Archive of Our Own

“I need more money,” Nate begs, cheeks flushed hot with shame. “Please.”

He can’t remember how he ended up on his knees, sinking into the cream shag carpet, but it feels fitting as she looks down upon him, every bit the duchess in her judgment. She lowers herself to his level, palms reaching to cup his jaw, smiling as he fights a flinch. Nate forces a smile in return, pretty and naive, holding still as her thumb runs over his bottom lip. So perfectly, perfectly pliant.

“Oh, darling.” Catherine coos, lips brushing the shell of his ear as she leans in to whisper. “You can’t possibly believe you’re worth so much effort.”

*

Nate Archibald is a cardboard cutout boy, wet paper mache and glossy finish. Malleable, something to be propped up and positioned for all those important people who parade past. Pretty as a picture and shallow as a puddle, all politicians' smiles and sad china blue eyes, look beyond the facade you’ve been presented and find only disappointment waiting. Chosen outfits and chosen future, like a dress-up doll in a store window, he opens his mouth to speak and someone else’s carefully practiced words tumble out. A good son, a good boyfriend, a good boy, with his designer, if paper-thin, veneer, foldable and fuckable and goddamn perfect.

In the end, Nate Archibald is just a slip of a silhouette in thousand-dollar shoes. Worthy of nothing and getting it all the same, he’s hardly even a person at all.

This role, golden boy and marinette with gilded strings, offers slow suffocation. Rib cage splintering under the pressure of his day-planner existence, vice grip of it all squeezing the last gasps of air from his lungs. He can see it now, his parents' dream, his great future, a lifetime of nerve pills, business meetings, and a steady pickling liver.

He learned long ago never to want, for hope is an idyllic notion and no one on the upper East Side is ever afforded the luxury of being a child, and yet, over and over he wavers. Grasping at Serena and Carter and all the other shiny things glinting in the dark along his descent, whispering bittersweet promises of any future other than his own. Perhaps this is Nate’s greatest sin, the desperate blindness which so seems to run in the family, coveting something to ease the ache clawing within his chest cavity, glass piercing soft flesh from the inside out.

Nate has never been smart, fluctuating between clueless and confused, and still, he let himself believe he knew better than destiny. And still, he let himself believe.

Before, before everything, a world predating Serena flight and Nate losing leaving Blair and Dan fucking Humphrey being thrust into their world, Nate Archibald was simply a shorter version of saying Blair Waldorf’s boyfriend or Chuck Bass’s best friend, of The Captain's son or the poster child for privilege. He was an accessory, always an extension of someone brighter and far more interesting. And much like accessories, when the season ends, you can toss him away.

He’s none of those things now, boyfriend and best friend and son to none, but an object all the same. The course he has always stayed, yet so reviled, skipped town with his father, and the world has yet to spin on its axis. Any way the wind blows, Nate is still nothing.

Still, there are certain things Nate Archibald knows. Knows he is insufficient and foolish and hollow and destitute and a thousand other things Blair would better know how to say, and that it is all his fault. Knows he’s good at precisely two things; being pretty, and doing as he’s told.

Perhaps this should lessen the blow, but usually, it doesn’t. Only makes things clearer.

Catherine laughs airily, “Don’t get me wrong, you're the best toy I’ve had in ages, but any further investment would require me caring about you as a person.”

Nate blinks, arming himself with the civility he’s draped around himself his whole life, and promises, “I can be better.”

His father’s voice rings inside his head, memories and ancient lectures swirling together, do better, we expect more of you, you must do anything to protect this family, and Nate wants to plead, I’m trying, please I’m trying.

“You’re such a pleaser,” his eyes slip closed as she brushes a lock of hair from his forehead, a mockery of affection. “But really, I’m set. Maybe you should find someone else willing to pay for your talents”

His eyes fly open. “What? No.” She’s toying with him, she must be, employing some new brand of humiliation she gets off on tormenting him with.

“Don’t be hasty. There are plenty of people who would die to get a piece of someone as desperate and pretty as you. I could always recommend your services.” She smirks, an ugly thing. “Only If you’d like, of course.”

This is another game, her way of gauging the full truth of his situation, and he won’t give in. Nate stumbles backward, pulling from her grasp. “I’m not desperate.”

“Sure you aren’t, sweetheart, I’m positive you and your mom will be perfectly fine once you're penniless-” She’s still smiling, voice saccharine sweet, and somehow that's worse. “-and homeless. If you aren’t, I’d be happy to assist”

He doesn’t bother with the button of his pants, heading for the door. His hands shake, but Nate never notices. “No. I won’t. I can’t.”

Nate wonders if his father would be more ashamed of him for whoring himself out in the first place, or for failing to rescue his family regardless.

“Oh, darling, I really think you can.”

No, Nate is good at precisely three things; being pretty, doing as he’s told, and being used.

*

Six days and one phone call later, and Nate’s sitting on the edge of Catherine’s bed, gaze focused on his own bare feet.

“I’m so glad you've reconsidered, precious, but really, I thought you’d hold out longer.”

