The ink was scarcely dry on the divorce papers and Chuck was drunk. He was at the Sherry-Netherland in the Upper East Side, trying to forget the last ten years of his life. This was his second - failed - marriage and he couldn't really say that he was surprised at how things had turned out. No one was.

He swirled the cherry in his cocktail, debating the merits of lingering in the lobby or just buying a bottle to take back up to his room. The funny thing was that he hadn't even divorced for all the reasons people expected. He hadn't cheated on Meredith. He'd been, up until tonight, better with his drinking. He worked a lot but, well, she spent a lot, so he'd say that part pretty well evened out in the receipts.

But he wasn't a good husband, and so, she had divorced him. Chuck didn't even know why he was getting so shit-faced. By the time Meredith had her lawyers send the papers, Chuck had gotten used to not having her around. She went to the Cayman Islands and France in the summer, Switzerland and Berlin for winter. She gambled his money in Monaco and visited Grace Kelly's heirs. She liked being Mrs. Bass because it opened doors for her. But it had, as with Lyla de Micci Bass - Chuck's first ex-Mrs. Bass - eventually lost its novelty.

Eventually his wives seemed to realize that they had to deal with Chuck at some point in the marriage. It was a task they had not been up to and Chuck couldn't really blame them.

So, after going oh-for-two, here Chuck was in a hotel lobby, getting drunk on old-fashioneds like he was eighteen again. He was getting to the point where he wanted to call his father and that was a horrible idea. He should probably stop now before he started drunk-dialing someone he'd regret.

Someone like Blair Waldorf.

Like a vision. A Catherine to his Heathcliff haunting him in his nightmares. She walked into the lobby on two prim little black Mary Janes with sturdy heels, her clutch held in front of her with that same slightly defensive posture Chuck remembered from high school that made him want to punch someone. She had not changed much. Chuck's heart seemed to lift and tighten in his chest as if a hand had gripped it and then let go. All the old feelings came back, the confusion, anger, and startling sense of loss.

He'd fucked that one up. Before all the others, that was his biggest.

She paused a moment in the doorway as if deciding on whether to continue on towards the elevators or take a detour. He watched as her eyes swept the room and for a paralytic moment he considered turning around on the chance she might not recognize him. But it was only him and the bartender and their eyes locked before he could make a decision and suddenly he was glad he hadn't tried to hide. Because he liked looking at her face, he always had, and after all these years that liking had solidified into an acute obsession.

He hadn't spoken with her since she'd asked him to say that he loved her. He'd always assumed her sudden departure from his life had not been an active effort on her part so much as a calculated indifference to his presence. She'd simply drifted away, and before Chuck realized he wouldn't get a second chance - that that had been his second chance - it was gone. She was gone. At some point this had dimly sunk into his brain and he had moved on. Gone to Italy for the summer when he was twenty-six where he met Lyla. A year later his wife told him she couldn't do this anymore - whatever "this" was - and Chuck had moved on again. And so, apparently, had Blair.

He didn't know a thing about her life anymore. He knew she had taken over her mother's designer business, but to what degree of commitment or success, he didn't know. He didn't even know if she had married. Certainly he hadn't been invited to the wedding. He'd invited her to his, the first, anyway, under some idiotic idea of letting bygones-be-bygones. She had simply sent back the card with the "regretfully unable to attend" box checked off.

Her expression, upon seeing him, was not one of immediate disgust. Mostly surprise. A hopeful, if unexpected, sign. After another second of deliberation and a faint wavering of balance in her Mary Janes, she set her destination towards the bar, and Chuck.

Her lips were painted a dark red (unexpected, he usually thought of her in pastels) and they curved up slightly at the corners as she stopped beside him, not quite committing herself to the act of sitting down.

"Chuck," she said.

I love you, he thought, staring at her. He knew it as surely as he knew his name. He had known it the moment she had turned her head at the White Party in the Hamptons and drove away with that lord, a cloud of her Burberry perfume left in her wake.

