AN: Happy 3rd Chairversary! Here's a cute little CB+kids fluffy story for your entertainment!
"Char, sweetie... it's time for bed," Chuck announced as he gently entered his precocious three-year-old daughter's room, making his presence known after having stood quietly in the doorway for a moment, watching her play with her dolls.
It still amazed him that this was his life, happily married to the love of his life going on eight years now with a family of their own, including two beautiful, smart children who thought the world of them. He never would have believed it fifteen years ago – he probably would have scoffed at the thought of being willingly tied down to one woman for the rest of his life, let alone the idea of fathering children.
"But daddy..." Charlotte Cornelia Bass began to whine. "The princess still has to marry the prince!" she declared, pointing out to him that her princess doll was clearly wearing a white dress while her prince doll was dressed up just as formally.
"Honey, it's bedtime. Mommy's helping Henry finish his homework and she'll be up to check on you shortly which means we need to at least start getting you ready for bed before she comes up here," he informed her as he took a step into her room.
"And we will," she stated matter of factly, her attention still on her dolls. "After the princess marries the prince." Chuck still couldn't get over how much she took after her mother, calling the shots and negotiating to get her way. He knew arguing with her over it would be pointless as he'd eventually cave anyway. "Here daddy, you can play the prince," she continued, holding the prince doll out towards him, prompting him to accept with a sigh as he took a seat on the floor next to her. He wasn't particularly fond of his daughter's recent fascination with princes and princesses, but for her sake he was willing to do anything to make her happy.
"Okay, daddy, now the prince stands over here..." she instructed as she guided his hand now holding the prince doll to one end of her rug. "And Princess Charlotte stands over here... and the music starts... daddy, hum the song!"
"Char..."
"Daaaaaddddy..." she whined again. Chuck rolled his eyes as he joined his daughter in humming The Wedding March while she pretty much bounced her doll down the line in the rug she imagined to be an aisle towards the prince. Out of all the things she enjoyed playing and having him play with her, this was definitely on his list of least favorites. "And then the prince kisses the bride and she's officially a princess!" Charlotte squealed in delight as she made the dolls innocently kiss.
"Alright, time for bed," Chuck announced once more, much to his daughter's dismay.
"I wish I could be a princess someday..." she sighed as she collected her dolls and began to put them away."
"Well you're mine and mommy's little princess, pumpkin," he reminded her, hoping to put her at ease.
"Yeah, but I mean a real princess, like in the fairytales! Where she has an adventure and meets her prince and they fall in love and get married..." she gushed as she dropped the last of her dolls in her toy chest.
"But why do you want to be like them? You can still have adventures and meet a nice boy and fall in love and get married someday... when you're older. Much older," Chuck told her, quickly adding on that last part. The thought of his little girl falling for a boy made him cringe slightly. He hoped to keep her young and innocent for as long as possible, knowing full well from experience what kind of boys she may eventually meet when she got older, one of his biggest fears being her falling for someone who was just like him as a teenager.
"Because they're sooooo pretty! And the princes are always sooooo handsome!" she remarked dreamily.
"Well you're already soooo pretty," he assured her, never wanting his daughter to ever have any doubt about her looks. With her chestnut curls and dark eyes, she looked so much like Blair when they were little. Give her a headband and the girl was a dead ringer for her mother at that age.
"I know daddy, but... princesses have it all," she sighed as she climbed into bed.
"You know, mommy used to be a princess," Chuck absentmindedly blurted out as he crouched down next to her bedside and began tucking her in.
"Really?" Charlotte exclaimed, wide-eyed as she sat up in bed. "Like Snow White?"
"I don't know about mommy being like Snow White..."
"But you're not a Prince, daddy," she declared, a look of confusion on her face. "Princesses marry Princes..."
"Yes... and before mommy came to her senses and married daddy, she was married to a Prince," Chuck admitted, a hint of annoyance in his voice as he suddenly didn't like where this conversation was headed or the trip down memory lane he would have rather forgotten about. "Briefly."
"Chuck!" he heard Blair's voice suddenly snap from the doorway causing him to abruptly turn his head to face her standing there.
Shit... how long has she been standing there? He frantically began to wonder, curious as to how much she had heard.
