This is the first story I publish here. I'm not English, I'm Italian, so my English might not be perfect. I wrote this fanfiction in Italian months ago and I did my best to translate it...I hope it's good enough! Anyway, I wrote this back in September, before the beginning of season six, when a spoiler about Bart taking the Empire away from Chuck came out. The spoiler wasn't true, so this is almost an AU. Hope you like it!
The Queen's Job:
"Thank you," Chuck whispered in her hear, eyelids falling heavily over his eyes. The warmth of darkness gently wrapped him. Blair's head, laid with grace over the irregular beating of his heart, was a sweet, reassuring weight over his chest.
Chuck took a deep breath and let her perfume inebriate him: it smelled like elegance, seduction and dignity, the unmistakable scent of Chanel N°5 mixed together with Blair's sweaty skin. He relaxed his shoulders, and the arm wrapping her thin, sinuous body dangled like a death weight, as he avidly breathed in that redeeming, brightening fragrance.
"You don't have to thank me," Blair said in a soft, dreamy murmur, clearly willing to enjoy the quiet moment given by the remains of the just consumed passion. "I can assure you that the pleasure was mine."
Even if his eyes were closed, Chuck was sure that Blair was gazing at him, her eyes full of a fluid, benevolent warmth, her lips still swollen by the ardor of his kisses and her hair ruffled on the naked breasts. An unaware simile bent the corners of his lips as soon as that figure came to his mind.
He thought that he would have wanted to lift his eyelids, just to bask himself in that perfect image, but he knew that, if he had done it, his eyes would have returned the view of Blair's room and all the sufferance would have come back. He would have been once again naked in a bed which wasn't his, in a house he didn't own, in the arms of a woman who was far stronger than him.
He held his breath and he felt Blair doing the same, as if just sensing that hint of tension had immediately brought her in his sorrow.
Unable to bear the idea of upsetting Blair, Chuck opened his eyes and looked at her silently. Blair, splendidly tousled, was studying him with that anxious, worried stare again; the same stare she had rested on him when she had entered her room and found him standing with his back turned to the door, a hand clung to the opened window's curtains.
At first the instinct to turn around look at her as she was discretely slipped towards him – one deliberate step at the time - hadn't been strong enough to fight the trembling bitterness with which his stayed fixed on a precise point of the panorama: the Empire's red neon sign shined unacceptably far, a blood stain among all the immobile skyscrapers.
But then her steps had stopped and Chuck had felt Blair's shadow touching him, a dark big spot standing out against the chandelier's warm yellow light. That darkness was magnetic and reassuring, it had made him feel comfortable, sheltered from his father's ruthless judgment, from his coldness and his cruelty.
So he had spun around, knowing that she was there to medicate his wounds, that she wasn't going anywhere, neither in front of this, in front of the powerless man his father made of him, stripped of his own dignity.
"He took it, Blair," he had blabbed incoherently and his words had sounded like the ones of a kid in his ears, childish and agitated. "He took the Empire, he took it from me."
"Chuck…"
"No."
With a firmness that had surprised him too, Chuck had kept her from saying anything and Blair had understood. She had understood like she had always done, like nobody was able to do with him, she had understood that the time to talk about everything would have come, but it surely wasn't the moment yet. It was too early, it was still too painful and still too hard.
She hadn't said a word or shot him any look full of pity. She had simply wrapped her ethereal arms around his neck and let her ducked head fall under his chin, her nose and her lips gently tickling his throat.
She was his; the only thing that had ever been his for real, which had been his all along, from the first time he had found the courage to slide his fingers under her silk lingerie and Blair had answered to his touch by letting him caress her. She was his not because he owned her like a propriety – and Blair had painfully proven it to him more than once - , but because she ardently wanted to be his and this would have kept anyone from taking her away from him. She wouldn't have let them.
The embrace had become a tangle of hands and greedy lips. It had been the sweetest and the most immediate comfort Blair could have given him: the awareness that he was the only man able to make her shiver like that, the only one to deserve the unconditional trust with which Blair gave in to all of his movements. Feeling that she was so deeply his had made him feel strong, it had made him feel loved and appreciated, important, indeed indispensable, like she was indispensable for him to feel something different from rage and pain. Both of the emotions had exploded inside of her and inside of her had turned into gratitude and love, into the instinctive and immediate impression to feel alive and complete only by squeezing her thighs, caressing her belly and her breast.
Then, after Blair had pronounced a passionate "I love you", everything had soothed, leaving them to enjoy the melancholic and peaceful silence of oblivion.
Chuck's illusion of that fragile calmness broke in a sharp, full of reality breath when he met Blair's deep eyes. She was respectfully waiting for him to say something. Chuck sighed heavily.
