Author's Note: Partially inspired by behind the scenes photos of Ed and Leighton with Mini-Blair, this is for Kat (bloodyhellgranger), who (I think) asked for Chuck with his teenage daughter, and dance-makes-my world, who asked to see Henry and the other Bass children. Minor characters ruin name choices all the time so forgive me for this oversight. The story wouldn't work as well otherwise.
The lights burn brightly despite the late hour, and he pauses in the doorframe to allow his eyes to adjust, to search out that which he came for. Her dark brown hair creates a curtain between them, creates a stark contrast between it and the blue duvet bunched up under her head and serving as her pillow. The rush of air from the door opening grabs the pages of the book lying open in front of her and sends them fluttering despite the marker tucked between the pages holding her place. He slides the book away from her in order to create a place for him to take a seat beside her, and he closes it with a certain amount of reverence one would not expect given who he is.
But he knows how important this is to her, and he stalls in his movements for just a moment to reconsider waking her. Because her examination is in less than five hours. Because sleep is just as important to her success as the thick study manual he has just moved out of his way. Because getting into Yale has been her dream since she was a little girl.
Of course, she is still a little girl – his little girl – and he leans over, sweeps aside her hair, and presses a soft kiss to her temple. He whispers her name in her ear quietly, whispers it until she stirs and her eyes flutter open to stare at him with deep brown eyes heavy with sleep. She blinks once, twice, and yawns out her question.
"Charlie?"
He repeats her question back to her with a derisive twist of his features, with an indignant tone over the name she and everyone else in his life insists upon using. And she offers him a laugh in response as she pushes herself up into a seated position, as she pushes her curls back to tuck behind her ear. Her headband fell off sometime in the night, but a quick sweep of her hand across the mattress does not turn up the missing accessory.
"We can't call him Chuck," she replies knowingly, smartly. "That would be so confusing. Unless we called him Little Chuck or something like that."
"He's a Bass," he retorts tartly. "There isn't going to be anything little about him."
"Daddy!" She shrikes and smacks her father's chest in disgust. That suggestive thought is not the one she wants to have in her head this early in the morning. "You're so gross!"
He offers her an apology, trails it with a chuckling laugh as she collects the assortment of markers and pens spread across her bed. She piles them all in front of her and begins to reach for the study manual that has been pushed aside figuring she can get a few more hours of studying in before she needs to head to school for her exam. Her father reaches out, stops her movements by placing his hand down on study manual.
"Don't you think you've studied enough, Madeline?" He questions because the pages of her study manual have become tattered and torn with overuse, with the way she has carried it around with her day after day utilizing every free moment to study just a little bit more.
"Daddy," she answers in a tone that says he does not understand. "This is Yale."
"I know," he replies because he does, because he has been here before watching someone he loves plot and scheme and study her way into the university of her dreams. He wraps his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into him for a hug and kiss against the crown of her head. "And not admitting you would be a sign that Yale as an institution is slipping in quality and, therefore, not worth your time, Maddie."
She wraps her arms about her father's waist, hugs him tighter as his words of comfort pass through her ears. She tries to internalize them, tries to have as much faith in herself as he has in her, but those small seeds of self-doubt have already taken root and her eyes sweep to the study manual once more. She is just about to ask to be alone, to send her father away so she can study a few more hours when her eyes fall on the picture frame sitting on her nightstand.
"Charlie?" She questions again. The wrinkles around her father's eyes deepen as he smiles, as he nods his head in affirmation of what she is asking. She shrieks in excitement. Her follow-up questions thrown out in rapid fire thanks to the internship she held last summer at the Spectator.
"Seven pounds, five ounces," he informs her. "And about forty minutes ago."
"And we can go see him?"
"The limo's waiting out front. I wasn't sure if you wanted to go now or come by after your exam."
And she looks at him as though she doesn't understand his hesitation because this exam may be important for Yale, but this is her family and its importance will always outweigh the rest. She scrambles off the bed, looks at the yoga pants she donned last night for her marathon study session, and asks for time to change.
"I'll meet you down front," he replies before standing and moving towards the door to her room. He reaches the doorframe, pauses, and turns his head to look at her over his shoulder to pass along the three words, eight letters he had not expected to hear when he answered his phone twenty minutes ago.
"It's a girl."