"I thought we had agreed during that week in Monte Carlo to never speak of my year of temporary insanity ever again," she hissed under her breath to him as she walked towards them at the bed.
"Oh come on, one of them was bound to find out someday, whether they read about it somewhere or hear it elsewhere," Chuck quickly pointed out, knowing she knew he was right. It wasn't exactly a secret.
"Mommy, is it true? Were you really a Princess?" Charlotte eagerly asked her mother who was now sitting on the edge of the bed, attempting to tuck her daughter in once more.
"Yes, yes I was," Blair reluctantly admitted. She knew it was a painful time in their lives that Chuck and her both hated to remember.
"But what happened to your prince?" the little girl curiously inquired with a tilt of her head, still confused as to how her mommy could have been a princess when her daddy was obviously not a prince. At least not to her knowledge.
"Well, sweetie, let's just say... not all princes are charming – some can be real frogs," Blair tried to explain in terms she thought her fairytale obsessed daughter would understand.
"Oooh like Prince Naveen?" Charlotte wondered excitedly.
"No, no... not like Prince Naveen – Prince Naveen ends up a good guy," Chuck quickly interjected, not wanting to get his daughter too excited over his wife's ex-husband.
"He was more like... like Prince Hans," Blair decided, knowing that would help her daughter understand. "Remember how he tricked Anna into liking him?"
"But he wasn't her true love! He didn't love her at all! Kristoff did!" Charlotte exclaimed as it seemed to begin to click in her pretty little head.
"Exactly," Blair confirmed as she continued. "Like Anna, mommy thought she loved the handsome foreign prince but the prince turned out to not be so nice afterall," she further explained as Chuck quietly groaned.
Did she have to call him handsome? He couldn't help complaining to himself.
"So... does that mean daddy's Kristoff?" their daughter immediately questioned, causing a laugh to emit from Blair as Chuck sat there wearing a look of both shock and horror at the idea of being compared to a lowly commoner who made ice with his sole companion being a reindeer.
"Not quite, sweetie," Blair tried to correct her all while hiding her laughter. "I'd say daddy was more like Beast, rescuing Belle from Gaston."
"Hm..." the little girl thought it over. "I see..." she decided a moment later.
"Sweetie, being a Princess in real life isn't exactly how it is in the fairytales – not all Princes are nice," Blair went on. "It's okay to pretend to be a Princess, but just remember to be you – I promise you, sometimes the reality is much, much better than the fairytale," she concluded with a smile, stealing a glance towards her husband, who returned her glance with a smile of his own. He understood exactly what she meant as in her childhood fairytales, for the longest time his best friend had been the prince of her dreams. Now, neither of them could imagine things being different than the way they currently were.
"Okay mommy," Charlotte resigned as she snuggled into the duvet, getting comfortable.
"Goodnight, sweetie," Blair told her as she leaned down and gave her daughter a kiss goodnight. "I'll see you in the morning."
"Goodnight, Char," Chuck told her as well, gently ruffling the girl's hair causing her to giggle as he too gave her a quick kiss goodnight on the top of her head.
"Beast? Really?" Chuck couldn't help asking once him and Blair were alone in the hall.
"Well you did go through a bit of a transformation... and no one ever thought someone like Belle would fall for him," Blair pointed out, wrapping her arms around his neck as she gave him a knowing look while pausing to let Chuck mull the idea over. "And besides, would you rather I tell her you were once like Gaston? There's numerous parallels there however he's supposed to be the bad guy and she can't root for the bad guy," she reminded him with a slight chuckle at the thought.
"True..." Chuck agreed, knowing she was right, although secretly he felt he could relate to both Beast and Gaston on some levels. "Although Beast was a prince and well... I'm not," he informed her as he wrapped his arms around her waist.
"That may be correct..." Blair toyed with him. "But why would I want a prince and when I could have a king? I may have temporarily been a princess but you'll remember, I was also Queen B," she stated with a seductive grin.
"Oh believe me, I haven't forgotten," he lowly growled as he caught her lips in a passionate kiss.
Regardless of their messy pasts, he was daily reminded that she ultimately chose him, with all his flaws and sordid history. And he couldn't have been happier.
She definitely was the Beauty to his inner Beast, her love having changed him.