He could still feel in his mouth the watered-down taste of the scotch on the rocks that Bart had offered him to welcome him. He remembered how even a small thing such as his father's ignorance about how he liked his liquor – neat - had made him want to scream, just to leave a mark on the marble face that was staring back at him; anything to be considered, to force Bart to look into his eyes and understand his value.
But, once again, he had found nothing but detachment and the same old, ill-concealed dissatisfaction in the way Bart had chosen to look at him. In a moment the promise Chuck had made to himself when he had bought the Empire had crumbled down, destroyed by those cold eyes - a promise made with the hope that he could have honored Bart's memory.
"He says that the Empire needs a less unreliable and inexpert direction," Chuck finally said and the memory of those worlds hit him again, as if he had been forced to relive the scene and listen to Bart's formal and detached tone once more. He had spoken to him like he would have talked to one of his employees, to someone who wasn't his son - who didn't deserve to be his son. In fact, as Bart had told him months ago, he wasn't ready to be a Bass. His father had given this justification to his decision to completely exclude him from the family business.
He wasn't a man and he couldn't measure up to his surname, Bart kept on thinking that he wasn't enough –able enough, strong enough, worthy enough. In the eyes of his father Chuck was like a weak spoiled boy; useless, even annoying.
Blair bit her lip. Chuck knew that she was feeling his suffering as a pain they both had to endure. It wasn't just about the invisible wire which connected them –something so strong to allow them to share joys and tragedies - , but also about what the Empire meant to her and to their story. It was the sign of their greatest mistake, of their great love, but also of how much they had grown up since then.
"You know this isn't true, Chuck."
"But he doesn't."
Blair's gaze was pungent and watchful, made incredibly intense by a little bit of resentment. She looked bitter and ready to speak with great venom, but, when she talked, she did it with unique delicacy. "It doesn't matter," she said, smiling at him sadly but with decision. "I know who you are, but most importantly you know who you are. He can steal anything from you except for what you think about yourself."
Chuck sighed and started twirling Blair's curls around his fingers. He would have wanted to tell her that she was right – and she was, he knew that - but he still remembered how Bart's words had left him puzzled, closed in a contrite, full of discouragement silence.
The fiery rush of pride that had raised to his chest when Bart had said "From today I'll take care of it" (with a dismissive look and a careless tone that were so inappropriate for all that had been scarified in the name of the Empire) had been nothing in front of his sudden inability to do anything but trying to hide the mortified tears in his burning eyes.
He would have wanted to leave conceding Bart nothing but a proud look, he would have wanted to show him that, as much as he felt humiliated, he didn't need his approval, that he didn't need him to finally see him as a man to feel like one, but there had been something that had kept Chuck rooted to his spot.
It was hope. That hope was so vain and flimsy that had made him feel like a fool, weak, but he still hadn't been able to get rid of it. He had seen himself again as the little boy would have waited forever for a compliment that was never going to come. It was like a silent but incomplete resignation that created grudge but never missed to bring an even more painful hope for a change with it, the hope to gain his father's consideration, the hope that one day he would have been able to make Bart love him, that he would have stopped being a disappointment.
Right now Chuck only wanted Bart to see him as he learnt to see himself, to take a step back, a step towards him, to recognize him for his value and not for his failures.
Rolling and unrolling Blair's curls around his fingers made him feel safe, comforted by the continuous repetition of the movement. Slowing caressing his chest, she filled his silence with the steadiness of her gaze, that, fixed on him, implicitly invited him to continue.
"He called the security, Blair," he confessed and he saw Blair looking down for a moment, hurt by his revelation. "He would have kicked me out if I hadn't left of my own free will"
It had been humiliating and painful, exactly like the last time, when, instead of Bart, it had been a woman to send him away, a woman whose eyes were the same as his, a woman with the unacceptable courage to disown her son for the second time.
And Chuck, today as back then, had hoped in vain for it to be a mistake, he had left by his own, with an exasperated slowness in his steps, harboring the pain inside. Through the discouragement he had wished to be called back by a penitent look and by some apologizes. They hadn't come.
"Parents should love their children," he declared with banality.
It was the first thing he thought about, the thought that had been stuck in his mind all summer long – all his life long. It was so unnatural, so wrong: if he had felt able to love a baby who wasn't his, then why hadn't his parents been able love him? Why hadn't they felt that rush of unconditional love towards him, that desire to protect him and make him happy?
The courage to ask himself why died on his lips together with his words, made vague by the sincere fear Chuck had for the answer. The conviction that it was his fault, that he really deserved this lack of love and consideration, kept on silently sneaking into his mind, latent but strong enough to resist, even if Chuck fought hardly everyday not to give in to it.
