A/N- YES!!!!!! Finally, some Chuck and Blair show angst for me to get my teeth into :) So I know some of you will be reading this thinking I have no right to post this instead of a new chapter for Five Doors Down, but I have an explaination for my absence: I suck at time management. Major assignments due in at uni and I have no time to write - I should be catching up on some much-needed sleep but instead I have laid in bed writing this.
So much CB drama to come on the show which excites me greatly - enough to write this tiny piece anyway. Enough of me boring you (if you're even still reading) so on with whatever this is.
Weakness Loves Mistakes
The thing he's most glad about, glad; stupid word because he has no right to be glad about anything, is that he didn't watch her say goodbye. That he kept his eyes so glued to the tiled floor that the pattern would be etched into his memory for eternity would be a blessing he figures: it would be a better memento than Blair's tears.
She'd have more: she'd have the silken gown, the burning hand from the slap that wasn't hard enough, because even in that moment she'd been able to convince herself that none of what had happened was true. She'd have the anger and the confusion and the taste of Jack's breath on her lips.
There are no distracting thoughts anymore. No halfway-through-a-budget-breakdown visions of what colour lingerie might be waiting at home. Home has no meaning anymore either; he doesn't go there because that was her, and silk sheets tend to make him even colder lately.
The floor tiles are his morning coffee, the photo of her at his desk a reminder that he's gained control of himself again; the smell of Jack's cologne against her neck his anti-drowsy medication.
Numbers on calendars don't read as a list of 'their' dates, of birthdays and anniversaries and favourites. Days of the week fail to correspond with dinner dates and launches and galas.
His life is his life now. It's not theirs.
-
The missed calls with missing voicemails suggest either drunkenness or misguided hope and now that he's got this far he won't let a phone call break his resolve.
She knows he's coming – he can tell by the smell of braised duck wafting precisely from the kitchen. With every step he takes he hopes her heart doesn't beat faster in anticipation that this is going to be anything other than confirmation.
He won't even say her name when he reaches her open door and when he sees how dull her eyes are his own fly straight to the floor.
She's forced to begin. "I loved you that much that I went to Jack."
He won't look up – he knows her lips are quivering already. A tear down her cheek. And then another before her voice cracks.
"I wore the dress."
And she'd been touched by another man, kissed by another man, by his uncle, had her hair brushed back behind her neck by his uncle and she'd still looked beautiful.
"I did it for you Chuck. All of it. And if because of that, you can't trust me-"
"I trust you."
"Then-"
"I can't trust myself when I'm with you." He continues. "Every decision I made when you were there beside me was for us when I should have been making them for me, for my hotel."
"I'd have supported that."
He shakes his head. "I wouldn't have let myself. That's the problem – you're the problem."
He shakes his head again, this time to remind himself that he's already saying too much, and his coming here was only supposed to be the end. Conversation wasn't on the itinerary.
"You're tainted."
"And you're not!? This whole situation is your fault."
"I know." He still won't look up. "I tainted you, just like I do everything else."
"Don't say that."
He flinches when she cups his cheek in her palm.
She backs up in disbelief. "So you're incapable of me loving you now?"
His voice is raw, biting, sneering. "How can you?"
"Because I know who you really are."
He shakes his head. "You're wrong."
"No, I'm not."
"I'm not that person who'll come home at six every day to have dinner at the table. I don't want to play happy families. That hotel is my family."
He inches closer to her door, to his exit. And she's still trying. He vows silently to try harder.
"I let you walk out of this bedroom before and I knew you loved me."
He turns to face her because if there was ever something he needed to hear just to verify that he was doing the right thing, it would be this.
"Just like you love me now."
Her voice breaks again as he stares her down.
"I'm not going to let you do it again. And I don't care if you think loving me is a weakness...It just means you're human."
He clears his throat silently, doesn't have to think about taking in the wallpaper or the carpet or the bed linen; it's in. It's concentrating on his wording now, just to ensure he leaves her no option.
"When we were at the White Party you said Chuck Bass wasn't good enough."
She shakes her head. "No, I didn't-"
"I'm Chuck Bass."
Her solitary tear results in the final stab in his chest, his final removal of any weakness as he turns away.
After that it's only blank.
Weakness Loves Mistakes