Dan grimaces. "You are not supposed to see me half naked on the first date, Archibald."
Nate shrugs. "What can I say, Dan. I didn't know you were such an exhibitionist."
He just rolls his eyes. "You wish I swung that way. You and Bass both."
"Hey, here's an idea. Let's not talk about him right now. God, what kind of knots are these..."
"Apparently tied ones," he quips, before tilting his head to get a better look at Nate. "What, your boyfriend broke up with you?"
Nate gives the rope a particularly sharp tug. "He's not my boyfriend."
"You sound like Jen," Dan drawls. "That's not necessarily a good thing."
"What the hell else am I supposed to say?" Nate answers, scowling a little. "He's not. And I could just as easily leave you out here right now, you know."
"You got me in this mess. Apparently you've a conscience, I doubt you'll want to disappoint it further."
"I wasn't the one who told those guys you were me," Nate points out.
He shrugs. "You had to go and use my name to get some, though."
Nate's jaw clenches slightly. "Yeah, well. I don't know if you noticed, but this isn't a great place to be Nate Archibald."
"So you thought you'd just use my name and hope I never figured it out? And that's just okay with you?"
"What would it have actually mattered? It's one girl who I'm probably never going to see again in my life, it's not like I was– destroying your good name, or something. God, it was just the first thing that popped into my head to keep me from getting my ass kicked for something my dad did." Nate lets out a breath. "Look. I'm sorry if you have a problem with it, but I'm not sorry for trying to save my own ass, alright? And I don't think it's fair to expect me to be."
"No, of course I could never expect anything of you," he mutters under his breath, biting off each word. "Of course. Whatever. I get it, your life's a fucking soap opera because your family's fucked up. Jenny's definitely done enough preaching on your lot's behalf, I get it. Just untie me so I can try and salvage my good name at the school that I actually plan on attending."
Nate wrenches one of the knots loose, none too gently. "Thought you were hell-bent on Dartmouth."
"Not going to happen," he hisses, more out of the pain of the rope pushing against his skin than the pain of admitting such a thing.
"So you're forced to look into Yale instead. You poor thing." Nate doesn't sound particularly sympathetic, and for a moment he busies himself with the last of the knots. "I don't know what your problem with me is. What did I ever do to you, really?"
Dan is quiet for a moment. "I've wanted Dartmouth since before I knew what college was." When his hands are free, he rubs his wrists idly with his fingertips. It takes him a few seconds to piece together the words he wants to say. "It's not you, not really. It's.. I know it sounds cliche, but you don't know what it's like. You Upper East Siders, you and Serena and Chuck and Blair. Everything is so easy. And, before you cut me off--" He chances a look at Nate. "Before you cut me off. I know things aren't really easy. But to someone on the outside? All we see is the money and the name and all of that, giving you whatever you want. And that's just not fair."
Something in Nate's expression has become shut off, carefully too-blank. "Life isn't fair. You might've noticed." He smiles, but it's bitter, nothing of contentment in it at all. "The funny thing? I don't have anything I want at all." Nate turns to go, adding tonelessly, "See you at school."
"And you wonder why people hate you, Archibald," Dan calls after him. "You pull this act, this wounded-martyr bullshit, and don't give anyone an opportunity to see past it. Stop running! You're not the only one with a shitty life!"
Nate turns sharply on his heel, something flashing in his eyes. "That doesn't make it my job to worry about everyone else's lives," he snaps, "and you wonder why people hate you? It's because you act like you have a fucking monopoly on the moral high ground. If you weren't so sanctimonious Serena would probably still be with you, but it's her fault, isn't it, for being who she is, just like I must not really understand anything about suffering because I'm rich. Not being rich doesn't make you a saint."
"Oh, fuck you," Dan hisses. "This isn't about Serena. Goddamnit, none of this is about her. Why all you idiots must bring her into every goddamn conversation, I will never understand. I never said you couldn't understand suffering. I never said I had any better morals than anyone else. You asked a question, I fucking answered it, and you didn't like the answer! So what do you do, Nate Archibald? You run. You run, because it's what you're good at. You can't stand up and be a man and tell people what you really feel, what you really think, so you run. And you know what? You'll never stop running. Because you'll never stop being Nate Archibald. The name will always mean something, your history will always precede you, your reputation will make choices for you. So I won't let you fuck up my name by running from yours, sorry. I'm not your pawn. I'm not anyone's pawn. Maybe you are, but not me."
It's obvious the words have hit home– Nate has never been good at hiding what he's feeling, not really, but it's more than just injury or anger. It's just raw, pure, hurtin his eyes, and he almost physically flinches. "Well," he says, very, very quietly, "aren't you glad we had this little talk."
"You think I'm glad?" Dan asks, the most obvious form of disbelief in his voice. "Nate, are you stupid? No, of course I'm not glad. I'm not a sadistic bastard."
"I know," Nate answers dully, "I'm friends with one of those. And he? Never pulls this kind of crap on me."
"Look. Nate." He swallows, unsure of how to proceed. Truth be told, he'd known in the back of his head that the words were meant to stab and hurt and twist so that Nate would feel the pain that he'd inflicted, but Dan also wasn't the kind of guy to hurt just for the sake of hurting. And he didn't have anything specifically against Nate, so. There was no reason for him to leave with this kind of damage done. "You're not a bad guy. You just.. I don't know. I was in love with Serena. Like, heart-wrenchingly in love with her. Bad poetry writing kind of love. And it all got ripped out from under me because I couldn't adjust. I couldn't live in your world. And I get the feeling that you can't either. You're not filthy, and money makes you filthy. Money lets you break rules, ignore them, or just trod over them completely. Money gives you rights you'd never have. And I think that's why you run. Because you aren't filthy, and your conscious is trying to keep you from being filthy. From corrupting yourself any further than the world you've been born into already did." He swallows again, looking up at the night sky and shaking his head. "I'm rambling."
"Yeah, well," Nate says, and scuffs his shoe over the pavement. "Once you're in you can't get out. And I didn't get a choice about being in, so." He shrugs.
"So you're going to go to Dartmouth then, and be the golden boy, and live miserably ever after? That's the plan?" It's said without any sarcasm, any judgement, just simple curiousity. Dan shakes his head. "That's not living, that's just existence."