A/N: the first meeting of Chuck and Blair. I may continue with a series of them as children if I get enough positive response. Enjoy and please review!
When We Were Very Young
Chuck's latest servant had dropped him off with strangers, and he was decidedly unhappy. This was the third time she had disobeyed his careful orders today! He wanted his purple suit, the one with the polka-dot bow tie, but despite his patient pointing, she had dressed him in the red romper and ignored his cries when he demanded she change him. A romper! And now he was among strangers and he didn't look his best!
In his little overalls, he crawled over to the nearest table leg, placing small hands on it and carefully raising himself into a standing position. It was then that he saw the other toddler in the room, a little girl with curly brown hair and enormous brown eyes. She was wearing purple, a frilly dress with a big bow at the back and matching nail polish on her tiny fingernails. She was the prettiest thing he had ever seen, even prettier than the one with blond hair called Se'ena that he'd met last week. But she was sitting on someone's lap and being carefully fed with a little silver spoon, while he had been left alone on the ground. Didn't they know that he was important here! Chuck was liking the purple one less and less by the minute. And were those grapes? Chuck loved grapes! Why didn't he get any? It was most certainly unfair, he decided, and voiced his complaint in the form of a high pitched wail.
From the other room, someone called for a 'Dorota' to make him be quiet, and the little girl took her eyes off the spoon that was making its way towards her mouth, pointed at him imperiously – or as imperiously as any two-year-old can, in any case – and said "Da!" Immediately, she was placed gently on the floor next to him, her servant holding her hand as she pulled herself up to stand beside him. Her servant listened to her. Chuck immediately stopped wailing and started his plans to steal the servant for himself.
She kneeled next to them and said in a heavy accent "Miz Blair, this Meester Chuck. Meester Chuck, this Miz Blair." She then stood up and started moving things around on the table above both their heads.
So it was Blair, was it? He turned big brown eyes on her servant, determined to impress upon her that he was better than this Blair, and needed to be picked up and fed grapes at the same time as she opened her mouth and said "Uck?"
To Chuck this was the last straw. His name was not Uck! Uck was for dirty things, and Chuck was most definitely not dirty. He was the cleanest person he knew, most certainly cleaner than the other boy who liked to make mud pies and wrestle with Se'ena. So, he did the only thing he could reasonably do at that point. Still holding onto the table leg for balance, he put a little hand on the front of her dress and pushed with all his might.
With a startled shriek she sat down – her skirts billowing around her small body in a decidedly princess-y fashion – and promptly started to cry. This in turn startled Chuck – in the curious way that two-year-olds have, he had not thought his plan through far enough to think that she might cry – who lost his tenuous balance and toppled to the floor, also bursting into tears.
And that was how Dorota – who had stepped out momentarily to assure Blair's mother that her daughter was not in any harm – found them: sprawled out on the floor crying for all they were worth. She picked them both up and cooed in their ears as she made her way towards the playpen in the corner of the room. Setting them down inside it, she continued preparing entrées for Eleanor's party.
Chuck found himself enjoying, despite himself, the time he spent nestled beside the princess. To him, it felt like they were meant to be – after all, they both liked grapes and purple and looking perfect and ordering people around. Not to mention that he was still admiring her screaming capabilities. He found them most impressive.
Once in the pen however, it became clear than Blair did not feel the same way. As soon as they were put down she turned her back on him, picking up the arm of the enormous teddy bear that lay, limbs akimbo, behind her and dragging it slowly to the other side of the playpen. She proceeded to drop it in the corner and curl up on it with a blanket she had picked up on the way there, ignoring him resolutely the entire time. "Mik!" she demanded, clapping her hands in the air, and was immediately handed a bottle by her servant. Smiling contentedly, she stuck it in her mouth and lay back, holding it above her and closing her eyes as she began to drink.
Chuck knelt uncertainly in the middle of the playground. Even as a child, the feeling was unsettling to him, almost foreign. The simultaneous desire to walk up to her and grab a fistful of her hair mixed with an almost bone deep feeling of awe and terror formed a lethal cocktail in his blood, binding him to the playpen floor as surely as roots bind trees deep into the earth. He was still contemplating a course of action as she finished her bottle, angling her small body away from him and into the teddy bear.
So lost in the preoccupations of a small child who has encountered something utterly new, he did not notice her breathing even and her body grow slack as she fell deeply asleep.
Finally he walked towards her, small hands outstretched with the intentions of tree roots. She did not move as he sunk both small fists into her hair, grabbing her dark locks and dislodging the ribbon that held them in place. Gentle tugging produced no results, so instead he stole her blanket. Nothing. Having utterly exhausted his few ideas (and in the process himself), he lay down beside her, spreading the blanket awkwardly over the two of them the way he'd seen his father with some of the ladies in his house. Their mysterious absence in the mornings following at the forefront of his mind, Chuck twined her hair ribbon through their interlocked hands. He was out before his head hit the makeshift pillow bear.
From a distance, it looked as though they were attached at the scalp, their minds becoming one as their soft limbs intertwined in sleep. It was how Dorota would find them later, curled so closely together that the rich, dark strands of their hair mingled, the ribbon still encircling their clasped hands.