Chapter Text
Manhattan, New York, 10/20/2019
Chuck wakes around five that morning, after a sleep that brought him neither rest nor peace. Since the night before, one thought has been haunting him—a name, to be precise—and now he can’t sleep. The sun hasn’t risen yet, his wife lies asleep beside him, and if she only knew all the thoughts assaulting him, he knows for certain she wouldn’t be so serene.
He looks at her in silence for a few seconds, then carefully sits up in bed, making sure not to wake her. Their bed, their house, their room—and yet he’s thinking of someone else. Blair had always been the one who knew everything about everyone, but she had missed the biggest secret of her husband’s life. A few years ago, he wouldn’t have thought much of it—thinking about someone else while he was dating someone was never anything new, and maybe he would have even felt smug for managing to hide something like this from Blair Waldorf. But now—now he just feels like a complete asshole.
He turns his head and looks at the envelope on the nightstand, and for the first time in years, he doesn’t know what to do. The situation is out of his control, and he has no idea how to handle it. He clenches the bedsheet between his fingers until his knuckles go white, trying to keep his feet on the ground, not let his mind drift too far.
He bites his lip and takes the letter in his hands, handling it with absolute delicacy—the idea of crumpling or ruining it, as he usually did with things, simply wasn’t an option this time. Not now. He turns it over in his hands, feels the smooth surface of the fine paper, breathes in the smell that reminds him of school.
He opens the envelope and reads it again—for the ninth time, maybe.
Yes, the words are still the same as the first time, but he desperately searches for a second meaning, something hidden Nate might have tucked between the lines, hoping Chuck would catch it. But there’s nothing—just polite sentences and cordial greetings for him and his wife.
He glances at Blair, still sleeping. She hadn’t cared much about the letter, about the invitation to the Constance and St. Jude reunion Nate had organized. She’d taken it, read it, and set it on the coffee table, lumped in with the rest of the daily mail.
Chuck had done his best to hide his nervousness, the knot in his stomach that formed the second he heard the name
Nate Archibald.
But he didn’t feel he had done a very good job, because the look Blair gave him wasn’t just confused and slightly worried at how his jaw had practically hit the floor—it was doubtful. And there was only so much you could ever hide from Blair Waldorf and Chuck knew that. He knew it better than anyone.
He kept his mask on all evening, forcing himself not to give the letter more attention than Blair had. So he acted as usual—or at least tried: he played with his son, complained about work with his wife, read the paper, and flipped through TV channels, looking for anything to distract him from the thought of Nate and his unexpected return.
He wanted so badly to stop thinking about it. More than anything, he didn’t want to talk about it with Blair, who clearly didn’t care. But God knew Chuck had never been able to truly banish Nate from his mind—not the way he should have.
“So Nate reached out again?” The spontaneity in his tone was anything but—it dripped with impatience. He forced his gaze to stay glued to the TV, not daring to look at Blair, so she couldn’t read his expressions the way she always had.
“Looks like it. After all those years in Thailand, it was bound to happen eventually, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I guess.” Pause. He told himself to stop, but he couldn’t. “But don’t you think it’s strange, after all this time? No calls, nothing at all, and then he shows up out of nowhere?”
“You’re the one acting strange tonight, Chuck. He probably had things to do.”
And that was the end of the conversation about Nate. They talked about other things while Dorota did the dishes and Henry kept her company, chattering about school.
That night, Chuck didn’t sleep. Too many thoughts, too many memories.
How could Nate just come back out of nowhere? How could he have never called while he was in Thailand—not a postcard, not a message? Chuck knew the divorce from Serena had destroyed him, knew Nate had considered her the love of his life, but fuck—it had been years since they’d spoken, and now he invited him to a reunion with all their classmates? That was a Serena move—vanishing and then returning as if nothing had happened. And if this was Nate’s way of making peace, of making up for all the years they hadn’t spoken, well—fuck you, Nate. That’s what Chuck would've told him at the reunion before walking away, holding back tears.
And so he found himself with the letter in his hands again, rereading it over and over, trying to imagine how Nate would have spoken the words Chuck was now seeing on the page—what his voice would sound like after all these years. But the truth was, he could barely remember it. He had almost forgotten the line of his jaw, the blond tufts of hair he could never tame the way his father wanted, and the taste of his skin still wet from the ocean.
Almost.
How could he ever forget someone so important? How could he forget the relaxed way Nate walked on the sand, or how he leaned toward the mirror after a shower, searching for imperfections on a face that had none—and Chuck had always held himself back from grabbing him and showing him just how perfect he was. Because he was. Nate was special.
He remembered how those blue eyes, full of hope and affection, had saved him when the world was truly crashing down on him—the world his father had built and then, without hesitation, dropped onto his shoulders.
He sighed and closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall.
He wasn’t sure he was ready to see him again—not after all that time, not after everything that had happened. How could he look him in the eyes? How could he look Blair in the eyes, knowing she had no idea of everything that had happened, of everything he and Nate had shared?
Blair could never understand. She would never understand what had gone on between them.
Chuck bit his lip, forcing himself to think of a solution. Was he really strong enough to go there with his wife, to look at Nate and pretend nothing had ever happened? That they had always just been friends? He wouldn’t bet on it.
And what if seeing Nate reopened a wound he thought had healed? What if those blue eyes destroyed him completely? Even the thought made him shiver, let alone the idea of standing in front of him.
