."

Around the room, several pairs of eyes are staring at Chuck, awaiting his answer.

Chuck considers what to do. Should he dodge the question? Opt for a categorical denial?

An image of Serena flashes in his memory.

"Promise you won't tell anyone," she said as he opened her shirt, revealed her lacy black bra, her gorgeous breasts.

Categorical denial it is.

Chuck shrugs one shoulder and curls his lip, as if to express how much the subject bores him. He does this exaggeratedly—he needs to look like he's putting on a front.

"Nahhh," he says slowly, tracing his finger around his cuff-link. "She says we're better off as friends."

It is the voice of a boy who has been rejected, and knows it.

"All right, is everyone up to speed on the latest scandal yet?" the teacher asks the class. His tone clearly indicates that he couldn't be more over this shit. "For the five hundredth millionth time, no cell phones in class, people."

Quinn, looking almost disappointed, turns back around, and Chuck knows that his act has been sufficiently credible. He is not exactly pleased by this. Under normal circumstances, he would never sully his reputation with this nonsense.

But Serena Van der Woodsen's tits are not normal circumstances. Nowhere near, in fact.

His phone brrngs again, and he checks it under his desk. It's her.

Secret spot.

Chuck texts her back immediately.

Okay.

"Mr. Bass. For the five hundredth millionth and one-th time, no cell phones in class, please."

Chuck stretches in his chair, arms overhead, the very picture of indolence.

"Okay," he says through a yawn. "Hey, can I go to the bathroom?"

#

As soon as she steps through the heavy metal door to the boiler room, Serena holds up her phone at him. Her eyes are like blue ice.

"Hey, don't worry," Chuck says in an assuaging tone. "I've already put all the rumors to rest."

He is expecting a positive response. Maybe even an immediate resumption of their earlier activities. But Serena just stares at him.

"No one knows it's me," Chuck explains, far less cheerfully than before. "No one's even going to suspect. I practically issued a press release."

Serena blinks. "Are you seriously going to pretend like you had nothing to do with this?" She waves her phone at him.

Chuck's face instantly clouds over.

"You think I sent it?" he replies, incredulous. "Serena, I didn't say anything, to anyone. Hell, you're the one who ran off and told Blair. Who, by the way, is the only other person who knows about this."

He shrugs angrily. "Put two and two together already."

"No," Serena declares. "Blair wouldn't do this to me."

"The fuck she wouldn't," Chuck immediately replies.

"She had no reason to!" she cries. "You're the only one who stands to gain anything from this."

"What doI possibly standto gain from Gossip Girl calling you a slut? So far the only thing it's brought me is you yelling at me for no reason."

"Oh, so this is just some amazing coincidence," Serena returns with a roll of her eyes. "It just happened to happen, the week you made it your life's mission to have sex with me. Or are you going to deny that too?"

Chuck stares at her for a moment before heaving out a sigh.

"All right," he concedes. "I admit that the prospect holds a certain...appeal." His eyes involuntarily glide over her chest. "But that doesn't give me any reason to break up you and Matt Archer. You were going to have sex with me anyways. You made that abundantly clear."

His voice drops. "You probably would have fucked me in the darkroom if that prole hadn't interrupted us..."

Serena hesitates. "You must have wanted...like, some long term thing."

Chuck snorts. "Please. You forget who you're talking to."

"Or maybe you just didn't want any more interruptions—how should I know?" Serena is getting flustered. "Either way, my boyfriend's going to read this, and by the time school's over, I'm not going to have a boyfriend anymore. Or even a date for this weekend. So thanks, Chuck. Thanks a lot for that."

He rolls his eyes. "You wanted to get rid of him. You should be thanking whoever sent in that blast. Not pretending like you're all upset over losing your second rate Nate. "

Serena is taken aback. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Chuck raises his eyebrows at her. "What?" he says with sordid amusement. "You think I don't notice the way you look at him when Blair's not around?"

He lets out a ugly little laugh. "You'd fuck him in a heartbeat if you had the chance."

"I would never do that," Serena says, both angered and dismayed.

"Yes you would."

"How do you know?" she challenges him. "How do you know what I would do?"

"Because you're just like me!" he half-yells.

"I am NOTHING like you!" she yells. "All you do is manipulate everyone around you. You manipulate me. God—you're worse than Blair."

She shakes her head at him. "She's right about you, you know," she insists. "She sees you for exactly what you are. A pig."

Chuck stares at her for a second.

"A pig," he repeats. "I'm a pig."

Serena stares him down, affirming this preposition through her silence.

"Huh." Chuck pauses, purses his lips thoughtfully. "So tell me, Serena: what does that make you?"

When she is silent, he continues. "Well, I'd say it makes you a sow." His voice drops to an insinuating rasp. "Because as much as you hate to admit it, you certainly love rolling around in the mud with me."

He grabs her by the waist. She tries to push him away, but he holds tight.

"Stop it," she cries, and tries to push him away again.

"Not until you admit that we. Are exactly. The same," he insists as she thrashes in his arms.

She throws her elbows so wildly that he is forced to release her. Then she stares at him for a moment, panting, before taking one big step towards him and shoving him down to the ground.