(It’s past three in the morning as Nate casts a final glance around, finally certain he hasn’t been followed across the bridge and slides into the phone booth. He’s never held a quarter for this long before, and it feels oddly heavy in his fist. The phone number is registered under a fake name, he fumbles trying to dial it.

“Dad, I’m not sure I can get you the money,” Nate’s tone is even, but it feels absurdly like begging. “Things aren’t great out here.”

“Relax, son, I only need a little bit more, just something to get settled with.”

He isn’t a child, and his father’s half a world away, he can’t wrap his too-tight grip around Nate’s wrists and lecture on how exactly he’s failing the Archibald name this time, but still, Nate withers under the false reassurance. No matter the time and distance, the feeling of smallness and utter insignificance are the same.

He sucks in a shuddering breath, picturing Cathrine and her manicured fingernails digging into the soft skin of his arms. His finger twisted in the cord. “Dad, I-”

“I have to go, but I’m sure you can think of something. Don’t disappoint me, Nathaniel.”

The dial tone thrums deafeningly in his ear as the line goes dead.)

“You win.” He admits. ‘I need the money. You win.”

Nate’s not entirely sure what he expects. For Catherine to smirk, predatory and victorious, and gloat over his failure, for her to pin him against the bed, whispering all the dirty things she’s allowed to do to him against his neck. For something, anything, other than Catherine to reach into her purse and pull out a slip of paper, a phone number nearly inked across it.

“I hear the deputy mayor is quite fond of you, I can always give her a call.”

Like hands around a throat, he chokes. “What?”

When she moves to clasp his hands in hers, he hasn’t the strength to pull away. “You’re not very fast on the uptake, huh? Did you think I was kidding?”

She’s fixing him with that look people have cast at him his entire life, marveling at the naivete, no, the stupidity, of Nate Archibald. “This isn’t a game?”

Catherine laughs and he’s so goddamn tired of the sound, but Nate shivers regardless. “It’s certainly a game, but not one we’re playing.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I'm sure you say that often, but honestly, I told you. This is a delightful solution, you get your money, and my favorite toy learns a few new tricks.”

Nate wants to hit something, to put his fist through the wall until plaster cracks and his knuckles bleed. Wants to scream and make a fucking scene and ruin his reputation of perfect composure. Wants to be eleven and unknowing and curled between Blair and Serena as Serena stroked his hair and Blair recited all the reasons they were wonderful, unaware of the world beyond the warmth of each other and the contentment of their shared misery. Wants.

Instead, Nate slides his most sweetly vacuous expression in place and offers, “You don’t want this.”

“Oh, Nate, even you aren’t that pretty.” The grip on his hand turns bruising, but the pleasant smile adorning her face never slips. “Tell me to make the call.”

“I won’t.”

She drops his hands, pushing him flat against the mattress with a sudden shove. “Are you really in a position to refuse?”

*

He isn't.

Nate knows this, knows this as a simple fact like the sky is blue or the Upper East Side breaks its children or Blair loves Serena. Nate is out of time, out of ideas, and thoroughly out of money.

Nate Archibald is helpless.

Still, there’s van der Bilt blood swirling in his veins, and as such even his fall from grace must be worthy of splendor. There’s a black-out limo and top-shelf champagne and stupid little thoughts curling in Nate’s mind of this is nothing like Pretty Woman and God, Chuck would probably find this hot.

He knows her name but chooses never to use it, as she makes a point to employ his. She’s aiming for intimacy, as though this is a silly fling rather than an arrangement, but Nate feels (metaphorically for once) stripped bare instead.

She offers him a single malt and seats him in a leather armchair, and when he eyes the drink suspiciously, she gives an only mostly fake laugh and promises it's clean. Before Nate can delve too far down the rabbit hole of wondering if he’d prefer to slip quietly into oblivion while this whole event unfolds, the age-old question of not knowing versus not remembering playing out in his head, she’s already atop him and immersed in out some office roleplay fantasy he hasn’t been informed the rules of.

It could be worse, he decides, because she’s objectively hot and in any other situation he’d be enjoying this immensely and she isn’t Catherine, and it’s all almost fine. Until Nate’s stepping back into his underwear and she tries to slip a hundred dollars into the elastic waistband and Nate is going to be sick.

He isn’t, but his hands tremble the entire limo ride home, even wrapped around his envelope of cash until his knuckles leech white. This money will pay their heating bill, and Nate tries not to consider this as he showers, determined to scrub his skin raw until either the water runs cold or he feels remotely like a person.

The water runs cold far sooner.

Like a soldier he marches on, creeping into his mother’s bathroom to dab concealer over where fresh hickeys will surely soon bloom. Stupidly, he’s reminded of the night he and Blair fell apart, van der Bilt ring still heavy on her finger as he let the police drag his father away. The memory burns, flashing cop lights and a busted lip, and still, decades could have passed since rather than a matter of months. The weight of the world has always tattered on his shoulders, but he feels the force more acutely now, ancient as sand and bone and aging far beyond his years.

Seventeen years old and he has lived a thousand lifetimes, yet never lived a day.

