Author's Note: This is my response to the prompt for Day Two of Chair Week on tumblr, children (Henry and any others that follow).
Chuck shifts uncomfortably in his chair as the waiter places the first course in front of him. The soup – a murky, green concoction – looks positively unappetizing, and he reaches for the glass of scotch in front of him to dull his palate. The scotch is of poorer quality than what he is accustomed to, and it burns in precisely the wrong way as it slides down his throat. His slight grimace attracts the attention of the twenty-something woman sitting across the table from him.
"Not to your taste?"
She leans forward over the table, commits the fopa of placing her elbows on the table as she tries to further accentuate her voluminous bosom to the object of her attention. He glances down with her movements, looks back up at her with a face bearing no emotion.
"No," he replies firmly.
"Come now," she teases lightly. "There must be something – or, should I say, someone – at this table that is to taste."
"No," he repeats, flicking his gaze from her face to her breasts and back again in an obvious appraisal. "Not even close."
The woman looks stunned for a moment, tries to smoothly cover it up as the white-haired man seated to her right snorts out a laugh. She crosses her arms in annoyance and huffs her disproval at the older man. But the man seated beside her just shakes her head at her, tells her not to waste her breath before turning his attention to Chuck.
"And where is your delectable wife tonight, Mister Bass?"
Chuck's eyes flash in anger, in jealousy over Robert Nolan's question. But Bob wiggles his own ringed finger at him in a silent reminder that he too is married, that his partner Ross is seated at the opposite end of the table from them.
"Blair sends her regrets that she couldn't make it tonight," he informs those seated around him. "She decided to stay home with the baby."
"Oh, you have children, Mister Bass?"
The elderly woman to his left asks, interjecting herself into the conversation. Her face expresses an eager curiosity; a curiosity those around the table who are more familiar with Chuck Bass long ago lost. His own face breaks out a soft, childlike smile.
"Yes," he replies. "I do."
"How lovely," the woman says. "Boy or girl?"
"Boy," he says. "Henry. He's six-months-old."
He reaches into the pocket of his suit coat for his phone intent on showing the older woman photos of his son. Yet the phone is nowhere to be found in his pockets and after a somewhat frantic search, he abruptly pushes his chair away from the table and stands.
"Excuse me," he mumbles.
The hostess raises an eyebrow in question as he departs, but he shrugs off Lily's concern as he strides from the elegant dining table towards the foyer where he checked his coat upon arrival. The woman running the coat check is busy flipping through her magazine and blowing bubbles with her gum, and he has to loudly rap against the doorframe to get her attention. She moves towards him slowly, but scrambles off when he trusts the ticket into her hand with a barked order for her to hurry.
The black coat is returned to his possession, and he frantically fishes for his phone in the vast number of pockets. His scarf, which had been tucked into the inner pocket, falls to floor without a second glance only to be snatched up by Lily.
"Is everything okay, Charles?" She asks as she holds the scarf out to him.
He ignores her question until he can find his phone, until he can click a button and see that he has not missed a single call or text. Yet the empty screen only serves to better illuminate the photograph of a smiling, toothless Henry that he uses as his background. He glances from the photo towards the dining room, towards Lily, and then back at the photograph.
"I should go," he replies as he pockets his phone and tugs on his coat.
"Are Blair and Henry alright?"
"Fine," he mummers as he places a soft kiss against her cheek in farewell. "But I should be with them."
"I understand," Lily replies. "Give Henry a kiss for me."
"Of course," he answers before striding towards the elevator. The doors spring open just as soon as he presses the call button for the elevator, and he steps inside without a backwards glance. He knows exactly where he should be, and this dinner party for the board of Bass Industries is not it.
He pushes open the door to their bedroom, smiles when he sees the soft glow of the black and white film casting a shadow across the bed. The volume of the movie is down low, but he can recognize the soft sounds of "Moon River" flittering past him.
"Hey," he greets softly as he steps into the room and tugs at his tie. "Watching Aud—"
She turns her head, looks at him in surprise before raising a single finger to her lips and shushing him. He begins to ask why when she gestures towards the spot next her in bed, peels back the duvet to show off a tiny body curled against her in the crook of her arm. He nods his head in understanding, kicks off his shoes with soft thuds as he moves closer to the bed.
"How's he feeling?" He questions quietly as he sinks down onto the bed next to her. He isn't foolish enough to reach out and touch the baby, knows better than to do anything that might wake a sleeping baby.