"A girl," she repeats, and her smile widens in excitement as a soft laugh escapes her lips. "I guess we really can't call her Little Chuck."
The limo stops along the curb and he exits first, extends his hand to help his daughter out of the limo. She loops her arm through his and allows him to escort her through the hospital and up the stairs to where her mother waits for them just as they did all those nights when she insisted on playing cotillion up and down the steps of their townhouse. She breaks away from her father, breaks away to ask her mother with cold indifference which room, and she bounds off in that direction before her parents can tell her to wait.
"Sorry," he immediately apologies when he sees the look on her face. But his wife waves away his concern because she has more important things to worry about right now.
"What's wrong?" He asks his wife gently as he lifts her chin and runs his thumb along her jawline. Her eyes flutter close and although he cannot see the concern in her eyes, the apprehension is still evident on her face. His heart starts to pound within his chest, and panic begins to fall like a curtain across his features. "Is – is everyone okay?"
"She's fine," his wife assures him with a forced smile. "And the baby is healthy. Perfect."
"But," he prompts because he knows she is hiding something, knows she is holding back and worries as to what she is trying to protect him from. He squeezes her hand in reassurance, in a silent encouragement for her to tell him what is amiss.
"Henry went to get a cup of coffee. He hasn't come back."
"Oh," he exhales. Blair's eyes sweep up to his, and he holds her gaze for just a moment before leaning down, pressing a kiss to her cheek, and murmuring that he will return in a moment against her skin. He squeezes her hand once more before departing, and then he begins the long walk down the hallway towards the cafeteria.
A lone figure in the middle of the second corridor on his right catches his eye, and he retraces just enough steps in order to turn and join the man standing in front of the nursery window. His heavy footsteps alert the man to his presence, but neither speaks as they stand side by side and watch the newborns through the window.
Chuck's eyes sweep up and down the rows, sweep up and down the nametags attached to each plastic bassinet as he looks for one that shares his surname. His wife assured him the baby was healthy – perfect, even – and he tries to draw on her words to keep his concern in check when he does not find a card with his surname written on it.
"She's perfect," the man standing next to him confirms. "Ten fingers. Ten toes. She looks like Mom."
"Then she must be beautiful," Chuck replies. He pauses, waits for his son to consider his words. "So why are you standing out here, Henry?"
The twenty-six year old draws in a shaky breathe yet keeps his eyes fixated on the other infants. Perfect and untainted by all the gossip and the lies and the hurt, they squirm and sigh and sleep and shape the lives of their parents from this day forth.
"What if I screw her up?" He asks softly. "I mean, she's so perfect right now and—"
"Henry," Chuck replies with a pat on his son's back followed by a squeeze on his son's shoulder to reassure and compel the twenty-six year old standing beside him to look at him. "Parenthood is all about making mistakes, but as long as you learn from those mistakes, as long as you never stop trying to be a better parent? Things will work out in the end."
"That's easy for you to say," Henry retorts with a shake of his head as he turns his gaze back to the newborns in the nursery. "You and Mom are the best parents."
"I remember hearing differently from you and your brother not too long ago," Chuck reminds him with a laugh. "And your sister? Would you mind telling her that? Because she's upsetting your mother with this cold shoulder routine."
"She's a teenag—" Henry begins to reply, but he cuts himself off and his features morph with the grim realization that this could very well be him in sixteen years. It's all Chuck can do not to laugh as he assures his son that there is still time before his daughter starts slamming doors and screaming a different set of three words, eight letters at her parents than the ones they want to hear from their youngest child.
"I was just as scared as you are now," Chuck informs him after a moment.
"You were?" Henry asks. Yet there is a twinge of surprise to his voice because his father has always been the calm one, the one to swoop in and soothe his wife and children when arguments got out of hand and plans were derailed.
"Your mother and I always made a point to tell you and your siblings the truth about us, about our past. We didn't want you to fall victim to gossip the way we did. So you know that your mother and I didn't have the most attentive parents."
Henry snorts at the adjective his father employs because attentive seems so mundane and benign to explain his parents' childhood. Because even though Grandmère, Zaydeh, and Grandma Lily showered him and his siblings with love and affection as a child, even though Grandpa Harold and Roman spent every Thanksgiving and Christmas eating candy canes and ice skating with their grandchildren in Central Park, that doesn't mean they weren't the kind of parents who jetted off to Saint Bart's or Paris with new lovers on a whim and undermined their child's takeover of the family business.