He didn't know what to do. The answers, always so obvious, always came to him when it was too late to matter. Quite by instinctive self-defense, Chuck simply did what he always did. He acted.

"Blair Waldorf," he said. "If I had known I was to be graced by your presence, I would have dressed up." He took a sip of his drink for a little bit of Dutch courage. "Will you sit with me?"

He hadn't meant it to come out quite so plaintive, but if she noticed she didn't let it show. She was dressed simply in a black cocktail dress and the hem of it brushed his knee as she sat down, the rest of her careful to not make contact with him. Such dark colors and bold lines, it wasn't like her. But then, perhaps it iwasi like her, now. How would he know?

"I'll have..." she said to the bartender and her eyes swept down to the drink in Chuck's hand, "whatever he's having."

"Two more," Chuck said.

The bartender, whose name was Rodrigo but who insisted Chuck call him Rod, nodded without judgment of Chuck's determination to destroy his liver. If you wanted to make money you had to choose your morals, Chuck mused. But just as one lie tended to bleed into another, so had the failures of Chuck's life, until he wasn't sure he'd lost his way so much as never had a destination at all. Maybe that's what he was drinking about.

Blair smiled her thanks to Rod and took a dainty sip of her cocktail. "This hotel is so pretty," she said, sparing Chuck the need to make small talk. Her brown eyes lifted to the ceiling to take in the 1920's art-deco ceiling. "It's almost a century old, did you know?"

She knew damn well he did not. Nor care. But Blair had always had a natural ability to make others feel at ease. She was an excellent host, she threw the best parties. Everything she did was always perfect. He wondered if she still had problems eating.

"No, I didn't," Chuck said, confused by this topic of conversation but willing to keep it going as long Blair kept sitting there. "Are you…" He wasn't sure what he was going to ask. "What are you doing here?" he said. That hadn't been it, but he couldn't bring himself to ask what he really wanted to.

"Visiting," she said cryptically, her eyes lowering. She sat upright in her seat, not facing him. "But maybe staying. I want to go home."

"You just got here."

She threw him a vaguely amused glance. "I didn't mean right now. I mean for good. I want to stay somewhere for a while."

She said it with a depth of feeling that Chuck did not understand, and knew he should. But this was their life, this had always been their life. You moved. You summered. You went on holiday. You came back until you could no longer stand to be in the same room as your husband and then you went to Las Vegas.

"Oh," he said. He finished his drink and started on the fresh one Rod had delivered. "I'm here for a wedding," he volunteered.

She turned her head, her interest piqued. "Oh? Anyone I know?"

"You know everyone." He drummed his fingers on the edge of his glass, watching her preen under the compliment. Recalling Blair's feminine enjoyment of gossip, he relished being the possessor of information she did not. When Blair began to fidget with the suspense, he decided to be magnanimous. "It's Georgina Sparks."

Blair's eyes widened fractionally. "No, it's not!"

"I promise you it is."

He smirked as Blair quivered in her seat, apparently unsure of what to do with this intel. "I should tell Serena! I wonder if she was invited?" She took a heartier swig of her drink. "Georgina Sparks!" she declared, slamming the glass back down on the table. "Awful girl!"

"Perhaps she's improved with age," he said, "like fine wine."

Blair made a moue of distaste at him. "I hardly think so," she said stiffly.

They lapsed back into silence.

"Are you married?" Chuck blurted.

He had drunk enough he didn't really care how it came out, or that it revealed too much of his hand. He was already upset, he might as well have it all out in one go.

Blair's eyes snapped to his, either surprised by the question or his rudeness. But it startled the truth out of her before she could think of a more appropriately censorious answer. "No," she said, and for some reason her cheeks turned pink. Must be the alcohol.

"No," she said again. "I don't want to marry. Nobody takes it seriously anymore."

"So your answer is to not take it at all?"

