Author's Note: I wasn't going to write anything for Valentine's Day as I don't particularly like the holiday, but I found a sketch of this little, fluffy oneshot tucked into my class notes while studying for midterm exams and decided to finish it. Happy belated Valentine's Day.
Tiny feet carry him across the carpeting running wall to wall in the conference room, tiny hands carve out space for him to pass through the full garment rack as the interns wheel in directly into his path, and a voice that is anything but tiny shouts out an excited yell, an exuberant greeting as the little boy flings himself into his father's arms. His words are whistled through the gap in his teeth, and he grins wider to show off the change that he occurred in his father's absence.
"Very cool, Henry," his father praises as he holds his son in his arms, as he straights the little boy's sweater and kisses his cheek and hopes that the day will never come where his son no longer runs into his arms each and every time he arrives home. Henry loops his arms around his father's neck and squeezes tight releasing after a long moment and squirming in his father's embrace to be placed back down on the floor.
"Look, Daddy," Henry says as he curls his hand around his father's pinkie finger – his father's initials pressing into his palm – and tugs him towards his seat at the table in the middle of the conference room. "Look what Aunt Serena bought me today!"
He climbs up in his chair without assistance, sits on bended knees as he plucks one of the cards from the middle of the table. The bright card is a swirl of primary colors serving as a backdrop for the villain from the latest Disney movie and a play-on-words, a pun about capturing your heart.
"It's for Valentine's Day," Henry informs him before trusting the piece of white paper with a list of names in front of his father's face. "I have to make one for everyone in my class for the party."
Chuck's eyes roam over the list, notes that some of the names have already been transcribed in shaky block letters on the back of the cards. He kisses his son on top of the head and praises him for doing such a good job writing out the names of all his classmates, and Henry beams with pride as he reaches to pick up his pen and show his dad how he can do this all by himself as he signs his half-finished Valentine.
"H-E-N-R-Y," Henry calls out each letter as he writes them. The last letter is written with such intense concentration that his small pink tongue is pushed through the gap in his teeth to peek between his lips. "B-A-S-S."
"Good job," Chuck praises as he ruffles Henry's hair. The little boy immediately reaches up, flats his hair back down with a glowering gaze towards his father.
"Only Mommy's allowed to touch my hair."
Chuck laughs as his son's rebuttal, apologies when Henry's gaze does not waver, and Henry accepts his apology with narrowed eyes before turning his attention back to his cards and the roster of classmates still needing Valentines.
"I'm going to go say hi to Mommy and then we can go home, okay?"
Henry lifts his eyes from the half-written name on the card in front of him, shifts it towards those working frantically in the workroom of the atelier, and then turns his gaze excitedly towards his father.
"J will be happy to see you. She told Aunt Serena that you being gone has left with Mommy with a lot of extra energies and that you need to drive Mommy crazy before Mommy drives J crazy."
A bemused smirk settles on Chuck's lips as he contemplates Henry's announcement, and the smirk deepens to one of mischievous pride as he strides towards his wife's office, as he hears his wife's voice rising loud and clear over all others.
"No, you idiot!" She yells snatching the fabric from the dress form and holding it in her fist as she waves it in front of the seamstress' face. "How many times do I have to tell you? This is the accent color for the other dress."
"Blair," Jenny testily replies from her place on the floor. Pins held between her teeth, hem gathered in her hands, the rebuttal is barely heard and the employees shift uncomfortably as they prepare for such strong personalities to clash heads with only days to go before New York Fashion Week. Again.
And just as Blair open her mouth to rebuke the head designer of company, her husband strides into the room causing all those gathered to breathe a sigh of relief and his wife to momentarily pause in her rebuttal to Jenny's insubordination. A smile replaces her look of anger; a clenched hand releases to press against the swell of her stomach in order to calm the baby feeding off her excitement.
"You're home," she murmurs as he reaches out to trail his fingers against her arm, as she presses a kiss against his cheek because there are some things she needs to keep private from her employees, some things she won't be able to stop if she allows them to start. "I missed you."
"I heard," Chuck replies with a smirk. "Henry informed me that you were driving Jenny crazy because I wasn't here to drive you crazy."
His wife rears backwards sputtering and searching for a reply before anger morphs her features into a thinly pressed lips and fiery eyes that dart from employee to employee and finally to Jenny. The exasperated blonde rolls her eyes, offers up words about how Henry told Nate just last Saturday that his mommy's favorite part of his daddy's business is public relations.
"He did no—" Blair begins to interject, but she pauses and narrows her eyes in a way all those gathered know to fear, in a way that can only be compared to a shark who has smelt blood in the water. "Wait, last Saturday? You mean, when Nate took Henry to play basketball just the two of them and Dorota saw a leggy blonde diving into Nate's town car when she arrived early to pick Henry up?"
"You know what, Blair?" Jenny replies with false sweetness as she rises to her feet. She holds the brunette's gaze for a moment, smiles deviously when she snatches the fabric from Blair's hand and saunters out of the room. "This fabric belongs on the second dress not this one."
The other employees follow Jenny's lead filing out of the room, quietly going about their tasks amidst the whirlwind preparations for fashion week, and leaving the owner of the company alone with her husband. And even before they are all gone, Chuck's hand tightens around her elbow in anticipation of her turning quickly on her heels to clue him in on her latest in order to prevent her from losing her balance thanks to the shift in her center of gravity.
