He takes trigonometry because it is a required course at St. Jude's. He takes trigonometry because the little boy he pretends not to be once told his father he would become an architect and design the buildings Bass Industries builds. His father had not frowned at him then and, considering Bart Bass does not smile, that is about as high of praise as Chuck Bass was going to get.
But calculating angles and sides is harder than he anticipated, and it is only when his life turns into a triangle that he understands. His best friend's girlfriend – ex-girlfriend, he corrects – climbs into the back of his limo and turns his life into an acute mess.
He doesn't tell Nate not because she asks him not to but because Nate is his best friend, because he thinks that the only way this will work is if they hide in corners and shadows together. But then he sees on the arm of the prince, and the butterflies grow green eyes and he can no longer hide away. He tries to get her to agree to go with him through vague comments about arm candy, grows angry when she doesn't catch his innuendo and agrees instead to go with Nate.
And then she goes and screws Nate and he flies off to Monaco. His best friend follows by invitation and, even though he hates the blonde for taking back the brunette, he keeps his mouth shut. Nate is his best friend – his brother, even – and Blair is nothing. Except then Serena tells him that Blair may be pregnant and the ties that bind the three of them together tighten, pulling them into something that looks distinctly like a triangle.
A love triangle.
This one is acute; the bonds between them tight and the degrees of separation small. He breaks the triangle on his own with a text to Gossip Girl. Nate ends their friendship by slamming him into the trunk of his limo. He ends this whatever thing with Blair by comparing her to a sweaty, broken horse. The lines between them facture; the angles between them collapse.
Or, so he thinks until he sees her and him at school the next day and realizes nothing has changed. He still wants to be friends with Nate; he still wants to be something – anything – with Blair. The triangle between them continues through the school year, the degrees of separation becoming smaller and smaller with every passing day.
The truth comes out at his father's wedding. Chuck gets to be the hero he never believes himself to be while Nate gets the explanation he was looking for and Blair gets the apology she deserves. It's only half the apology she needs, but it almost sounds like he is saying that he loves her and maybe it is enough.
He gets her for a week – a single, glorious week. But he screws it up, loses himself to his fear and loses her in the process. The triangle seems to be broken she was returns. He still gets to keep his best friend, a man who apparently has no interest in his ex-girlfriend and thus severing the bond between the two. Blair toys with Chuck through her dalliances with another man with a title, with someone else who doesn't matter because they cannot resist each other.
But the angles collapse between them again when his life falls apart, when he falls apart and tells her that it is too bad she loves him, that she needs to stop playing the wife, and that he hates to lose the game. She goes back to Nate eventually, kisses the Golden Boy as snow falls and his heart grow colder. He tries to move forward, but he is hopelessly ensnared until the three words, eight letters she desperately wants to hear finally sets him free.
He has her, loses her, wins her back, and loses her again. The process repeats itself over and over. Yet, for a while, there are no triangles. There are other people, yes, but the connections are linear rather than complete with angles and sides. There is her and Eva and him in the middle; there is him and Louis and her in the middle.
The only similarities tying him and Louis are that they both enjoy Monte Carlo and they are both in love with the same Upper East Princess. The only similarity tying her and Eva is that they both have loved ones in Paris. Eva and Blair loved different people; one fell for a Charles Bass pretending to be Henry Prince while the other loved the Chuck Bass.
Different parts. Never the same.
The lack of angles and sides does not mean that the pain, the agony of watching her be with someone else isn't there. True, he could not feel anything – no pain, no joy – even after he receives the save the date card for her wedding in the mail and Dan buys him a dog.
But then he finds out she is pregnant with a child that is not his and he cannot breathe. His heart cannot beat, and he cries for what might have been. The kiss to help her become less confused nearly undoes him, and her asking him to tell her the secrets of how he became more like Louis and less like him enrages him.
He pretends to be the bad guy even as he evolves into a better man. He will never be a good guy, and he knows this even as he keeps treading water and tries to keep his head above water. Monkey is, surprisingly, a comfort, and he channels all of his energy into caring for the mangy mutt as he tries to let her go.
Tries and fails.
She calls him, asks him if he could ever love another man's child, and he tries to do the selfless thing because he just wants her to be happy, wants her to have the fairytale she dreams of and deserves. Dan arranges their meet-up for them when it becomes obvious that he needs to be Chuck Bass, he needs to be the selfish narcissist she fell in love with at seventeen.