But fighting was exhausting, it was depressing and maybe it was even useless, because, even if he forced himself to think the best about who he was, his effort was never repaid. Believing that he wasn't to blame for the competent he received from his father didn't change anything. Indeed that exertion left him worn out, grown weak by the war he fought against himself and by the one he fought against Bart's convictions.
Chuck felt the sudden need to be alone, to keep Blair away from that pain, from the inevitable impossibility not to share it, to stop her from seeing him so needy, so weak that he was angry at himself for that unforgivable fragility.
He quickly put on his plump shirt, he got up and came back to look beyond the window's opened curtains. Turning his back at her, he severely tried to silence the side of him that craved for being encouraged by reassuring words and delicate touches, the one which was burning from his necessity to be held by Blair, the one that longed for her presence and for her power to make him feel loved and worthy of love.
However, in spite of the firm will to stay turned, Chuck couldn't stop himself from hoping that she'd put an end to that contradictory mixture of needness and firmness
Blair moved in a silky swish. Chuck felt her as she approached him, obstinate and determined, indifferent to his mild attempt to keep her away.
Without her heels on she was at least ten centimeters shorted than him, her pale skin and the petite figure made her look incredibly fragile, but it was with a surprising strength that Blair tug at his shirt and forced him to turn around. She had wrapped the sheet around her body and her long hair, which he had ruffled, fell on the light golden fabric, dirtying it with dark stripes. Chuck stared at her speechless for a moment, then he glanced down and his eyes rested on Blair's bare feet before he slowly closed them.
It was only with the soft touch of Blair's warm fingers tickling his chin that Chuck stopped fighting against the measured pressure with which she was trying to lift up his face. When he opened his eyes again he found Blair's dark pupils gazing at him, wide and wet, sparkling with the power of her tenacity.
"It's not your fault if he…" Blair paused. She shook her head a little. "If they can't see what I see when I look at you. It's not your fault if they're so blind, so ignorant that they can't understand how much talent and greatness there is in you."
"I'm not powerful, Blair," Chuck uttered the words softly, voicing his confession and greatest fear in a shy murmur.
Blair shook her head again, this time with more strength, and her curls disorderly moved over her chest and shoulders.
"I know you think you're not, but you're strong enough to keep them from making you doubt yourself."
Chuck sighed. He didn't feel strong enough; he was exhausted, devastated by a war he felt like he had been fighting since ever, since he had come to this world and nobody had found the courage to want him and love him.
Anyone but her.
He turned once again to look at New York's lights standing out against the dark ink of the sky. Blair turned with him. Standing on her toes, she laced her arms around his neck and leaned her chin on his shoulders.
"He had promised that one day this city would have been mine," Chuck said. The skyscrapers took the shape of his denied future, sharp fragments of the only promise Bart ever made him, the only one Chuck had really believed in.
"It will be," Blair affirmed with confidence and with a little bit of unrestrained enthusiasm. "And not because your father decided it, but because this is your destiny and, most of all, this is what yo desire. "You're Chuck Bass and the Chuck Bass I know always gets what he wants".
Chuck shifted his face and his nostrils ended up in the middle of Blair's curls. He watched pleased as a provoking and catty smile appeared on Blair's lips. He laughed, a soft and vaguely bitter laugh. "Not always," he commented. "With you I couldn't. You ran away from me," he added, subtle and ironic, but with a trembling note of annoyance in his voice.
"But I came back," Blair pointed out in a serious tone.
"But you came back," he echoed her words in a whisper. He didn't say anything else, he just kissed her ardently and felt that enthusiasm fortifying him, winding him up with passion. In a moment, everything started to look easier and more possible.
It was a long and deep kiss, at the end of which they ended up face to face, looking in each other's eyes, shrouded by a soft and comforting silence. Chuck saw Blair smiling, a sweet and melancholic smile.
"Are you happy, Blair?'" he asked her quickly, unable to keep himself from thinking that she might be unhappy. "There's nothing simple in my life and I know you wanted…"
Blair hushed him up, pressing a finger against his lips.
"Nothing makes me happier than standing by your side, Chuck," she told him with firmness, a smile still spreading across his face. "Through anything, remember?"
Before he had the time to answer, she concluded: "After all, it's a queen's job to protect her king."
Notes:
[1] I don't really know if you can see the Empire from Blair's room. Give me the poetic license!
[2] The last thing Blair says is on of her quotes from episode 3X07, How To Succeed in Bassness
[3] There are a few parallels with season three, I'm sure you noticed them.