A soft hiss escaping his lips as he applies pressure to a bruise, and this too is familiar, though he’d hidden the wound his father dealt to appease lawyers and his mother’s shifting blame, rather than the tired nausea settling in his stomach.

In the mirror’s reflection, he catches his mother’s gaze. She eyes the money cautiously, before giving Nate a long once over. After a moment, she nods, and though she’ll never express her gratitude in words, some of the nervous tension fizzles from the room.

He doesn’t turn around. “This could all end if dad turns himself in.”

Her gaze meets him in the mirror and his heart rattles in his chest, and he knows her answer before the words ever escape her mouth. Nate looks away first.

“That’s quite a joke, Nate,” she flashes her most dazzling politician smile, all endless white teeth and manic eyes. “Don’t make it again.”

Nate shouldn’t be so shocked by his helplessness, after all, he’s never been anything but.

*

In a sense, it’s all a matter of escalation.

Ms. Deputy Mayor, clad in nothing but stockings and Manolos, tilts up Nate’s chins and says, one of my girl friends has been awfully lonely since her divorce, is there anything you can do about that hmm? And Nate blinks for a moment before saying, okay, because there is nothing left to do but comply and Nate’s long learned to accept okay. She swallows his mouth in another kiss and the matter is settled.

Being passed around like a party favor is a lucrative position, and soon enough he’s decorating the arms of elite’s for nights out, as well as decorating their beds for nights in.

School complicates matters, as English papers are fairly difficult to write when you spend your evenings gracing rich strangers' beds, but who gives a goddamn. His mother knows, but doesn’t know, and never bothers to ask questions regardless. Drops the topic entirely the first time Nate disappears and stumbles home three days later with fingernail scratches and fifty grand.

A vicious, vindictive piece of him, fanned by the machinations of Chuck and Blair, almost hopes she’ll inquire. Wants to hurl is it worth it, mother? your social standing for your son. Have I gained your approval now?

A far more rational piece knows she never will, and he wouldn’t bother to argue anyhow.

He’s high more often than not, or at least south of sobriety, drifting along with a haze in his head, enjoying the sticky sweet taste of ash on his tongue. When the world spins like a shaken snow globe, it’s all easier to take. His parent’s part in this shitty play and how fucking complicit he is blurring into bitter nothingness and unrecognizable fingertips ghosting over his skin.

But hey, maybe Nate’s just sour he never asked Chuck the going rate of his favorite girl before their falling out.

Blair is lost to him and Chuck willingly cast off, but if nothing else, he has insight now. Understands Blair’s ruthless path to glory and Chuck’s everything, the desire for control when there is none, craving power over your very nature. Nate is not powerless, he cannot be when he can say only if you wear a condom and ill wear lipstick to suck you off, but not Chanel brand and if you want to tie me up, it will cost you another 5k.

In a way, there’s almost more freedom in his downfall, than he ever held in life.

And if a dirty feeling settles over him, an unshakable shame buried shallow below the surface of his skin, if he feels used, hollow, not enough to even quantify as a person, this reaction isn’t new.

In the beginning and the middle and the end, there has always been something wrong with Nate Archibald.

Serena’s in his bed now, their legs mingling over the sheets. She’s avoiding her mother, or perhaps Chuck, and if Nate were sober enough for pleasantries he would definitely ask, but the quiet is nice, and he can’t bear to be alone any longer.

He loves her, but not like that, and perhaps he never did. Perhaps he simply adored the way her hair smelled like rebellion and freedom and her mouth tasted intoxicatingly like finally, finally being alive and notBlairnotBlairnotBlair. Slept without her because he wasn’t supposed to, and it was intoxicating, being wrong, having corporeal proof he was fucked inside and out. Or a fractured piece of himself still does, because Serena shines so bright all the lights in her wake seem dim, and on hot nights he can still taste champagne and her on his tongue. Maybe he did, or maybe he does, or maybe he never, because Serena is Serena but Nate is never Nate and nothing makes sense any longer.

“I know you aren’t okay.” Serena finally says, because she does, she always does.

Because Serena is his twin flame, and when he looks beneath the perfection and the golden skin, the layer of quiet sadness never quite leaves. No matter what people and noise and liquor she may fill herself up with, a piece of her is still missing, a hollow just beneath her heart. Nate looks into the blue of her eyes and sees himself. They’re the same, looked upon with you’re so beautiful but there’s not a thought in your head and you’re so wonderful, don’t you dare ruin my perception of you by being real, chasing after a future people like them never seem to achieve. Pedestal perfect until you aren't. Pedestal perfect until you’re broken.

The past is still heavy on his mind and he can’t say I’m not okay, Serena, but you can’t fix me, not this time, so he asks, “Would Blair still love me if it wasn’t you?”

Serena stiffens, but she doesn’t pull away. Perhaps even she knew the truth; his cardinal sin had never been straying, but stealing Serena from Blair.

For even in their moments of Blair & Nate and Serena & Nate, it was always Blair & Serena & Nate, tangible if not touchable, for Serena was so beyond him. Blair could dream of being queen, live her life as though a heroine in a Hepburn movie, but Serena always had been, and always would be, her very own sun. The brilliant center of Blair’s universe, one Blair could not help but orbit, basking in the warmth of her.