By that point he's not even touching her anymore, but Serena is too furious to care.

Chuck looks up at her from the filthy concrete floor. Lifts his hand up from a damp patch and shakes it off with great disgust.

"Fine," he says, slathering the word with spite.

He picks himself up with as much dignity as possible—which isn't much, given the circumstances. "You're not like me, Serena. You know what you are?"

Serena crosses her arms over her chest. Clenches her jaw.

"You're one of those girls who peaks in high school and then ages twice as fast as everyone else," Chuck tells her, brushing the dust off his shirtsleeves. "You'll have snorted your entire trust fund up your nose by the time you turn thirty. And then you'll marry a series of rich assholes and divorce them one by one."

His eyes are burning with a wicked light. "Just like your slut mother."

Serena recoils from him. Tears spring into her eyes.

"At least I have a mother," she throws back at him in scorn. "You don't have anyone—except for your father, who can barely even stand you. And you're never going to have anyone, because your little bad boy act is going to get real old, real fast. Sure—" (she shrugs) "—ten years from now, Blair and Nate will invite you over for Thanksgiving and Christmas. But only because they pity you, not because they actually want you there. And as soon as you leave, they'll be relieved that their charity for the year is finally over."

The room falls silent, and Chuck and Serena stare at each other, shaken. Almost unable to comprehend how adept they are at wounding one another.

Serena compresses her mouth and shakes her head. Her eyes are still glistening with unshed tears.

"God, I wish I never had to look at you again," she says.

"I'll see you this weekend," Chuck throws back at her in anger.

She is already halfway to the door, but she still turns and looks at him over her shoulder.

Off her look of incredulity, he scoffs. "Oh, right. Like you're really going to miss the Shepard wedding."

#

"It's okay, S," Blair says into the phone. "You don't have to go stag...you can just tag along with me and Nate." There is a pause. "Are you kidding?" she says brightly. "There are a million guys out there who would die to be your date. I'm sure one of them will show up Saturday night. Besides...let's face it." Her tone is begrudging, yet cheerful. "Matt Archer was totally boring."

"He was, wasn't he?" Serena says after a little amused noise. "And kissing him was like kissing a goldfish. All cold and wet and...EUGH!"

The girls laugh together, then trail off into silence.

Blair hesitates. "You...haven't set your sights on anyone else, have you?"

"You mean like Chuck?" Serena huffs into the phone. "No."

There is a finality in her tone that Blair is pleased to hear.

"Well, I really do think it's for the best," she hurriedly replies. "I mean—you two?" She laughs again. "You're really better off as friends."

"Mm. That's just it, B," Serena replies in a lower voice, a sadder one. She is lying in her bed, her face pressed against her pillow. "We had a fight, and..."

She sighs. "I'm not sure we're friends anymore."

Blair swallows. "You've still got me," she offers.

"I know," she hears Serena sigh in answer. "Love you, B."

"Love you too, S."

Blair ends the call. Closes her eyes and breathes out through her nose.

"Hey," Nate says with a hint of concern. He is sitting beside Blair on his bed; their math textbooks are lying open in front of them. "Is Serena feeling any better?"

When Blair doesn't answer, his brows knit. "Blair?" he asks, sounding almost scared. "What's the matter?"

"Nate…" Blair pauses, folds her hands in her lap. "Let's said you had this friend. And they were doing something that wasn't good for them. But when you tried to explain to them why it wasn't good for them, they totally blew you off. And then you figured out a way to stop them from doing...that thing. But you kind of had to trick them, a little…"

She stops and looks up at him, searching his face for signs of understanding.

"Uh...Blair?" Nate says. "You've lost me."

She sighs.

"Hey," he says, pushing back her hair from her forehead. "It sounds like you did what you thought was best. Because you wanted to help someone else. Right?"

"...Right," she says after some hesitation.

"Well, then. How can that be wrong?"

Blair pouts. "I just feel icky," she says.

He puts his arm around her, strokes her back. "You're a good person, Blair. And you've got a good heart. You know that, right?" He kisses her temple.

"I guess," she utters without much faith.

"Hey," he says with a little smile, gliding his fingertips down her cheek to her chin. "Come here."

He leans forward and kisses her—gently at first. Then his hands slide down her back to her hips, and his kisses quickly grow more ardent.

"Mmm," he murmurs against her mouth. He pulls her on top of him, begins to tug at her shirt. He is trying to pull it over her head.

Blair stiffens.

It is far too bright in the bedroom. If Nate pulls off her shirt now, he'll see the protuberance of her stomach, the fat deposits under her arms.

He'll see what she's really like underneath her clothes.

Her hands shoot out to grab his hands. She clutches them, arrests their motion.

Nate freezes. Looks up at her with questioning eyes.

"I'm sorry," she breathes out. "I'm just...I'm not ready."

He takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

"Is that all right?" she adds, worried.

"Of course it's all right," Nate answers. "I mean—it's like I've always said. We should wait till we're both ready."

Blair looks down at him, her eyes soft and grateful.

Beside them on the bedspread, her cell phone starts to ring.