"His fever broke half an hour ago," she informs him. "The medicine knocked him out again."
"Good," Chuck replies as he places the back of his hand against her forehead. She still feels warm to the touch although not burning hot as she had before he left for Lily's party nearly two hours ago. "How are you feeling?"
She sniffles, plays with the wadded tissue in her hand, and then raises it her nose in a dramatic blowing. Her nose is rubbed raw from the tissues. Her normally silky smooth hair is stringy and plastered to her head. Her husband reaches out, pushes aside her hair, and she looks at him with watery, weary eyes.
"Terrible," she says before releasing a hacking cough into the crook of her arm. "Is the dinner over already? I expecting to at least get through Tiffany's and Roman Holiday before you came home."
"I left," he replies with a shrug.
"Chuck, that dinner was important," she reminds him with a flourish of her hand. "Lily put it on so the board would stop worrying about everything."
It had been difficult getting the board on his side, particularly after such negative publicity about his father's mysterious death and the police wanting him for questioning. It hadn't help that he and Blair had run off on their honeymoon only for him to return and take paternity leave a few months later.
"I'll take care of the board later. Right now, I'm taking care of my family."
She nods her head, gives up on insisting that he return to the party. She had already waged that fight earlier this evening and, frankly, she is too tired and sick to care any longer. She reaches for the glass of water on the table beside her bed, careful to avoid knocking off the bell she uses to call Dorota with in the process. His eyes follow her movements; settle on the reminder that Dorota did not greet him downstairs when he returned home.
"Did Dorota go home?"
She glares at him for the question, curls her right arm protectively around her baby. The left hand, the one holding her tissue moves to pull his blue cap further over his tiny ears as though to protect him from some imagined chill.
"Don't speak of that horrible woman," she snaps at him.
"Blair," he coaxes gently.
"No," she rebukes. "She brought her disease riddled children into my home and let them play with my baby with their snotty noses and germy hands."
She huffs at the reminder, at the horror she allowed Dorota to inflict upon the little boy. True, forty-eight hours ago, Leo and Ana had arrived at her home without a trace of the sniffles eager to play with Kochanie Henry, as Dorota and Vanya's children affectionately call him. But less than twenty-four hours later and her little boy was a whimpering mess with a cough that sends ice water through her veins.
"It wasn't Dorota's fault," he reminds her. "Children are disease vectors."
"Not her fault? You're the one who called and yelled at her first."
She lets out a dreadful cough, one that leaves her sniffling and hacking at the tail end of her rebuttal. He had called Dorota and yelled, but only to find out if this was the common cold or if Ana and Leo had exposed Henry to some horrific disease they picked up in Poland over the holidays. Dorota swore it was just a cold, showed up before he left for the dinner party with tissues and baby cough medicine.
"It's just the common cold," he throws out in defense.
"Really? Because I feel like I got hit by a truck."
She sniffles again, coughs into her well-used tissue again. He glances over his shoulder at the television screen, turns his attention back to her as he says that he is going to go change and places a soft kiss against her forehead. He strides into the en-suite bathroom, divests himself of his suit and tosses it over the lip of the whirlpool tub. After washing and moisturizing his face, after brushing his teeth, he returns to their bedroom and slips into bed beside her careful to avoid jostling the baby between them.
"Do you want to put him in his room?" His wife asks softly over the dialogue of the movie.
"Nah," he replies before shifting his position and placing a gentle kiss on Henry's covered head. "I think we can make an exception for our sick boy."
"Hmm," she sniffles. He reaches over, pulls back the covers, and motions for her lay down. She does as he asks, careful to move the baby from his position snuggled against her to flat on his back in the bed between them. He follows her lead until they are lying in bed facing each other with Henry fast asleep between them, until they fall asleep themselves with hands clasped under the sheets.
It is the poke of miniature fingers to the eye that awakens him, the bap of a tiny fist to the nose that forces him to open his eyes. His little boy smiles at him in recognition, shakes his tiny fists and pajama covered feet almost as though he is silently celebrating the return of his health. Except Chuck –
Chuck feels like he has been run over by a truck. His throat hurts, his nose is clogged, and he lets out a groan when he spies his wife eying him over the baby's head.
"I feel like shit," he bemoans as he tries to bury his face further into the covers. She laughs, snickers that he has finally succumbed to the illness being passed amongst the family after claiming that he never got sick.
"Better get used to it, Bass," she tells him. "You said so yourself – children are disease vectors."