I Kiss Happiness into Your Lips

Sequel to Against the Dying of the Light. However, if you have not read that story, there is enough background in this one that you will not be too lost.

Pairing: Chuck/Blair

Summary: They were young, beautiful, married and in love. Chuck and Blair had everything in the world, except what they wanted the most.

AN: This title was taken from Pablo Neruda's Sonnet LXXVIII from a Hundred Love Sonnets. If you have the time, do read the poem. You will be amazed at how much it could sound like something Chuck would say to Blair, especially in the context of these two stories. This sequel will only be about three to four parts long.

Part 1

Blair Waldorf Bass was the picture of perfection. Chuck leaned back in his seat at the back of the limo and watched the clip on the television he had installed in the vehicle for just this reason. When her charity gala was featured on the nightly news, Blair was articulate, beautiful, flawless.

In her black Valentino, she appeared sleek and slim, and he wondered again how she could ever have thought that she had problems with her weight. It look a long time, a lot of attention, utter devotion until he convinced her there was never any need to slim down.

Perfect round pearls lined her neck and graced her ears as she talked about the orphanage that was the beneficiary of her event.

Blair Waldorf Bass—the toast of Manhattan society. She was rich, powerful and had everything. Young women her age envied her life, and she carried herself like royalty.

And he was the only one who knew about the tears she shed late at night, when they were in bed, blanketed by the pitch black night. When she cried, she refused to let him turn on the light.

Every morning when she woke up, she helped him into his suit so he could go to work, and she slipped into one of her expensive dresses and searched for a cause.

One day, she arrived home after he did, with Baby following after her while she pushed Serena's daughters in their twin baby carriages. There had been such a sparkle in her eyes, and he admitted that his heart leapt at the sight of his young wife looking after the toddlers.

But it had been a discussion long over, and revisiting it was revisiting their one biggest pain.

He did not comment on it, and it became more and more often. Blair would take home Serena and Dan's daughters are have them sleep over. She turned one of the guest rooms into a bedroom for the girls. And his stepsister found nothing wrong with the babies spending so much time with their godmother.

She and Dan were trying again, for a boy this time.

That made him wince, and he hoped Blair never heard that.

There were many things that he hoped Blair never found out. But often there was no hiding the little things in their little world. Earlier that afternoon, he received a visit from a friend, and he owed him, so he helped him. Nate Archibald helped him on the road to sobriety, and it was a debt he would always hold.

"Mr Bass, Mr Archibald is here for you."

He pressed the intercom button and said, "Send him in."

Nate strolled into the room, looking desolate as he always did, unshaven and unkempt. "She's pregnant."

Chuck's gaze shot up to meet Nate's. He had developed such a thirst for that word for the last few years that it called his attention immediately. "Congratulations," he drawled. His gut twisted at the news. He swallowed.

"We don't want a kid," Nate continued. He ran his fingers through his hair. Chuck's best friend had only recently joined a law firm, and Vanessa was showing her first exhibit in a week. "I need you to make the arrangements."

Chuck gritted his teeth, but did not ask why it could not be Nate who would pick up the phone and schedule his own appointment. "Consider it done."

Nate left his office and Chuck was left staring at the door even after it shut. There was no way he could do more work, not anymore. Instead, he called for the limo and called it a day. And he watched the taped interview of her charity ball from the back of the vehicle because after that conversation with Nate, hers was the only face he needed to see.

He arrived home to find the lights dimmed. His head immediately turned to the left, towards the twins' makeshift bedroom. Chuck pushed the door open and saw the Humphrey girls asleep in their beds. Between the two beds slept Baby, who was now a large dog he needed to grunt to carry. Chuck turned and looked for his wife. He found her sitting in her walk-in closet, staring at the dim reflection of herself in the mirrors surrounding the room.

"Hey," he said softly. "What are you doing here in the dark?"

She did not look up at him, but when he sat beside her she leaned her head on his shoulder. "This will be the nursery, right?" she said softly. "That's what we talked about."

"Yes," he answered. A long time ago, when she was taking the hormone pills and they thought there was such hope.

She nodded. "I wanted to be sure. It's been so long."

It had been a long time since she stopped, because he begged her to stop. The pills had made their lives a living hell, with the side effects it gave her—the nausea, the dizziness, the way she threw up more than she did during her bout with bulimia.

And despite how impossible it was, he held on to one promise to her. "It will happen, Blair."

He watched her reflection, so he knew that a tear slid down her cheek. "I'm so tired, Chuck," she breathed. "It's so exhausting hoping for a miracle."

But they were here, in this very place, together like this, because he had put his faith in a miracle, and they were willing to work on it. She clutched at his arm and he saw the glint of their platinum wedding band on her finger. "It will be better, Blair. You'll see. We keep trying," he teased, "and I'm enjoying trying. You're not getting bored trying, are you?" he asked in an effort to lighten the mood. "I must be losing my touch."

