Theft of a Heart
Chapter 1. The Storm
A/N: C/B.
Post-2.15.
Description: AU. Post 2.15. Blair runs to Chuck, who's BUSY….Will they ever end up together?
Disclaimer: All The CW's/Cecily Von Zieglesar's. Do not own the quote(s). Very gloomy : D Do not own Atonement/
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O0...0O
"My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I AM Heathcliff! He's always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my own being….."
-Wuthering Heights
O0...0O
The sun was setting as he woke up.
When he woke up, he was left with the acute sensation of acrid, drug-flavored smoke in his nostrils and very bright gaslights. The soft absorption of the sheets. And a headache like a cannon of no uncertain calibre had been blasted inside of his head.
He glanced around at the old, stucco walls, and the cool age of the Spanish tiling. Where was he staying--some kind of sister hotel to the Palace or something? Either way, it was his.
Water, he thought dully, and walked over to the bathroom, splashing the tap over his face.
Blair, he thought dully, but there was nothing to fill his body there, and it was a worse agony than any lack of water could inflict.
O0...0O
Earlier That Afternoon
His eyes.
Hazel. Hazel-tawny. Hazel-green. Tawny-green. The unblended mix of orange and green. Unblended green and orange. Someone had said that. Ian mcEwan. Atonement. Robbie and Cee. Cee and Robbie. Keira and Chuck. Chuck and Blair.
She held a surprisingly and refreshingly cool hand to her closed lids, shocked at how mad and distracted her thoughts had scattered; instead of stretching out into one long string of thought, they had sparked short, friction-like bursts.
She kneaded her temples and tried to make a new train of thought. That train was hacked to pieces by savage Indians, all named Chuck.
Her mouth curved upwards at that one. Chief Chuck. "Bring all the women to me." She found her vocal chords stirring in low-pitched, jagged, breathy laughter. Musingly, like when she was a little girl, she pressed her fingers to her neck and felt the vibrations.
She stared out the window. The pulse of the city, from up here, was nigh-nonexistent, like hers, the stormy gray clouds like the ones deep in her heart and mind.
She closed her eyes again, and as usual, the vision of Chuck Bass swam before her eyes, his amused, cynical eyebrows and the unrestrained feeling in his eyes that ran against the look in the rest of his face, two veins, two strains at war with each other.
Useless to pretend he didn't exist, useless to lock him away in the rattiest dungeon of her mind. He always broke out of the bars with strong Samson-like muscles of Memory. Useless to tell herself she didn't love him. Useless to tell herself he didn't own her ,body and soul. Useless to call him a faithless playboy, because that was about as deep as her façade of the Perfect Society Girl.
For all of her stubborn, stupid, shallow restraints she had placed on herself, she knew that if he appeared before her now she would instantaneously give into that impulse to touch him, to hold him, to show him she loved him. She would talk, she would babble on, some of it nonsense, others of it philosophical, stupid and profound mixed in with each other, blending effortlessly.
None of this would hurt her, all of it would give her joy, if she knew he felt the same way, if she knew he woke up in the middle of the night, calling her name, like she did; if he gave into his worst impulses not out of misguidedness or cruelty, but sheerly because he loved her, because of some twisted logic that wound itself around and around its spiral of thought, like an entangled necklace. She needed to know.
O0...0O
Chuck Bass looked out the window and he saw Blair's face plastered on the side of a skyscraper.
He looked down at the coffee in his hands and he saw Blair's eyes.
He saw the russet silk of the curtains and he thought of Blair's hair.
He saw the framed poster of My Fair Lady in the corner and he remembered seeing it with Blair.
The silence around him was peppered with red dots of memory, Blair talking, laughing, crying….
…. "Do you….like me?"….
…. "You make me sick."….
…. "You don't belong with anyone." ….
…. "Three words. Eight letters. Say it, and I'm yours." ….
…. "Thanks to your little performance last week, the lord and I are better than ever!" ….
…. "I have a proposition for you." ….
…. "I. HATE. YOU." ….
…. "Whatever you're going through, I want to be there for you….Because. I love you." ….
That particular one stung him like fire, how he'd thrown her away, the best thing that ever happened to him, the only thing that had ever made him cry, the thing that he loved best, more than Bart, more than anything else.
That thing with the cream-tinted skin and the aura of lavender, that thing with the perfect and dark orbs for eyes, that thousand-kilowatt smile, that thing whose core glowed the same color as his. That thing on which his whole life depended.
