The sun seeped through the otherwise dimly lit hotel room, waking Blair up. She sighed contentedly and opened her eyes. She was exactly where she needed to be-not running from reality or hiding out in-she shuddered at the thought- Brooklyn, but instead laying in the arms of the person she loved, waking up, completely sated, after hours of making up. She couldn't believe she'd spent a year-an entire year-without his kiss, his touch... Her entire body warmed at the thought. She grinned and kissed him awake.
"Good morning Beautiful," Chuck said giving her a sleepy smile. She hadn't heard that since they were together. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
"Forgive me yet?" Blair asked hopefully. After she'd shown up at the casino announcing that she was 'all in' this time, they'd come back to the hotel and had a long, hard, talk. Even though she was more than pleased with what happened afterword, she still wasn't sure where they stood.
"Waldorf, if you're still not sure, I must be doing something wrong," he replied automatically.
"No, no. I just needed to make surer it wasn't a dream," she told him. They lay there for a moment, just taking each other in. He was giving her that look he'd been giving her since that first night at Victrola. The look that told her he loved her way before he was able to put it into words. There was no hurt, or anger, or dark possessiveness in it. Just pure adoration and happiness.
"I love you," he said, breaking the silence. It had been so long since she'd heard those three words, eight letters, like that. It wasn't a desperate plea to get her to stay or uttered accidentally. It was a plain and simple statement, and it still made her feel as wonderful as it had standing outside her penthouse all those years ago.
"I love you too," she answered smiling. It wasn't a bittersweet fact, a goodbye, or a request to wait just a little longer-it was accepting the truth, embracing it, because she hasn't been this happy since right before the accident, when she'd almost had everything, and lost it all in a flash.
His next words surprise her-a huge feat, since she is almost never surprised. But that's Chuck. The one exception to all her rules.
"I want to marry you." She says his name slowly, pleadingly, because she wants that too. She wants it so bad it hurts, but she also wants it to be for life.
"We can't. There's just too much to figure out," she says finally, and it breaks her to say it, because every part of her wants to run down to the first chapel that will take them and promise herself to him forever.
There's no trace of anger or hurt in his voice when he says, "I know." She studies his face, trying to see what he could possibly be thinking, but not even she, who knows him better than anyone in the world, can read his mind.
"I just want you to promise me you will," he continues pulling something out of the drawer next to the bed. He holds it up, and she gasps. It's the Harry Winston ring, the most beautiful piece of jewelry she's ever seen, dangling on a necklace. And he's giving it to her-not in a desperate attempt to keep her while shielding her from what he's done, or shoving it into her hand after being faced with losing her again. This is a promise- a promise that this is it- Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck, together in a way they never thought possible. That as soon as they conquer every obstacle standing in their way, this beautiful ring, the symbol of all of the heartbreak, loss, and love shared between them, will find itself onto her finger, and remain there, as long as they both shall live.
She needs to say something, anything, that won't end in her crying. Tears of joy, but tears none the less.
"Chuck Bass is a romantic. Who knew?" she asks, unable to stop the smile that forms. He smiles back knowingly and clips the necklace onto her. Her ring, the one that he's been so close to giving her so many times-even when he thought he gave up the right to-was finally on her. Resting on her chest, it seems to fit there so naturally, they way stars fit in the sky, or air fills his lungs. He traces the chain and kisses her shoulder gently.
"You do. You always have."
And it's true. She's known probably even before he did. She's known it since he stood on the balcony and told her there was something in his stomach... Fluttering. She's known it even when he denied it, pushing her away and regarding their love as weakness. She's tried to forget it, to ignore it, but no matter what path she took it always, always, lead her back to him. And now she knows just as surely that it wouldn't matter what life threw at them next. They were together now, and would be forever. The count remained them a million, the world zero, and they weren't about to let that change.