She nodded, staring back down at her drink. But her eyes darted back to his. "Are - are you? I heard that you got divorced. Some Italian girl…"

Chuck waved it away like a fly. "That was ages ago. You're really quite behind the times, aren't you? Tsk tsk."

"I've been busy," she said. She let her hands drop into her lap and squeezed them together and Chuck had to fight the urge to do something stupid like ask her what was wrong.

Her lashes fluttered up from her cheeks and she turned a little more towards him in the chair. "You are married again, then?" Her wide brown eyes looked at him so intently that Chuck's mind blanked out and he couldn't come up with a pithy answer. He couldn't read her expression at all. He used to know her like the back of his hand.

"I was. Until recently." He picked the cherry out from his drink and popped it into his mouth. "Must not have taken it seriously, hm?"

She simply stared at him as if he were something strange. Something interesting. He was so used to his memories of her being expressions of mingled disappointment, contempt, and hurt, that he wasn't sure how to deal with this evidently new Blair Waldorf.

"Well, I'm sorry," she said. It was the sort of thing you said when you didn't know what you were supposed to say, but the odd thing was that she seemed to mean it. She looked at him again with a faint smile and Chuck wasn't sure he'd ever been smiled at this much by a woman in his life, certainly not by Blair. Maybe he really did need to cool it with the drinking.

"Don't be," Chuck said. "I'll be paying for my mistakes for years to come."

Blair's perfect mouth tipped down at the corners. "You probably didn't pick nice girls, is all."

"No such thing."

Her ladylike disapproval turned quickly into a sullen pout and Chuck grinned. He'd forgotten how much fun it was to mess with her. Blair had never suffered fools gladly.

"I'm a nice girl," she said.

"Oh come now," Chuck said, in mock reproof, "we both know the truth of that, don't we?"

"You're awful," Blair said.

"Yes," was all Chuck said.

Blair looked at him in confusion, then back down at her hands. "I should go," she said. "As fun as this little reunion is…"

She stood up and, not quite knowing what he was about, Chuck stood up too. The world tilted threateningly before righting itself. "Wait," he said. "I'm sorry."

He fished some dollar bills out of his pocket and placed them on the bar. "I'm sorry, Blair."

"Chuck Bass doesn't apologize to anyone," Blair said.

Chuck ran a hand through his hair and stared at the marble tiles that ran up in a diamond pattern to the elevators. "Well," he said, "I'm apologizing to you. Doesn't that impress you?"

"Not really," she sniffed, as he knew she would. "You only do what's in your own best interests."

"Everyone does that. I'm just honest about it."

"Then why are you apologizing to me?"

Because it was easier than what he really wanted to say. He breathed out softly. In his haze of liquor, he thought her expression seemed almost concerned, but when he blinked her back into focus she was simply staring at him with a familiar guarded impatience.

"Because I want you to stay," he said. "It's been a while, hasn't it? Didn't you miss me at all?"

"I never missed you," she said swiftly. Which meant she had.

"I missed you," he said. "All this time."

She gave him a look that truly seemed like hate. "Stop this. Whatever you're doing. I came over here to say hello. I've said it. You should stop drinking before you get into trouble."

Too late. Chuck grasped her wrist as she turned, his thumb rubbing over the delicate skin of her pulse point. "That's it?" he said. "You're just going to walk away again?"

"Yes," she said, wrenching her arm free. "Goodbye, Chuck. Have a nice life."

And suddenly he was angry. The alcohol slugging through his veins blurred the finer points of distinction and all Chuck felt was a complete sense of betrayal. How dare she? Have a nice life. Was that supposed to be funny? She knew it was not a nice life for Chuck Bass and was never going to be. After everything, it had apparently been easier for her than for him to "just get over it." She had demanded of him the one thing he could never do with anyone, and now it was as if it had never mattered to begin with. Oh irony.

"Blair," he said. But she kept walking.