“Do you still love her?”

Falling in love with Serena van der Woodson is not a conscious decision or even a process. You simply woke one morning and found yourself there, helpless in love with her. Blair has spat the sentiment once, wicked tongue and gleaming eyes, Serena is just so fucking easy to love, right? No matter that you try, she’s inside you, filling you up.

The words were perhaps the most venomous Blair Waldorf would ever cry, and yet the truest.

“Do you?”

Nate knows, he knows. No one on Earth could ever love Serena as Blair did, and Blair as Serena, and Nate is doomed to lose everything learning this lesson.

“Dan felt like what love is supposed to be, but he wasn’t.” Her lip quivers. “Why wasn’t he?”

Serena and Nate, Nate and Serena, they’re interchangeable, never loving who they’re supposed to. Never loving who’s right.

She blinks up at the ceiling, not quite crying but eyes wet all the same. “I don’t even know who I am, just who I’m supposed to be.”

I’m a whore, Nate thinks, I’m nothing.

“I want to be special, Nate. I’m so afraid if they stop looking at me, even for a second, I’ll be irrelevant.”

“You’re Serena van der Woodsen, you could never be irrelevant.” He reassures, and he believes it, believes it more truly than any words he’s spoken in years.

She interlocks their fingers, squeezing gently. “What are we going to do, Nate?”

He thinks of Serena at the very start of summer, asking him have you ever been happy, with a giggle and hidden sincerity, and Nate wonders now why he hadn’t asked back, have you?

“I don’t know, S,” he admits, and he doesn’t. “I just want to be real, to feel like a person.”

“Stay with me?” she asks, and it isn’t a question.

His eyes slide close. “Always.”

*

Catherine disappears in a blur of Blair and Vanessa, though not before calling him a perfect little call girl and sucking a hickey to remind her by into his collarbone. Nate doesn’t bother to pretend he isn’t terrified of her in a way which aches, curling into his bed upon receiving the news to stare at the ceiling, relief pouring over his indescribable waves, like the waxing and waning of the ocean, a deliverance of an infinitesimal sliver of the freedom he so craved.

Blair never asks, but she squeezes his hand a little tighter in the hallway all the same.

Dan Humphrey slides into the picture without fanfare, easy as breathing and lemon pie he’s suddenly enmeshed into their lives. Somehow, this is the major shock of the year, because what’s prostitution and incest and general debauchery in comparison to a boy from Brooklyn? Dan and Serena alternate between casting identical looks of concern in Nate’s direction, soft eyes wide and mouth tugged into a little frown, and he wonders who designed it first, Rufus, Lily, or someone in between.

Any scrutiny is easy enough to cast off with a pretty smile and empty-headed laugh, because Nate is no one’s touchstone, but he’s always steady, never anyone you have to worry after. He’s a background player, an occasional boyfriend or friend, but scenery nonetheless. A supporting role, never stealing attraction from the true stars of the show.

Sometimes, Dan looks at him differently, doe eyes trained on Nate as they used to Serena, the way the entire population of Earth gazes at Serena. Like he’s significant and golden and good and not, and not-

Not Nate Archibald, for whatever it may entail.

There’s a patchwork of fading yellow/green hickeys decorating, overlaid by a fresh coat of purple, and he’s never been this tired in his life, a sort of unshakable heaviness settling within him, only exacerbated by the fact he slept in a limo last night. He’s hungry too, because his mother is too busy paying off debts to buy groceries and fuck, when was the last time he ate, noon yesterday? and maybe he has a combination headache of a hangover and tension, but Nate is fine. His situation could always be more dire.

This is why when he stumbles over a lunch table and into a chair, Blair says, excuse me, did you just faint?, Nate replies with no, I just got dizzy for a second.

“Nate, what the hell?” She asks, and because she’s Blair, the words still sound entirely composed coming out of her mouth.

“I’m fine,” he says, because he is fine. Nate is always fine.

“Sit up,” Blair instructs, “clearly you can’t be trusted to take care of yourself.”

Nate does as he told, head only swimming the tiniest amount, for when the entire apocalyptic focus of Blair Waldorf is trained on you, you comply.

“I’m fine,” he repeats, like a mantra.

She ignores him, pulling a yogurt and spoon from her lunch bag. “Open your mouth, you look malnourished.”

“Blair, stop, this is ridiculous.”

She’s glaring now, but Blair looks at him just as she always has, with too much expectation and fairytale romanticism, but quiet understanding all the same. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, they’ve always been two sides of the same damn coin.

“Do shut up, I’m missing a French test for this.”

Oh, he thinks, because there is no other way to describe the feeling worming through his chest. He spent his entire childhood, entire life, under the impression he would one day marry Blair, bought and sold at the low, low price of his wishes and wants, and Nate had long learned to understand her. Her core isn’t rotten, but it’s a shaky thing, built upon a tremulous foundation of insecurity and covered over with diamond. She’ll never, can’t, say, I’m scared and I’m worried and everything is falling apart, I can't help myself so let me help you, please.