"We wanted to give you everything we didn't have and you know your mother – she had all these plans for how we were going to raise you. And then you came along and it didn't matter that I'm Chuck Bass and she's Blair Waldorf because you were this tiny, little dictator that decided when and where and how things would be done," Chuck informs him with a smile. The memories of sleepless nights spent staring at the infant in his arms and wondering what to do are fonder now, are stripped of the bad with the passing of time.
"But I knew that I loved you and I would never give up on you like my father did me because if your mother has taught me one thing in life, it's that you never give up on those you love."
His son has turned to look at him once more, and Chuck's eyes connect with those inherited from his wife. They hold each other's gaze for just a moment before Henry pushes himself away from the window, gives his father a quick hug as he whispers words of thanks in his father's ear, and then takes off running down the hallway back to where his wife and child are because he would never, ever give up on them.
Chuck watches him go, watches him disappear around the corner, and he is just about to follow him when the phone in his pants pocket begins to vibrate against his leg. He fumbles for it, smiles when he reads the name flashing on the screen and raises it up to his ear.
"Hey, dad," his middle child greets after Chuck says hello. "Sorry I missed your call. I was, uh, studying. What's up?"
The sound of a woman's laughter, of a door shutting and closing in the background tells him that studying was probably not the case, but Chuck lets it go because twenty-one year old Bass men don't like to be told what to do by their fathers.
"I was just calling to tell you that you're an uncle. Emily had the baby earlier this morning."
"Oh, yeah? That's cool. Are they still calling him Charlie?"
"No," Chuck replies with a laugh, with a snort of gratitude. "It was a girl."
"I bet Maddie's happy," her brother says, remembering all those times she would follow her mother around the townhouse and demand a little sister since two against one is not fair. "She'll finally have someone to play tea party with."
The pang of longing that stabs through his heart cannot be helped because his daughter has stopped demanding her father and brothers play tea party with her or pretend to be her escorts for cotillion. She's starts cotillion classes next Wednesday and she'll have an escort who (hopefully) doesn't have to borrow her father's tuxedo tails in order to be presentable as she makes her debut.
"Uh, Dad, I have to go. Tell Henry and Em congrats for me and tell Mom I'll come down this weekend from Boston to see the baby and have brunch with everyone on Sunday, okay?"
"I will," Chuck replies. He waits just a moment, waits until his son has nearly hung up on him before he speaks once more and says those three words, eight letters he never heard from his own father. "Hey, Nathan?"
"Yeah, Dad?"
"I love you. You know that right?"
"Yeah, I know," Nathan replies in a rush of air. "I love you, too, Dad."
The phone clicks off in his ear as Nathan hangs up and returns to whatever he was previously engaged in. Chuck lowers the phone from his ear, begins to slide it back into the pocket of his pants when he hears the sound of high heels against the gleaming white floors of the hospital. He looks up to see his wife walking towards him slowly, cradling a pink bundle in her arms. He walks towards her until the two meet in the middle, until he can softly ask her what she's doing out here.
"You always introduced our children to me," she informs him, referencing the three times he was handed the baby before her. "I wanted to be the one to introduce you to our granddaughter."
She pulls back the edge of the blanket, forcing his eyes to drop from her face to that of the newborn in her arms. Her skin is a healthy and soft pink, and her long eyelashes flutter as she stares up at her grandfather. Blair gingerly, carefully passes the infant into his arms, and he holds her safe and steady with one arm as his free hand raises to keep the blanket out of her face.
"She's beautiful," he says in a breathy whisper. "Did Emily and Henry come up a new name for her? We can't exactly call her Charles or Little Chuck."
"They did," Blair informs him with a smile. "Chuck, meet your granddaughter, Charlotte."
"Charlotte," he echoes as pride over having a namesake, over having a beautiful addition to his legacy fills him. He never wanted to name any of his children after his father or mother, never wanted to saddle them with the burden of redeeming the names of cruel people who hurt him and those he loves at every turn. And then a feeling of dread passes through him, and he looks at his wife with a face just begging her to contradict him. "They're not going to still call her Charlie, are they?"