"Oh, sorry!" she chirps to him, and plucks up her phone very quickly. "I really should take this call."

She rolls off of him, slides off the bed, and takes a few steps away. She sets the phone to her ear.

"Charlene Bates from the Circle Club!" she crows into the receiver. "I am so sorry that I missed your call earlier."

"The hell you are, Waldorf," Chuck says in a dry tone. "What's with the alias? Are you and Nathaniel on one of your little study dates again?"

"As a matter of fact, I am," Blair answers with a smile, as if the fictional Mrs. Bates has just inquired about her health. "Thank you so much for asking."

She glances in the mirror over the fireplace. Nate is still within earshot, sitting on the bed behind her. He is flipping through his geometry book with an expression that she would think were disappointed, if she didn't know him better.

He doesn't look like he's paying her any attention at all.

Still, she thinks. Better to be careful.

"Look, I know you sent in that blast," Chuck tells her in a tone that anticipates denial. "Serena may not believe it, but I know you. And this has your name written all over it."

"Oh, I'm so happy to hear that you liked my seating plan," Blair effuses, setting her hand to her heart. "I just couldn't stop working on it. Not until I was satisfied that everyone was arranged in the best possible way. You know—certain people close together...certain people far apart..."

"So you admit this was your plan?" Chuck asks, hardly believing the confession he is hearing. "To keep me and Serena apart?

"Well..." Blair switches to a diplomatic tone. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I have heard of your interest in my best friend. But I have to tell you...Serena won't be joining the Circle Club anytime soon. Her schedule simply won't allow her take on yet another social obligation."

"More like her best friend won't allow her to have her own fucking life."

"I'm afraid you'll simply have to set your sights on someone else," Blair says with feigned sympathy. "But I'm sure finding a new junior member won't pose any problems. After all, your club is so very...exclusive."

"You know what I can't figure out, Waldorf?" Chuck says crossly. "How you benefit from any of this. I mean, do you just like playing with Serena like she's your own life-sized Barbie doll?"

"No, that would be you, Mrs. Bates," Blair says with an icy smile. "Remember?"

"Or maybe..." Chuck trails off, mulls for a moment. "Maybe it's just your ingrained Puritanism. Maybe you're just an uptight little virgin who doesn't want anyone else to get laid, either."

"Hmm. You know, I'm not sure we're seeing eye to eye to this..."

"Look, Blair—I didn't go after Serena. She came after me. And why? Because she wanted to have some fun. Something you are clearly incapable of doing." He blows a frustrated breath into the receiver. "I mean, why did you have to mix yourself up in this in the first place? Why couldn't you have just left us the fuck alone?"

"No, no, Mrs. Bates. Let me stop you right there," Blair says with some force. "It's not that Serena's too good for you or anything." (She emphasizes each word, clearly implying the opposite.) "It's just not a good fit."

"Surely you can understand that," she finishes, her voice sickly-sweet.

There is a pause.

"Fuck you, Waldorf."

Then the line goes dead.

"Always a pleasure, Mrs. Bates," Blair says. "Toodles."

She presses the "end" button with her thumb and tosses back her hair. And catches sight of something unexpected on the mantelpiece.

She blinks.

"What's this?" she asks in a small voice.

After a few seconds of silence, Nate looks up from his geometry book. Realizes that Blair is now talking to him.

"Oh!" he says with a start. He hops off the bed, walks over to join her.

"Isn't it great?" he says in overt admiration. "Chuck gave it to me last week. He said he and Serena made it in photo lab."

"You don't 'make' a photograph," Blair says absently, staring at the photo in its sterling silver frame. "You develop it."

Nate shrugs good-naturedly. "Yeah, you know. Whatever."

Blair's eyes glide over the picture, over the young faces of her and her friends.

Serena is standing next to her, smiling her biggest, brightest smile. Nate is leaning into her, a modest expression on his face. She is dead center, wrapping his scarf around her.

Chuck is standing behind her and Serena, his head tucked over their shoulders.

You two sure you don't wanna make out? she remembers him saying a second after the picture was taken. She and Serena had turned around and slapped him upside the head. And everyone had laughed.

"We all look so...inseparable," Blair says almost sadly, tracing her finger over the glass.

Nate looks surprised by this.

"That's 'cause we are," he says with complete conviction. "I mean—"

He lets out a little sigh. "I know you don't always get along with Chuck...and you and Serena have your differences every now and then," he qualifies. "But we always work it out. We always come back together in the end."

Blair looks at Nate for a moment. There is tenderness in her eyes.

She takes a quick step towards him and hugs him tight in her arms.

"Whoa," he says, startled. "What was that for?"

"Love you, Nate Archibald," Blair says with fierce pride, snuggling into his chest. "Always have. Always will."

"Love you too, Blair," he returns softly, and rests his chin on the top of her head.

In answer, she hugs him harder. Basks in his embrace, in the strength of his arms.

But over her head, out of her sight, Nate's eyes have already returned to the photo. To Serena's smiling face.

A/N: Thanks as always to Maribells for betaing. Please, M, for both of our sakes, never write a fanfic chapter as long as this one.

Would love your reviews, guys. I put a lot of work into this one.