She stared at their reflection in silence. He didn't move. Sometimes, this silence was the most beneficial. Sometimes letting her cry was the catharsis they both needed. Serena and Dan were on their way to making a third baby on Dan's pathetic salary from the magazine. Nate and Vanessa were getting rid of theirs to salvage the careers only just getting started and a relationship already rocky to begin with.

And he was here, with a perfect wife that New York envied, wanting a baby so much to no avail. Life was a fucking bitch sometimes.

But he never let her see that.

In front of Blair, the only thing that left his mouth was hope. With Blair, there was no call to question miracles.

Her eyes were full of sorrow, and to those who knew to look, even the briefest of interviews on tv captured her loneliness.

Her hand on his arm moved up and down. His eyes followed the rise and fall of the ring. "There's nothing wrong with you," she said, as if in epiphany. He ached to remind her that there was nothing wrong with her either, but she would shoot him down with a sheet of paper that told him about the damage her bulimia had wrecked on her hormones. "Chuck, we can get a surrogate," she said, latching on to the idea like it was the most brilliant one she had come up with. "Or knock someone up. I won't complain," she promised, and his heart ached at the fervor in her eyes. "You deserve a family."

The idea was so preposterous, but she appeared so sold, like she had resolved the problem they had had for years. Chuck gently said, "I have a family."

And he did. A long time ago he had no one, and then he admitted to himself that Blair was his family. And she had held his hand when he accepted that the van der Woodsens were also his.

"You want a baby. You deserve a baby."

He turned away from the reflection and looked down at her. And she met his eyes. He wished he could tell her he did not want one, so she would not feel the pressure or be overwhelmed with guilt. But no matter how much he loved her, he could not bring himself to tell this particular lie. Chuck brushed his thumb on her chin, and she gave a small smile, the way she often responded to his gesture of affection. "I want yours," he enunciated.

Her eyes fluttered closed, and her tears rained down her cheeks. "Vanessa told Dan, you know," she said softly. "Dan told Serena so now I know." Her voice hitched in her throat. "I deserve a baby more than they do!" she cried. "You know, Chuck." Her eyes were brilliant with furious tears. "You know!" And she was sobbing, and he could do nothing but hold her tight. "Why do they get one and we don't? They don't even want one."

She was broken, and he held her even tighter to make sure she didn't shatter. Blair cried into his shirt, loud, gasping sobs that she would never have done before college, when she used to hold in her pain and let it go by hurting herself. But sometimes, God, sometimes when this was what the pain was about, he wished she would not be as open, because it tore him apart as much as it did her.

"We're fine," he said hoarsely, rocking her body against his. "We're fine."

He was the king, and she was the queen, and they lived in a tower so high that they could look over their kingdom every night, he thought as he carried her out of the closet and passed by the tall glass windows on the way to their bed. They were Chuck and Blair, and Manhattan envied them. They were young, beautiful, married and in love. They could go anywhere in the world and buy everything they wanted.

He held her as she sobbed herself to sleep. He kept his eyes open the entire night. If there was ever any night when there was a possibility for her to slip back into the arms of the demons they had escaped long ago, this was it. And that would never happen again.

The faint mewling sounds that came from his side interrupted his trance. Chuck rose to pick up the baby monitor before it woke Blair. He padded towards the twins' room and picked up the crying girl. "Heather, is that you?" He didn't even know how to tell the kids apart, and Blair could do it in a heartbeat.

The baby buried her face into the crook of his neck and calmed at the warmth of his body. Chuck took a deep breath and smelled the baby powder. He closed his eyes. He wanted a kid. He wanted it so much.

He found himself humming a song he had heard Blair sing to the girls. Chuck sat on the white rocking chair that had purchased for the room. And slowly, he rocked.

Chuck woke up to find her watching him hold the baby. Chuck drew a deep breath, because he had never once wanted her to see him interact with Serena's children. When he held the girls, there was no way he could make her believe that it didn't break his heart every single time their own test came out negative.

"Blair—"

She gave him a tight smile, then reached for Heather, carried her to the bed. Blair returned to him and held out her hand. He took it and kissed her wrist. "Come on, Chuck. Sleep on the bed. You're going to get a crick on your neck if you sleep there the whole night."

Chuck moistened his lips, waiting for her to say anything else. Ask him how it felt to hold the baby. Tell him that he should have woken her.

There was nothing.

She loosened her hold on his hand. Chuck frowned, "Aren't you coming?"

"You go ahead," she replied faintly.

That was not happening ever again, he thought. The demons visited when you're alone. That was why the moment Nate left him, he packed up and went home to her. The demons would not find them alone again in times like these. He grasped her hand, then picked up the baby monitor. "We're going to bed. They'll be fine."

They'll be fine.

tbc