Author's Note: Okay, so I'm not really back since tomorrow I'm leaving for about a week, but...I just needed to write, and that hasn't happened in a while...so this came out.

Sometimes Love Just Gets In The Way

She didn't understand why it had to feel this way – like her heart was just being torn out of her chest with each moment he spent leaned toward her ear. She simply could not comprehend the way her throat went dry and tears burned the backs of her eyes only because he was rubbing her stomach.

Blair Waldorf felt bitter; the enormous, green monster of jealousy swallowed her whole and she couldn't bear it. She had never let these emotions consume her so wholly, but now – watching him, her past (present, and future) love – Blair found that she just no longer had the stamina to fight them off.

Her eyes burned and ached from the tears that had never fallen, her stomach churned with the butterflies that never flew away, and her legs wobbled mercilessly whenever she neared him.

But it seemed that Chuck Bass never saw this. He simply smiled at her, cordial as ever, and kindly spoke to her as if she were an old friend. This was what hurt the most. That he refused to acknowledge her obvious discomfort (displeasure) at the situation they had been put in. As she was standing in front of him, frantically fighting for control of her own body and emotions, he acted as if nothing was wrong. Like there wasn't a gigantic elephant in the room, waving its trunk in their general direction.

It killed her to see him with someone who was not her.

And it absolutely killed her to see him married to a woman whom one, most definitely was not her, and two, was absolutely-no-doubt-about-it pregnant.

"Care to dance with an old lover?" his smooth, velvety voice never ceased to send delightful chills down her spine, tickling the top of her bottom and curling around her tail-bone seductively. She turned to face him, and forced a smile. Blair silently ordered her legs to still and pleaded for her heart to quit pounding at a mile a minute.

But then he took her hands, and every thought she had been having (and had once had, and would ever have) flew out of her mind, like an elusive smoke that just disappeared. All Blair felt was the warm contact that existed between his palm and her own, the sparks that flew up between his torso and hers (surely sparks that were only felt by her and her alone).

They glided gracefully across the shiny marble of the floor, her shoes slipping a little bit when he dipped her down and her auburn curls were nearly flat against the floor. He looked into her eyes with his own warm, caramel ones, and she felt herself go faint. And then she remembered the woman on the other side of the room – the woman who was probably most definitely watching them at that moment, and who she should care about a lot more than she did.

However, she loathed that woman. With every fiber of her being. Blair'd never met her, never cared to, but the only feeling she associated with 'Mrs. Bass' was pure and utter black hatred. She knew it was wrong, knew that the things she thought would surely send her on the first available red-eye to hell, but she just couldn't help it. The only thing she'd ever wanted to gain in life had been taken from her – a love she had thought was strong enough to withstand anything at all, and the bright prospect of a happy marriage.

More than she loathed...Caroline, was her name? She thought so. More than she loathed Caroline, she hated herself. She hated all the self-respect, the dignity, she had lost. Blair Waldorf had been a name that was once so feared, that people cowered at the first syllable uttered. And now, when her name was mentioned, it was met with a pitying glance, perhaps a "oh, how is she doing?" It hurt her immensely that she had fallen so dramatically.

But what she hated the most about herself was that she still loved him.

"So, is it a boy or a girl?" Blair inquired in what she desperately hoped was a coy, somewhat flirtatious voice (not a shaky, apprehensive one, as she imagined it was).

He stared at her blankly for a moment, the slightest flicker of shock present in his eyes before he replied. "It's a boy." His smirk stretched into a proud smile, seemingly without his consent, and she noticed a small blush coloring his cheeks.

But Blair was supposed to be causing that blush; Blair was supposed to be inducing that adorable, little-boy smile. Not her.

"Congratulations!" she said, her voice full of fake excitement, her eyes hard behind the thrilled facade she presented to him. She remembered a time when he would recognize this in her expression, and pester her until she confided in him. This no longer existed, obviously, but Blair still felt something inside of her give a tug and a warm feeling of nostalgia overwhelmed her.

"Thank you," he replied, giving her that shy smile that had once made heat pool between her legs but now only made her cold, battered heart fall deep down to the bottoms of her feet. She looked up to meet his eyes, only to catch his steady gaze and drop them back to the floor, feeling very sullen all of a sudden.

"Could we...maybe..." he trailed off, and she felt their direction changing. They were headed somewhere far away – someplace that was easily out of the line of vision of Caroline Bass. She allowed herself to be dragged along with him, feeling defeated and weak in his presence.

"Are you okay?" Chuck asked her, using his crooked index finger to bring her chin up so she could look at him – into those eyes that she could spend centuries gazing into.

She couldn't take it. Couldn't blink, couldn't breathe, she had to force her heart to keep beating as she stood there in front of him, feeling utterly exposed and naked. Yet the still looked into one another's eyes – their souls, really – and in that moment, she knew he felt it too. Felt the thing that was pulling them together, once again. The ties that they had, no matter how hard each of them tried, they could not be broken.

Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf were tethered to one another, for better or for worse, forever.

"No," Blair sobbed out. She broke away from him and ran into a deserted hallway, tears filling her eyes as her arms automatically found their way around her waist and she hugged herself. Falling back against the wall, she slid down to the floor, getting lost in the sound of her gut-wrenching cries of complete silence.

And then he was there. Everywhere. His hands, his smell, his nose, his mouth. His voice was muttering something softly into her ear as he hungrily lavished her with the attention she had dreamed about for so long. His lips did not near her own, and he did not make any move to undress her, nor did she to him. They just moved together, entangled, and that was all they needed.

"Say it."

"No," she gasped in reply, ripping her body away from his own. They both knew the word was not an answer to his request, but rather a protest to the current predicament they found themselves caught up in.

His breath was rough and raw with passion when she felt it hit her neck, hot and wanting. But she didn't want to feel it. She would never put herself in a position to be the other woman. Especially when Chuck's significant other was his wife and pregnant.

"Blair, I...God, I've missed you. So...so much," his voice cracked and she felt wetness on his cheeks when he leaned his face on her bare shoulder. His head moved up and she felt his thin, warm lips press against her shoulder, in the place where his cheek had just been. They moved higher, to the very nape of her neck, and then to the skin behind her ear. Her head rolled around on her shoulders and hit the wall with a light thump as his mouth traveled down to the valley between her breasts.

His hands stroked up and down her forearm and she grasped his hair, bringing his face up to hers and kissing first the corner of his mouth, before placing her lips under his own – anywhere but on his mouth. That was an unspoken taboo between them, nothing on the mouth.

She had sudden flashes of him in bed with Caroline, the hot sweat of passion coating their skin as they lay beneath the sheets. It disgusted her so much that she felt bile rise in her throat and pushed him away.

Blair was so completely repulsed by herself and her actions – as well as Chuck's actions – that she immediately got up and ran into the bathroom, letting the rancid waste spill from her mouth. The purging seemed endless to her; it felt as if she had been in there for ages before she pulled away from the sink.

Only to see Chuck Bass leaning against the doorway, staring at her with that intense look from many moons ago. She knew what was coming.

"Why are you doing it again?" he asked her – his voice mostly made up of confusion, though there was a hint of concern in his tone.

"Do I have a choice!" she rasped out maniacally, throwing her hands out in front of her. No longer did she feel insecure or nervous as she glared (instead of gazed) back at him. Blair's fiery look bore into him, and she found herself wishing that she could burn a hole in him, just so that he could feel the same pain she had felt all these years.

"You've always had a choice, Blair," he answered quietly, looking at the tile of the floor now. Sparkling on his cheek was a single bead of wetness that had fallen from his eye.

"No, Chuck. I haven't. If I'd had a choice, I would not be here right now. I would still be with Nate, and we would be happily married. Because that was the safe decision, the right one. But my heart had to pick you to fall I love with! And I pay for that decision every goddamned day of my life." She had to put more distance between them, thus she strode over to the opposite side of the bathroom.

He wouldn't have any of it, and closed the distance in between them within three seconds flat. His hands grasped her own, but she took them away. She was done giving in. Blair summoned an amount of strength she was unaware she'd had and used it to tell him the thing she had been fantasizing about since he had first left (since that day when her life had been so changed forever, when she had become so overcome with anger, that it swallowed her whole).

"Please, Chuck, hear me when I say – I still love you, with all of my heart. And understand me when I tell you that there is not one sane part of me that wants to. It's taken so much out of me, loving you this whole time – while you're with her. It hurts so much and I am just completely sick of it," Blair said to him in a voice of such sorrow that it nearly broke her heart to know that she was speaking it.

"I can't do this anymore. I can't see you, I can't speak to you. I need things...I need it to be as if you've never existed, never been a part of my life before. So please, please Chuck, leave me alone. I never want to see you again, because it kills me." Her eyes were filled with hot, watery tears as she looked up at him. Chuck's face was sticky with his own tears and he reached out to wipe hers away.

She allowed this touch. She allowed it because she knew it would be their last physical (and emotional) contact. She tried to save the sensation she had in her mind, and file it away – so that, one day, when she truly was over him, it could be pulled out again for her to reflect on a passion she had known only long-ago.

"I do love you, Blair," he said, leaning forward and touching his lips to hers. Their mouths moved together in a dance that they were both somewhat surprised they still knew the steps to. He pulled away and she looked into his eyes one last time.

"I love you too, Chuck. But sometimes..." Blair stopped, gazing out the frosty window of the bathroom they were in. "Sometimes love just gets in the way." She exited the bathroom, and left Chuck Bass and the past they had once shared behind.

End Note: I love reviews!