He couldn’t risk everything—not with Blair, and certainly not with Henry. How would his son react? He couldn’t, he just couldn’t risk letting Nate’s return destroy everything he had so carefully built. He couldn’t let all those years of effort to forget him go up in smoke the second he saw that dazzling smile and had to face the truth—that nothing had ever really changed, that Nate had never left his head, much less his heart.
It was easier to live a half-lie with Blair than to live the truth with Nate.
Nate was a secret, and a secret he would remain. Chuck couldn’t risk it—not in love. It was too much.
He and Nate had been born in secrecy, hidden behind bathroom doors in bars, in silence, in the dark. And that was how they would die—without anyone ever noticing, withering quietly while the world around them went on unchanged.
It was better to stay with the one who had always been there. He couldn’t risk something good for something right. He knew he had to be rational—but God, Nate was the only exception, the only person who always made him doubt everything. He was almost tempted to leave it all and run away with him to Thailand, if only Nate asked. And a part of him still hoped Nate really meant to ask.
---
That morning passed slowly, quietly: Blair took Henry to school, then went to work, and Chuck did the same. He grabbed his double coffee and tried to get things done—or at least pretended to. Sitting there at his desk, completely alone, with the photo of Blair and his son staring back at him, almost accusingly, he couldn’t focus.
We know what you’re thinking about, Dad.
Everyone knows. I’ve always known too.
He forced himself to stare at his computer screen, to take note of Bass Industries’ stocks, but those numbers meant nothing to him. Truthfully, nothing meant anything to him.
Work, Blair, Nate’s return, his own overreaction to that letter. Everything was a mess he had fallen into.
He looked out the window at the traffic below. For a moment he wondered if any of them had a Nate too—someone who one day is your whole world, then disappears the next without a word, and ten years later reappears, as if nothing had happened.
Serena must have rubbed that strange, infuriating habit off on him.
He kept his eyes on the computer for a few seconds longer, trying to get his mind in order, but the only thing he could think about was that party—what Nate would wear, what he would say, how his face might look. Would those youthful, boyish features still be there, or had time worn them away like it had everyone else’s?
He sighed and shut the computer. He wasn’t accomplishing anything. He was just sitting there, thinking about Nate. There was no point in pretending otherwise.
---------
Manhattan, New York, 10/15/2019
Nate didn’t know what to do. His eyes were fixed on that letter—that fucking letter that had given him no peace for two days. He wondered if the words were right, if the timing was right. He even wondered if the handwriting was right—too neat? Not neat enough? He didn’t know anymore. He didn’t even know if the idea of the party was right or wrong.
Who would have thought Nate Archibald—the man who, until a few years ago, had been married to Serena van der Woodsen and had the title of one of the most powerful men in the city—would find himself half-drunk in a Manhattan hotel, after two years traveling across Asia, writing an invitation letter to Chuck Bass and his wife?
He had done this sort of thing a million times before—the letter writing, not the traveling—, but somehow this was different. This time, Nate lingered over every word, every sentence. He reread them, crossed them out, rewrote them. Every line seemed like a love confession to his ex-girlfriend’s husband—what a mess, Nate. Really.
He took another sip of wine, poured it into his glass mechanically, hoping it would help him make sense of all these thoughts, all these memories. But how could it? How could he even think of writing to Chuck after everything that had happened—everything they had been, in those years before Blair, before Serena?
He set the pen down on the table, letting it fall in defeat. He didn’t know what to do anymore. He was a lost man. Leaving Asia, he had felt secure, ready to come back. But now it was all the same again, as if he were right back at the beginning.
He stared at the ceiling in silence, shifted on the couch, and thought about all the hotels they had been in together—they had been through them all. He remembered the feeling of Chuck on top of him, his lips soft and wet against his skin. He remembered the words Chuck whispered in his ear—the ones that made him smile, the ones that made him shiver.
How did we end up here?
That question had haunted him since the divorce. Sure, it was Serena who had ended things, who had left him for one of his closest friends—Dan Humphrey—apologizing with a simple “Sorry, Nate, but he’s the one I want.” That was so Serena: leaving the man she’d married without thinking twice, running off with her teenage love, saying there was nothing to be done, nothing worth talking about, because she had chosen, and she never went back.
And yet, Nate couldn’t deny the sense of relief at the end of that marriage, which had always felt forced. The first person he thought of was Chuck—the only one who had ever truly listened to him, who had seen beyond Nate Archibald.
Nathaniel.
He was the only one who called him that. Not even his parents did.
He had taken the car and rushed to tell him—about Serena, about Dan, about how there was no hope between them, how maybe there never had been. Chuck hadn’t understood what Nate was trying to say, hadn’t read between the lines.
Leave Blair, and let’s be together. This is our chance.
Of those words, Chuck had only understood that Nate had divorced the woman who was supposed to be his great love, that he was now devastated and thinking of escaping somewhere, so he could put himself back together, so he could start over. He hadn’t understood that more than a confession, it was an invitation to join him—to follow him on that last-minute trip.
Chuck—who had always understood everything about everyone—hadn’t picked up on that subtlety.
In the end, there was nothing Nate could do. Everything had gone wrong. He hadn’t heard from Chuck in two years, and this was his desperate attempt to reach him again. Because as hard as it was to admit—Nate wasn’t Nate without Chuck.
And so Nate had left, alone, without the only person he truly wanted at his side. He remembered the last words he had said before leaving, standing at Chuck’s door, when Blair wasn’t there, when it was just the two of them.
“You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone.”