Thirteen and tipsy, he’d told Blair once, when we get married, I want to take your last name. She had wrapped her arms tighter around him and said with shiny eyes, I’m unlovable, no one will ever love me as you do. Both of them spoke lies, but he’d known with a certainty which only came when you’re were too young and too old and too terrified all at once, he and Blair were a matching set. Knew of their invisible puppet strings and the higher powers which forever tugged upon them. Controlled and contained, destined for the sort of perfection only achievable through artificial manufacturing.

Serena may be his mirror, but Blair is his shadow. Nate could be summertime and Serena sunlight, but Blair is winter, and their jagged, broken edges fit better together than they ever did alone.

If Nate were better at allegories he would remember how the sun shines brightest in winter, reflecting off a soft blanket of snow, of how Dan Humphrey reminded him of rain, gloomy and weighed-down but begetting new beginnings, flower blossoms and green grass.

Nate is no poet, and he’ll never be able to spin beguiling words on silver tongue, and he says, “You don’t have to do this.”

I do, Blair thinks but never says, waving her spoonful of yogurt almost menacingly. “Now, unless you’d prefer Humphrey feed you, you better let me do this for you, Nate Archibald.”

*

Dan’s hovering in front of his bleary eyes, trying to coax him into agreeing to a movie marathon, and Nate’s trying to pretend it doesn’t sound like the nicest night of his life.

“C’mon, what’s your favorite movie?”

Nate’s mother is convinced they’re salvation will come in the form of her buying back all their furniture, and his father’s blown through the payments faster than a Bass, and Nate has already been forced to step down from his position as lacrosse captain and is dangerously close to flunking his English class with the new teacher Blair’s warring against and-

Nate is so goddamn tired, down to the marrow of his bone.

He scrubs a hand over his face. “If you make fun of me, I’m never entering Brooklyn again, but The Sound of Music.”

Dan grins, and it’s so unexpectedly brilliant Nate has to take another breath. “Dude, my sister loves that movie. What do you say, me, you, and Jenny? Movie night tonight at the loft?”

“Sorry, man, I have plans.” I can’t remember if today is Tuesday or Wednesday and I’m too busy letting the highest bidder fuck me to watch a movie. “Actually, I have to bail now.”

The smile slips off Dan’s face, and more than anything, Nate would like to make it return. “Of course, rain check then?”

Please please please God, please. “Sounds great, but be prepared, I may or may not know all the words to every song.”

Dan shakes his head, and while the twist of his mouth can’t quite be described as a smile, there’s a certain fondness. “Jenny already subjects me to a sing-a-long, you would too? I’m betrayed. Deeply, deeply betrayed.”

Nate turns to walk away, arms outstretched toward the sky, and it’s almost enough. “You love it.”

Almost enough lasts nearly as long as the ride from Saint Jude’s to a penthouse on sixth, limo wrapping around the block five times to avoid being spotted. Nearly as long as the feeling of a sickly familiarity creeps up his spine, a mingling of old recognition and unease as he’s led to a bedroom.

Almost enough lasts until he recognizes Congressman Buckley, recognizes any future beyond this is nonexistent.

Grandfather’s greatest rival knows. He knows and he knows and he knows and he knows and-

God, does the rest of his family? Are they ashamed, sitting in their hallowed halls and whispering over Nate’s idiocy, refusing to speak to his mother because of Nate’s actions? Are the Buckley’s plotting against them because Nate was too fucking stupid to find a better solution?

After all, like his mother always says, it is all his fault.

Nate bristles. “If this is some sort of political power play, I want nothing to-”

“Shhh, Archibald, no need to fuss. I have no desire for this to become public knowledge. The irony of the situation is apparent, but believe me, it will only make this better.” He smiles, there’s an unmistakable coldness to the look, never reaching his eyes. “I mean, of all the ways to wreck a van der Bilt, this has to be the most fun.”

He quivers with an angry, frightened tension, nauseous and shaky in a way he hasn’t been since the first time. “I’m leaving.”

“Oh, don’t be childish, my motives aren’t entirely impure. You’re an attractive boy, I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.” He steps closer, and Nate the thrum of his pulse, every nerve in his body calling him to flee. “I’ll give you fifteen grand for an hour, forty for two.”

His head is cloudy, mouth tasting of ash. Buckley’s offer is so far beyond the usual, spelling the sort of financial stability Nate’s been chasing since the first night Catherine pounced him. Buckley’s expression is much the same, the faux kindness, playing casual despite the predatory leer creeping into his gaze. He’s offering a complete violation, in exchange for a break, nights sleeping in his own bed and lacrosse practice and movie nights with the Humphrey's.

“Fifty for two hours.” He grits.

Buckley’s amused by this, chuckling low in his throat. “I underestimated you, Archibald, maybe you’re a politician after all. Tell you what, here’s my final offer, seventy-five for three hours.”

His stomach flips, and the words burn like bile in his throat “Okay.”

“Good boy. Take your clothes off, and don’t be so stiff about it. You’re probably the highest paid prostitute outside of Amsterdam, try to enjoy the allure.”