The process repeats. He has her, loses her, but this time he loses more because she and the baby he already loves are so cruelly ripped from his life. He watches her marry another man even when he asks her not to, and he thinks that maybe he can live with that until he finds her in a hotel room by the airport and learns that another triangle has developed.
The angles of this triangle are obtuse, odd, and expansive. It develops despite him denying so. It develops despite her protests to the contrary, despite her assuring him months ago that his kiss reminded her that she should be with Chuck. But it is there because when she is fleeing, when she is desperate to escape, she calls Dan instead of him.
Humdrum Humphrey who was never his friend but the only person who realized that he couldn't feel anything, that arranged the meeting between him and Blair that gave him hope. He is not stupid enough to consider it caring because no one cares for Chuck Bass. People pretend to as they steal his company, steal the parts of his life that are precious and sacred to him. Dan was no different. Dan stabbed him in the back, payback for his sister or some other kind of offense that Chuck is probably guilty of.
As though showing him what his life entails – dying alone in a closet by his own hand – wasn't enough.
The angle between him and Dan grows wider as the angle between Dan and Blair becomes smaller. And yet the line between the two men cannot be broken. They are not friends, not even close to being brothers yet he is still connected to the man because his friend – the woman he calls "Sis" – is still connected. She looks at Dan and Blair the same way he looks at Dan and Blair – disbelief, anger, resentment, and yearning.
The hardest thing is watching someone you love, love someone else.
The gulf between the two men in this triangle widens, compressing still the space between each of them and her. The angles between her and him and her and Dan are small so that their pull is still undeniable even as she asks him to walk away, so that he has a hard time telling if the other man is the better man for her.
The boy from Brooklyn is all wrong for her yet this is not the same Blair. Maybe this new Blair is the real Blair; the woman she would have been had he never entered her life. And maybe he should step aside because he just wants her to be free and happy even if that mean she cannot be with him.
The best part about this obtuse triangle is that no two angles are the same. Even amongst the smallest of angles, one is larger than the other and one man is closer than the other. She picks him, he rejects her, and it seems that they are doomed to fall into that same vicious cycle again. Except this time she fights for him; she lays out all her cards, says she is all in, and lets the chips fall where they land. The triangle breaks as the degrees of separation collapse between them in an opulent hotel in Monte Carlo.
Months of separation and waiting, of disappointment and setbacks, and then she is Mrs. Chuck Bass and he is Mr. Blair Waldorf. The wedding maybe is not what she deserves, but his uncle is right and it is very them. He wears white almost as though he is the bride, which may be true considering how long he waited for her to propose marriage. But, at the end of the day, the only thing that exists is them – Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck.
They are completely committed, unable to separate from one another for more than a few hours a day as the honeymoon period gives away to genuine wedded bliss. Yet another person waltzes into their lives and pulls Chuck and Blair into the all familiar three-pointed geometric shape they thought they were done with.
Except this one, this love triangle is perfectly proportioned. They love equally and wholly amongst all parts, and for once everything in Chuck's life feels right. He loves Blair, can and will do anything for her. He would sell his Empire and give up everything for her. But this little baby – this wonderful, amazing baby – fulfills the parts of him he did not even know where missing.
He loves his son without even knowing who he is, loves him absolutely as his squalling and squirming body is placed upon his mother's chest. Loves him even before that point because the idea that this pregnancy – however unplanned – was created out of love and that the only person he has ever loved is carrying his baby brings him to his knees. It becomes painfully obvious that his father never loved him because he would give up his whole life for Henry, would willingly throw himself off the roof of a building before ever letting his son reach the edge.
His confession of this late at night in the days following their son's birth scares her, and she begs him never to speak of such a thing again. It is true – true for both of them – but that does not mean that either of them needs to acknowledge it. Because the only way this works is if they stay on equal footing, and she cannot bear to think that one of them might love more than the other.
It doesn't matter, though, because this triangle is unchanging. It is the basis for everything in his life; the root of every decision he makes going forward. It is perfectly proportioned; it is absolutely right. Because Henry plus Blair – no matter the mathematical manipulation – will always equal Chuck.