A/N: Just a little one shot written in half an hour so excuse any mistakes. I'm about ready to send off the next chapter of TBD to my beta so watch for the next post! Review if you please, I always love them.
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"What did you think of me when we first met?" He asks, although he already knows the answer. The silence presses, stretching between them. He smiles, tries to thin out the air with words.
She barely looks up from the page she's skimming, reading glasses crooked on the edge of her nose. "My opinion hasn't changed much," She responds, "You know that."
There are days where she will humour him, fill every gap with her beauty, with the glitter and promise of a touch, tonight ... she's having none of him.
They were six years old, faded and echoing like the frayed pieces of the memory, an old camera out of focus. Timid laughter, polka-dot dresses. He knew then, the moment she said her name, so soft that he grabbed it to his heart without even realizing.
Blair Waldorf.
And never let it go.
"I loved you," He says, his lips aching a little for want of a kiss, "I love you now." He's trying to draw her in and every night is the same, more or less, a tradition in thin lines between love and hate, in the familiar rhythm of their relationship.
She falls into him a little, rigid holdings on her chemise, the silk tickling his chin. And they seem both to stand ground, want not to surrender to the other. There is equality, and yet an unspoken rule neither has figured out.
"Bass," She cautions, her lips so red and full, "I'm reading."
"And I'm not," He responds, intentionally.
"Well," She pouts, juts her lip out a little, plays it coy, "Don't you have some papers to look over?"
"Not tonight," He breathes her in, "You haven't missed me?"
And then there is the smallest crack, the deepest sigh of longing. "I always miss you," She says it as though it's not enough; "I hate it when you leave."
"So you're punishing me for it?" He looks up, tilts his head, smirks. The river melts enough to cross.
She's offended. Tiffs and shifts her weight, pulling out of his embrace. "How dare you insinuate such a thing."
He raises his hands to the headboard, clutches them with his long fingers. And quiet surmounts, piling onto the bed with them. She continues with her book, turning the pages every so often.
One business trip and he's suddenly withering away, wishing for her attention.
"You know," He says after some time has passed, but he doesn't finish his sentence. Instead, Chuck stands up, stretches and begins to put on his pants. He doesn't feel like lying down if it doesn't involve his girlfriend naked and lusting, not tonight anyway.
She watches him from the corner of her eye, tries to remain uninterested as he slips a shirt on, buttons it up. If she lets him win now, if he lessens the burn of her longing by his touch, then they are both weak to the other, then he is allowed to come and go as he pleases and expect everything from her that she has to give.
She needs to pretend like she hasn't already handed over her heart.
He was an arrogant asshole then and always will be. It is the first thing she can remember about him, the way his hair was perfectly mussed, even as a child, the way he shook her hand, cool and collected, as if she were as insignificant as an ant.
Charles Bass, before anyone called him Chuck, the elegance of his movements as he turned away from her and had engaged Nate in a worded conversation on the latest superman comic book. And how much she hated him then, promised herself she always would. But something about him stuck beneath her skin, shoved spaced in her heart.
Never let go.
And now they are here together, and he has been away for five days too long. She was afraid she might have forgotten him, the way he felt, and now he's moving towards the front door and she doesn't want to tell him that because she doesn't even know what it means.
"I'm going downstairs," He says, alluding to the bar.
She nods and there is a breath, a split second where his hand is on the doorknob but he isn't moving.
She wants to say something snarky, something petty but she restrains herself, takes a deep breath. Sighs. They have been together for four years, a thousand nights together, more whispered words than she could imagine and she has never been happier or more irritated with him in the whole of her life.
There can be no more secrets; he told her once at the beginning of their relationship, it feels like centuries ago. I don't want us to hurt each other like that again, he had kissed her forehead and smiled, one she could remember fluttering towards his eyes, in the tips of his fingers like electricity.
And they had agreed.
Chuck is forced against the front door, his hand slipping from the knob. "I love you," She whispers into the shell of his ear as she hoists herself around his hips, "I love you, I love you."
The book is forgotten, the page lost. The lights left on.
"I love you too," He says back, running his hands through her chestnut curls, her lips on his neck. He could never have enough of her.
She discovers him with her hands, with a smile so wide that she might float away and beyond them the New York skyline poaches the evening sky. Her reading glasses fall to the floor, cracking beneath their feet.