"See," she hisses at her husband. Blair's eyebrows are pitched high, and her voice rises with every breathless syllable. "I told you there is something going on with Jenny and Nate. First, they arrive within minutes of one another at Serena's wedding. Then they happen to both go out of town at the same time. And now Jenny knows what our son is saying when he's supposed to be spending quality, alone time with his uncle."
Chuck drops his head at an angle and smiles at his wife's words, at her excitement over the possibility of needing to scheme to learn more information about the private lives of her business partner and his best friend. And right about the time she begins murmuring about where Gossip Girl is when you need him, he leans forward and presses his lips against hers in a tender kiss.
A tender kiss that immediately ignites into something more passionate as she reaches up to press her hand against his cheek, as he moves towards her to press his entire body against the curves of hers; a tender kiss that is anything but because it causes him to lean forward in search of her lips when she breaks the kiss and momentarily stunned when she pushes him away.
"You told Henry about my preference for public relations?"
"He must have overheard me," Chuck counters before pausing, before his lips dip into a smirk. "Or maybe he overheard you."
"I—I would—" Blair sputters indignantly, but her protests are forgotten when her husband presses his lips against hers once more.
"I missed you," he murmurs against her lips in between kisses. And his hand falls to slide against the curve of her belly causing the baby within to move in search of the coolness provided by Chuck's hand against her feverish body. "All of you."
"It's been eight days," she reminds him in a voice tinged with desperation, with desire, and she follows the break in their kiss by trailing her nose against his cheek.
"Come home with me then."
"I can't," she reminds him. "I have to stay here and prep for the show and then I have to help Henry make his Valentine's Day cards for his class party."
"He already has them," Chuck replies, and she rears back once more to look at him as surprise flitters across her features. "Henry's working on signing his name on the cards in the conference room right now. He said Serena bought them for him."
"He must have mentioned needing them when she and Dan took him out to lunch today," Blair replies softly as she steps out of his embrace and begins to gather up the abandoned materials piled on her desk. She felt bad enough as it was keeping him cooped up on the conference room all afternoon, but Dorota and the back-up nanny are both out with the flu and Lily is still in St. Bart recuperating from yet another divorce leaving her with no option but to bring Henry to the atelier with her. "He's been so anxious about having them done and I kept putting them off. I should have—"
"Hey," Chuck interrupts reaching out to touch Blair's elbow, to drag her attention away from her worries and back to him. "We said we weren't going to do this anymore. Don't go back on me now."
His reference to the late night telephone from less than a week ago when the guilt of missing Henry's first visit from the Tooth Fairy ate away at him until he called her in a melancholy and lonely moment serves as a reminder of what she told him that night - that they are not their parents even if this emergency trip to Dubai kept him from experience this particular milestone, that they are never going to be their parents.
"We're never going to be them," he reminds her once more reaching out lift her chin upwards with the tips of his fingers. "We're Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck. We're better than all the best. And Henry knows we love him. That we'd drop everything if he needed us."
"I know," she replies softly before shifting the tone of her voice and trying to cover her own fears with condemnation of others. "I just don't want him to get mocked for bringing Humphrey-approved Valentine's Day cards."
"He's Henry Bass. Anything he brings will be the gold standard."
His words bring a smile to her face because she cannot deny how true they are. After all, their son had his classmates wearing scarves as accessories by the end of the first week of Kindergarten, and Dorota reported after one of her trips past the playground to check on her young charge – a task left to her because Henry had made his parents promise but forgot his mother's comrade in scheming – that the little girls are already referring to Henry by his full name in reverent whispers. And her words, her offer that maybe she should take a break and get something to eat brings a smile to his face.
"Mommy, look," Henry shouts when his mother strides into the room with his father sauntering close behind. "I did it all by myself."
"This is perfect, Henry," Blair replies as her eyes sweep over the tacky cartoons, land on Henry's script, before shifting to see the glow of pride in his work on her son's face.
A glow that dims for just a moment as Henry back in his chair to look at his father and then stands up in his chair with a gesture for his mother to step closer to him. When she does, he cups his hand around his mouth and whispers in her ear as his eyes shift to make sure his father cannot hear them.
"Don't worry, Mommy. I wouldn't give you one of these cards. These cards are for minions and Humphreys."
A smile returns to her lips, a glow to match her son's spreads across her face, and she laughs when her husband begins questioning their son about spilling secrets shared just between Henry and Daddy as she helps her little boy into his coat. Cards held tightly in one hand, Henry grasps tightly onto her hand as they weave their way through the crowded workroom and Chuck presses his hand against her back as she watches Jenny reach for her phone just as soon as the blonde learns that Blair is going out for dinner and won't be back for a few hours.
But her son tugs her out of the office and towards the waiting limo, as her husband helps her sink into her seat and instructs Arthur to take them to her new favorite restaurant, and she nearly forgets her suspicion until the limo stops at the corner and a town car races past them. Blair twists in her seat and watches the brake lights turn bright red right in front of the atelier, but the limo turns the corner before she can be sure.
"Wasn't that Nate's town car?"
Her husband looks at her with a face that betrays nothing, but she can read the unspoken words hidden in his eyes and her own eyes narrow and darken with mounting suspicion that her husband has been holding out on vital information she no longer can gleam on her own with the aid of Gossip Girl's text messages and blog updates.
"Spill, Cupid."