Nate’s hands tremble as he pulls his buttons from their holes, and he hasn’t been this terrified since he was fourteen and his father caught him smoking weed. No, he hasn’t been this terrified in his life, the sort of all-consuming terror rattling within his crushed chest cavity inspired by utter, irrevocable helplessness only Dan Humphrey would have words for. “I'll pass.”

“Fine, make this difficult, I don’t particularly care.” His gaze flits to Nate’s hand, artlessly tugging open his shirt. “Go slower, give me the show I paid for.”

Nate, will timeless practice does precisely as told, sliding down his pants with a roll of his hips. He lacks finesse, tastelessly blending the moves of every girl he’s ever seen attend to Chuck, unable to contain the hot flush to his cheeks. Buckley watches, eyes darkening with lust as he barks out further orders.

He’s the brooding boy, pensive and melancholy, but this, this is beyond anything he may contain. This is despair, and Nate Archibald will accept despair.

Buckley hovers behind him, still fully dressed, and when he presses him onto his stomach against the mattress after a moment, it’s almost a relief. “This would destroy your career if the press ever found out.”

“Don’t be naive, Archibald, Washington is filled with back door deals like this. Really, as far as dirty little secrets go, you’re pretty vanilla.” His hands' gravity to Nate’s hips, grip aiming to bruise. “But being on the other side? I’m not sure how many mayors of New York get their start whoring themself out to pay off daddy's bad habit.”

Chuck’s voice swirls in his empty head, crooning you were just born to please, weren’t you? and careful, Nathaniel, you bruise like a peach. The context hadn’t been the same, but with Chuck, you never knew. His father, you're the man now, protect your mother. He lies still.

Nate closes his eyes, but he doesn’t fight. There is nothing left to fight. “Fuck you.”

“I’m going to, so stop playing like all of Manhattan doesn’t know how fucking wretched you are.”

Nate’s always been a whore, sold off for as long as he can remember. His family, the Waldorfs, a pretty face to be positioned as necessary. No one has ever cared what Nate wanted, and even less over what he didn’t want. He’s a body, a vessel, and nobody gives a fuck what’s inside.

Nate Archibald has always been a whore, only now, in a far more literal sense.

“See, Nate, that’s what makes you special, why everyone is just so ravenous to have a go at you. You’re awfully pretty, sure, but it transcends petty things like looks. You used to be one of us, above it all, and now you’re a little slut. I’d say everyone loves to have a piece of ruining the fallen-by-the-wayside golden boy, but I have a feeling you’ve been ruined for a very long time.”

Nate would carve his heart from his chest to curl up on the sofa and watch The Sound of Music, comfortably sandwiched between Dan and Jenny, but inside he fights against the tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. Too afraid he’ll enjoy his suffering all the more.

*

Weeks roll on and Serena and Blair catfight as Serena and Dan have easily avoidable drama as Blair and Chuck fall together and fall apart and repeat the vicious cycle three times over and Nate comes so despairingly close to eclipsing what passes for normal he can almost forget.

Happiness is an elusive, diaphanous thing, slipping through your fingers, and seeming to appear in tricks of the lights. He longs for halcyon days which never truly were, false belief a lifeline as he promises himself he used to be happy, he must have been.

The days of his father in rehab, wrapped around Vanessa and her steadying hand, the future finally a strip of blue sky as he painlessly slipped his leash, convinced the eye-of-a-hurricane calm could last this time. The early days of him and Blair and Serena, each uniquely yet indistinguishably unhappy, bleeding into one another as they sought any source of joy, always in the worst of places, and the worst of each other. The days, and oh the nights, spent with Chuck, the blinding highs and his feeble, childish belief Chuck would be better if only Nate waited patiently enough, if only he turned so many blind eyes and clamped his hands over his ears long enough.

The future is uncertain, money only guaranteed as long as Nate can lie on his back and sink to his knees, and the shackles of the van der Bilt’s are cast off as Nate is cast into the dirt, but where is his thankfulness? Call it bargaining or escapism, but he has a purpose now. For better and absolutely for worse, he craved freedom like rain in the desert and had it delivered to his doorstep with a shiny red bow. Now he quakes in its presence.

“Dude, just pick an album,” Nate says, sprawled backward off Dan’s bed, mouth wrapped around a fat blunt.

Dan looks up from his frankly ridiculous pile of records to give him a good-natured glare, whether for the weed or his mockery of Dan’s music selection “process” Nate can’t tell, but it makes him grin stupidly. “Very rude, but fine, my dad’s stuff or Jefferson Airplane.”

Nate rolls over, determined to vote for Rufus’ music, but this action only leads to the blunt immediately falling from his mouth. He dives after it with an oh shit, but he can’t quite rescue Dan's history paper in time. There’s a light thump and a sizzle, and a giant burn mark in the center of his thesis sentence soon follows.

Really, Nate should apologize, considering he just toasted the very studious and much nervous Dan Humphrey’s paper, but the look of unbelievable horror on Dan’s face is too much to ignore. A horror that only increases as he watches Nate dissolve into hysterics, laughing atop the pile of records he just toppled off the bed onto over the singing of his precious homework. Dan gives a nervous laugh, then another, and soon he joins him, bent over and wheezing on his bedroom floor.