Aware that he was putting on a spectacle for Rod, Chuck started after Blair. "Don't -" he said, the rest of the words closed up in his throat. "Blair…"

"Just go home, Chuck," Blair said over her shoulder. "Wherever that is."

Instead of doing what he ought to do and taking his losses and going home, he followed her. He caught up to her at the elevators and at that point took complete leave of his senses. All he could think about was the last ten years and how utterly empty they were and how the last ten minutes with Blair had been some of the most exciting he had had in a long time. He pushed her into the elevator and let the doors close.

"Chuck!"

"Don't shout," Chuck said.

"Let me out this instant!"

"No."

"Excuse me?" Blair could not have looked more shocked if he had kissed her. Not a plan entirely off the table yet, either.

"I said no." Chuck felt strangely calm now. "I know you don't hear that often."

Blair made a noise of disgust. "Oh please. You're drunk. Let me out."

"I love you," Chuck said.

"No, you don't," Blair said. "And I'm asking you to stop." Her eyes started filling up with tears. "You're being mean."

This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Chuck tried to mentally retrace the last few steps to figure out how this had ended with Blair crying. Again.

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes! Now please move so I can get out of here. This isn't even my floor." She brushed impatiently at her cheeks, her brow furrowed, and Chuck knew she was angry and that that anger was more at herself than him for having shown him weakness.

"I said I -"

"I heard you! Jesus Christ I heard you. Leave me alone."

"No."

At that, Blair looked as though she might hit him. Chuck would have let her. Instead she did something much worse and backed away from him. "Why are you doing this?"

"I just wanted you to know," he said. His heart pounded sickeningly in his chest. He was too late. He had left it all too late and now at the moment of his clarity he feared he had made Blair well and truly despise him.

She blinked at him and more tears fell. "You're awful," she whispered.

Chuck stepped forward and since Blair had nowhere to go she merely stiffened as if bracing for a blow. "I know," he said. "You want to kiss me?"

She shook her head so vehemently a few tendrils of hair fell loose from her chignon.

"You're not a very good liar with me, did you know that?" Chuck said.

"Don't flatter yourself," Blair spat, some of her old spirit flaring up at the idea of Chuck being skilled at anything that she was not. "You live in a world of depravity so you just assume everyone is lying all the time."

Chuck couldn't say she was inaccurate in her assessment of his worldview, but that hardly meant she was exempt from it. "I'm not lying now, though."

"It's too late." Blair clutched at her elbows like a little girl trying to comfort herself. "What does it matter now?"

"Is it too late?" Chuck lowered his head to her, his lips near hers. Her lashes fluttered madly against her still-wet cheeks. Her breath hitched as he kissed her, his fingers weaving through her hair and pulling pins free.

Part of being successful in business is to assume the sale was closed before the client had made his decision. Chuck exercised this philosophy in all aspects of his life. People called him an asshole for it but they also liked it, because they couldn't be him and the world needed men like him. Blair could never be truly happy with someone like Nate Archibald or Lord Marcus Beaton, or any of the other men she thought she wanted. They were all innately decent people and Blair could never be anything but bored by them.

So, she kissed him back as Chuck knew she would. And she would hate herself for it and hate him, but that was the price you paid.

She was stiff in his arms at first but then, as if every fiber in her being had been pulled taut and snapped loose, she sank against him. Her hands came up and gripped his hair and pulled him closer like nothing had changed, like there had never been a decade of silence between them. This was the part of Blair that Chuck coveted, the wild, unpredictable part of her that no one saw.

Chuck had. He'd known it, felt it, since that night she danced in front of him.

He tasted salt from her tears and there was the faint scent of berries from her lipstick. She clung to him and arched her back so that he could feel the full length of her against his chest, her breasts pressing into him. He stepped forward, his hand sliding down her back, and then, quite suddenly he was pushed back.

"Ow," he said mildly.

