Title: Ever Lingering Presence

Author: BookCaseGirl (Abby)

Date: August 16, 2009

Rating: T

Summary: A drabble taking place during the summer between season one and two. Blair is at her father and Roman's vineyard in France, and Chuck is everywhere – though no one else sees him.

Status: Complete. There's the slimmest of slim possibilities that this could continue. No idea.

Classification: Angst.

Author's Note: I know I didn't update "What Were They Thinking" today...Sorry, just didn't feel like it. I will update both of the in-progress stories that I'm writing, though – for anyone that's reading. I was in an angst mood, and this what transpired because of my lack of sleep and depressed mood, ha. I do hope it pleases some?

Disclaimer: I don't own Gossip Girl

This is unbeta'd.


She went to the bathroom and run the shower. Locking the door, she used a hairtie to pull her hair back from her eyes. Once the stray hairs were no longer bothersome to Blair, she knelt down in front of the baby pink toilet that matched the décor of the bathroom that had been augmented to her bedroom.

It was difficult at first – mostly because it had been so long. For a while she had been under the childish illusion that she was actually over this obstacle. After Thanksgiving, she spoke to her doctor, and everything had seemed perfectly fine. Every problem was magically solved by relaxation CDs and counting strategies that must have been meant for someone in a different situation. Blair wasn't like those people – she wasn't suicidal. She just simply did not look up to the standards that had been set for her long ago.

Once she got started, the icky fluid fell from her lips faster and faster. She had stopped at a wonderful bistro and asked for a pass back to the kitchen to meet the chef – throwing her father's name in and knowing it would get everywhere and anywhere she wanted to go. When she was finally back there, she bought off the chef, shooing him away. Alone in the kitchen she was, with all of the glorious food. Forkful after forkful of steak was shoved into her mouth, and she washed that down with an entire chocolate cake, swallowing milk to coat her mouth for the second course. She picked at some bread before shoving the entire mini loaf into her mouth and nearly choking.

When she had arrived home, she was stuffed to her maximum limit and felt the dire need to purge of everything. And then there she sat, crouched, watching everything get drowned out with the sound of her retches and the swirls of vomit that taunted her in the porcelain bowl. Part of her had wanted someone to find her. That part had been crying out for saving, asking for her to just have mercy on her pathetic and worn body.

Everything – all of the hurt, the deceit, and the utter confusion – got washed away, for the time being. It swirled and mixed with the water. As she watched, Blair felt another rumble from low in her abdomen and stood. However, seconds later, she fell to the floor again. This time she simply lay there, not even having the strength to straighten her back. Everything was gone now, and all that came out was rancid-smelling breath and a watery substance. Yet she still kept coughing and sputtering.

Blair rose on wobbly legs that threatened to give out at any second, but she would not allow it. The strength came from a strange place deep inside of her, and it was almost unexpected since she had thought all of her strength was somewhere in the plumbing lines of Paris. She fell back onto the bed, the covers falling around her and her body melding a place in the silky comfort.

She lay in bed, thinking of Chuck and only Chuck. He was the one thing that she couldn't leave alone. He was so addictive, so beautiful to her. And he was always the one person that matched her in every aspect of personality. They both had their faults, and those vices balanced each other out wonderfully. Still, though, here she lay – alone in a cold bed at her father's vineyard in France. She hadn't spoken to Daddy or Roman; when she got in, they were in the middle of a romantic dinner, which honestly, had only made her want to throw up even more.

Now, here she was. It was her – dark and small and vulnerable (all things she refused to show any member of the human race that walked the earth). Her eyes felt heavy, and her chest heaved with tear-less sobs. She felt her heart pounding from somewhere deep within her chest cavity and placed her hand above it, reveling in the feeling of life, of being here and feeling things.

All Blair wanted was to forget Chuck Bass. She wished she had never met him, or at the very least that she could go somewhere and have her mind wiped clean of every thing that contained a fragment of him. Each way she turned in bed, he was there – the ghost of him lingered on the sheets in which she slept, though he had never even set foot in this house. She could see his smirking face, feel his weight on the opposite side of the bed, and smell his Dior cologne.

He was torturing her, plaguing her. Chuck was anywhere, everywhere, but nowhere as well. He was not tangible – she could not reach out and feel his soft skin on hers – and he was not physically there.

But to her – to Blair – he was always there. His presence was always sensed, powerful and overwhelming.