Dan gasps. “Ms. Scmidt’s going to think I’m a pothead now. It was bad enough when she thought my name was Man Humper, but this is objectively true. I’m at least stoner adjacent.”

Nate laughs until his breath rattles in his chest, stomach aching. He hasn’t laughed this hard since a truly disastrous game of Never Have I Ever between him, Chuck, Blair, and Serena in the Hamptons. For a moment he’s feather-light, weightless and floating in the autumn sun, for a moment he’s Nate and absolutely nothing else.

“Dan?” He says.

“Yeah?”

He considers Buckley purring, I’ll give you an extra seven thousand if you let me hit your pretty face and how he can cross “left my underwear in the deputy mayor’s office” off his bucket list and how no one in his life has ever looked at him like Nate is Nate and not an extension of their own aspirations or a prize to win or something attractive to sleep with.

Nate bites his lip, head lolling backward. “Is there something wrong with me? Fundamentally?”

Dan kicks his foot, and there’s a softness to the gesture. “I think there’s something wrong with everyone, but you, poor little rich boy? Fundamentally fucked up? That’s way too Fitzgerald. And Dickensian. Really, like every cliche, all at once.”

Nate kicks him back. “Oh, so you’re calling me cliche now.”

“Absolutely,” Dan agreed, and for a moment his eyes are soft and wholly sincere and Nate thinks he understood what Serena meant when she once said, Dan doesn’t look at you like you're his everything, he looks at you like you’re a person. “You completely are, but I’m also officially informing you that you’re fundamentally good.”

*

Nate rises to a silver box sitting on his bedside table.

Inside, he finds one hundred thousand dollars of stacked bills and a silk baggie of roofies, a stationary card tucked atop the money. -play safely, Nathaniel, the card reads, font elegantly scrawled in Chuck’s handwriting.

For a moment, Nate considers the life insurance policy his parents have most surely taken out against him, and wonders if he’s worth more alive or dead.

*

Bart Bass dies and Nate almost wishes it was him instead.

Predictably, Chuck is an utter mess, holed up in the Palace and spiraling into drunkenness and debauchery. He’s subdued, more equipped to paw ineffectual at serving girls hired for precisely that reason and hurling vile words at Nate and Blair when they attempt to pour him into a suit for the funeral. They’re fourteen again, taking turns preventing the other from choking to death on their own vomit as they slur about their parents' less than stellar approaches to love.

He wants to claw out Chuck’s eyes, the angry pit bubbling in his stomach boiling over at the very sight of his face, but instead, he stands steadfast, because Nate is nothing if not repetitive and Blair doesn’t deserve to handle this alone, and presses his shoulder to Chuck’s until he’s almost upright in the pew. The stench of aged scotch is almost enough to qualify Nate as drunk as well, and a familiar sympathy is fighting within him. The desire to break something, glass or bone, is ever-present, but forgiving Chuck is easy as sin and familiar as the back of his hand. Nate is pathetic and so, so weak, and he would like to believe Chuck would do the same for him.

(Nate carefully keeps this thought locked away; the death of his father. Oh, wouldn’t that solve so many problems, the money and their disparaged social situation and Nate’s extracurriculars. Therefore, Nate prevents that question from ever escaping, trapped in the same bleak corner as I wonder if dad would hit me again if he found out how exactly I’ve been financing his do-over in the Dominican? and if I asked, would Dan kiss me?)

The funeral is a verifiable who’s-who of elites and of course, Nate’s slept with at least four of the attendees. In the expansive vocabulary shared by Dan Humphrey and Blair Waldorf, Nate has never come across a word to accurately describe the feeling of shame for sitting at the funeral of your ex-best friend’s father, gaze locked on your own shoes to avoid making eye contact with someone who has paid you for sex. Nate swallows and stares straight ahead when a divorcee who loves to be kissed low on her sternum begins tapping on his elbow.

Chuck’s head lolls onto his shoulder, and Blair casts a glance not intending to hide her nervousness in his direction, and Buckley begins messaging his phone to tell him to come tonight, and Nate nearly crumbles to dust then and there.

Nate doesn’t quite remember how the ceremony ends, or even how he returned to the Church lawn, but Blair’s giving his wrist a soft squeeze and promising to watch after Chuck. He should protest, an especially miserable Chuck is an especially cruel Chuck, and Blair has been the subject of his psychological games far too many times already, wants to tell her to find Serena instead, but his mouth won’t open.

Buckley’s calling him now, but Nate never bothers to answer, there will be a driver at his house in an hour no matter what response he provides. The money is gone all over again, but Nate is a collection of tattered ribbons, one more touch and he may fall to decorative shreds entirely. Soon, there will be nothing left of him, reduced to ash and a cocktail party anecdote.

Time is meaningless, stretching and shrinking beyond all imagination, and Nate is sitting on his front steps, silk baggie heavy in hand. The idea of slipping quietly into oblivion, being anywhere but here, is beyond tempting, sweet on the tip of his tongue like a little white pill. He wants to be free, set loose like a dove in a cage, and this is one way. The power of nothingness.