"S - stay away," she said. She pushed her palm against her mouth, her brown eyes wet and unseeing. "How could you do that? You're disgusting." Always aware of her appearance, she started pulling her hair back into its chignon. "I'm disgusting," she muttered, almost to herself. "What's wrong with me?"

Chuck was so used to women hating themselves for wanting him that it really should not have hurt to hear Blair say that. But it did.

"Oh come now," he said as he took step back to assess the damage, one hand smoothing his shirt front. "It was never that bad, if I remember correctly. Say a few Hail Maries in the morning and you'll be fine."

Her cheeks bloomed with color and he watched as she struggled inwardly with herself, the tattered remnants of her dignity hanging off by threads. "You're drunk," she said, as if that won her a point. "You're being rude."

"Even so," he said, "you know I'm right."

"That was years ago." She waved a hand in his face. "It doesn't matter now."

"It matters to me."

Tomorrow, Chuck would regret this. He would regret his honesty and this humiliating form of self-harm to his image. "Can you honestly say that you haven't thought about me in all this time?"

"Of course I have," she said dismissively. "We grew up together."

"I don't mean like that. Don't equate me to your sycophantic adolescent admirers."

"I would never make that mistake," she snapped.

He smiled because he knew it would infuriate her more. He had made a mess of the night, might as well commit to the end. Extending his hand, he said, "Come here."

She eyed it as though it were a poisonous snake. The elevator pinged and the door opened to his floor. That seemed to decide her as she looked behind him to the vast hallway that lead to his room. "No," she said. "I want to go home. Take me home."

"I just want to talk to you."

"I don't believe you."

She picked up the clutch she had dropped and took a step to the side and away from him. Chuck could almost physically see a wall come up, separating them. "Since you have upset me so much, I expect you to pay for my cab," she said with all the regality of an empress.

"Cab?" he said. "How plebian of you." He pushed the elevator button for the lobby and the doors closed. "No, I'll have my driver take you home."

It was just as important to know when to make a strategic retreat as it was to advance, and Chuck knew when he had been beat. At least for a time.

"You'll let me call on you tomorrow, of course," he said. He leaned against the closed doors and folded his hands behind his back, his posture one of studied indifference and polar opposite to Blair's.

"I most certainly will not," she said. "You'll be too hungover, anyway."

"Who the hell do you think you're talking to? I've been drinking Glenlivet since I was eight."

Blair pressed her lips together. A crack in the ice queen facade. Her fingers skittered nervously across the studded pearl line of her clutch. "I - I'm staying with my mother for the time being."

Chuck hid his surprise at this bit of information so freely given. "Do you suppose that's a good idea?" he said in his most neutral tone. Blair's mother was brilliant and hard-working and a terror to her daughter. There was no one else who could so easily dismantle the orderly walls of Blair's life as Eleanor Waldorf.

Blair nodded distractedly. "It will be fine. Things are different now."

Chuck seriously doubted that, but who was he to judge when he had not spoken to his own father in six months? "Well, I'll call you," he said. He pulled out his cell phone. "Do you still have your old number?"

Blair made a funny noise and Chuck looked up. "You still have my number?" she said.

"Why wouldn't I?"

Shrugging, Blair looked off at a point past his head. "Just thought you'd have cleaned out your phone and deleted it."

Chuck smiled slowly. "I'll send you mine again."

"You needn't bother," she said with a flouncy hair flip in his face. She bobbed out of the elevator as the doors opened to the lobby.

Chuck watched her leave and wondered how many times he was going to have to relive this same scenario. "My car will be waiting for you out front," he called after her. She said nothing but he knew she would take it. Her pride ended where the Waldorf name began and he knew she would play whatever mental gymnastics it required for her to take a favor from him. He called his driver Max and told him where to be, then stepped out of the lobby. His gentlemanly duties accomplished, he headed back into the bar.

Rodrigo was just cleaning up. "Got time for one more?" Chuck said as he sat down.

"Of course, Mr. Bass," he said and started filling a new glass. "The same?"

"It always is," Chuck said.