Roofie, such an ugly word, Nate stupidly thinks, and then he swallows.

After all, he’s a prostitute, not a conversationalist, no one has ever praised him for his scintillating conversational skills, only his face.

*

Nate Archibald wakes in nothing but someone else’s underwear and metal handcuffs.

The underwear is china blue and lacy and Nate recognizes them immediately from two weeks ago when Buckley tried to coerce him into wearing them, a remnant of his wife from “before the accident”. Nate had refused, the implication sitting heavy in his stomach. His breath wheezes in his chest, blackness dotting the edge of his vision as oxygen grows too difficult to obtain, an all-consuming panic clawing at his cloudy brain, seeping into every neuron and synapse.

The handcuff key is sitting on top of the burrow and Buckley is nowhere in sight, and if Nate had the capacity to think, he would thank every God for the summer Blair and Serena tricked him into a yoga class. He twists, grasping the key in his mouth and jamming it into the keyhole, and then he runs.

His legs nearly fold under him when he tries to stand, whether from the drugs or his heart pounding against his ribcage like a xylophone, Nate can’t tell, but he nearly falls again trying to tug on the nearest pair of pants. He’s already halfway down a flight of stairs by the time he fumbles his shirt over his head, not bothering to search for shoes.

After half a lifetime of booze and partying, Nate’s been left will have a fairly high tolerance, and hasn’t thrown up from substances in years, but he soon finds himself a block down the street, hurling into a public trash can in a torrential downpour. His toes have done numb by the time he’s finished, dry heaving in a soaked through shirt.

His phone is still sitting in the pocket of his jacket, and no power in the universe could persuade Nate to return. He trembles, a whole body shake he tells himself is only shivering, not because these aren’t his fucking pants and he can’t remember anything beyond the limo ride. No, Nate is only cold, even as he jumps the subway turnstile and unconsciously picks the car headed for Dumbo in Brooklyn.

Nate can’t remember a time when his house felt like home. When he pictures loving families, it isn’t his own families' hostile, distant Thanksgivings were his father overdoses on vicadin, but the family chili dinner nights and easy banter and sound of 80s rock permeating the air no matter which room you entered of the Humphrey's. The last time Nate can remember feeling safe, feeling comforted, was sprawled on Dan’s bedroom floor, laughter echoing in his ears.

Nate stands on Dan’s doorstep, and he prays for the feeling again.

Dan opens the door, shock blossoming across his face. “Nate, what are you doing here?”

Nate feels untethered and wrought open and he’s never been this lost in his life, but Dan is watching him with those soulful chocolate eyes and he’s Dan, the lighthouse and the anchor, and because he has nothing in the world left to lose and no answer to Dan’s question which could possibly make sense, but if anyone could understand it would be him, Nate kisses him.

He has no expectation Dan will reciprocate, but after a moment he presses back, arms snaking around Nate’s back and pulling him even closer. Nate’s torn apart and so goddamn empty and Dan is fucking bursting, teeming with life and love and everything Nate’s void of and so Nate kisses him with such desperation and ferocity like Dan could reanimate his corpse and fill him back up again.

After a long moment, Dan pulls away, eyebrows still drawn in confusion, but there’s contentment that wasn’t there before. “Well, I can’t say I expected that.”

“Me neither,” Nate admits.

“My dad’s with Lily, and Jenny’s staying with Eric, you should come inside,” Dan says, moving from the doorway where they’re still hovering. “You’re all wet.” Dan looks fucking radiant as he pants a little, but the spell is broken, “Why are you all wet?”

He flicks on the kitchen light, and Nate winces from the brightness, but it’s nothing compared to the hardness which immediately comes over Dan’s features. He raises a hand to brush Nate’s cheek, but thinks better of it after a moment, hand dropping to his side.

“Did someone hit you?”

I don’t know, he doesn’t say, because Dan’s regarding him like Nate’s favorite housekeeper when he was six and mother lied easily my husband is no belligerent drunk, Nathaniel’s just a nervous boy or his guidance counselor freshman year as Nate hopelessly attempted to explain I know I’m not smart, but I swear I try to concentrate while reading, the letters just keep moving.

Nate flinches a little, realizing how badly he must look, bruise blooming high on his cheekbone, eyes still glossed over, pupils blown wide, clad only in his funeral shirt and someone who just fucked him’s pants. God, he’s barefoot and soaking wet, dripping water onto the hardwood floors, but at least Dan can’t see he’s wearing a congressman’s dead wife’s panties.

Nate should apologize, for barging in and for the taste of vomit still acrid in his mouth, should spin an elaborate lie regarding the short nature of life and the stark reality of death, should flee before he can ruin anything more. Nate should do a great many things, but he’s just so tired.

You must do anything to protect your family, echoing in his head once more, but Nate knows better now. The Archibalds were never his family, and nobody is going to ask if it was all worth it. Nate must decide for himself.

“I need help,” he says, pleads. "Dan, help me."