What profundity lay in the name Blair Waldorf, what devastating beauty and what crushing strength. The ability to control and be controlled at the same time, to link with him as one body and soul and mind.
He set down the coffee and opted for more Blair, labeled Campari.
O0...0O
She knew it.
She knew where he'd be staying.
He always went there, he told her, that beautiful, suntouched week between the end of school and their trip to Tuscany. That trip that never happened.
The week that was so beautiful it was as if it had never happened.
He always went there, he told her, since that night after Victrola, because of how quaintly aged it was and yet how clean, because it reminded him of her, whenever he thought of her. He always went there when he thought about her.
With only a bath towel saddled about her slim hips, balancing another one precariously on her head, she walked into her closet and feverishly began combing through her dresses, choosing an utterly impractical, utterly romantic, floor-length black dress, with thin spaghetti straps and wavy black gauze. It set off her fine white skin, untannable, and made it glow.
She pulled it on.
It was beautiful. She looked beautiful. It was utterly impractical and it was sophisticated and it was subtly sexy and it made her look about ten years' older, sans the crows' feet. The black brought out the red-gold and blond tones in her hair, and emphasized the perfect slimness of her figure.
She tried her necklaces on it. A white-gold Pomellato necklace, that went well with everything--no. The dress was timeless, and the necklace was too old-fashioned. Her amber choker was garishly modern. The long pearl strands from Victrola made her look like Bellatrix Lestrange, and the erikson-Beamon necklace, from Chuck, her trump card, favorite, didn't work with the dress.
All of her gloves were wrong for it; the long, black ones, the white ones, she even tried on her leather French falconry ones for good measure, thinking it would produce an artistic disarray. It didn't.
She shook her head in frustration, but one look in the mirror let her apprehension go away. Her aristocratic neck, with its length and gracefulness, and her collarbones and shoulders, looked great, and she was sure Chuck would appreciate it.
Sudden hot tears sprang to her eyes, and impatiently she brushed them away. It was all wrong of her to go chasing after Chuck, like she was his slave, his pet. His squeeze-toy. His dog.
His mother, his wife, a nag, a nanny. The tears flowed unchecked now, graffitiíng her dress, and she resisted the impulse to reach out with her tongue and taste the saltiness.
She took a deep, shuddering breath. She would torment him, she lied to herself, knowing even as she said it to herself that she would allow herself to be crushed in that strong grip.
She sat on the edge of her closet couch, bending low, hugging her knees like Cecilia in that moment of self-contemplation in Atonement. She felt the appreciative flutter of her dress and in that moment she was Cecilia, separated from her Robbie, waiting, watching, wanting.
"I love you. I'll wait for you. Come back. Come back to me." Come back to me, Chuck, come back to me, the only woman, the only human, that ever saw you for who you were and was not repulsed. I love you, I love you.
She wanted to scream it aloud, that she loved him, that she was bleeding inside for it in a way that no doctor could fix, but instead she settled for burying her tear-stained face into her armpit and murmuring it to herself.
She exhaled, not knowing she'd been holding her breath, and pulled herself together, for her sake and his. She combed through her hair and let it blowdry, and it shone like silk, the red and gold in her hair shining under the synthetic light, and decided to go without makeup. It fit with the dress. Simplicity.
Elegance.
She looked at herself in the mirror contentedly, a glowing feeling in her chest. She felt complete and beautiful. Confident, marching in and getting Chuck back.
A few sprays of lavender perfume here and there and she was done, done with suffering, done with playing games, ready to surrender.
It did not once cross her mind that Chuck might be with other women, for she was Cinderella, and Prince Charmin' did not cheat. Tonight was a night of magic, tonight was when things happened, tonight was a wave of pure happiness.
She threw on malleable black-lace flats, and strode out purposefully. She liked how her flats did not click authoritatively on the Maplewood floors like they usually did, how they managed to squeeze her past Dorota, how they made her stride with the freedom of an Indian through the front door and not neglect a black trench coat or to close the door circumspect fully.
O0...0O
Thoroughly inebriated, Blair's face and presence burned into his mind like he was cattle-branded, Chuck pressed 'Mandy' and 'Olivia' on his contacts.
"Hey, Mands. S'me." Chuck exhaled loudly. "Yeah. See you in twenty."
"Livy?" Chuck coughed. "Yeah. Up for a threesome?"
O0...0O
The hotel clerk greeted her with a smile even the worst drudgery of a shift could not erase for Blair Waldorf. "Mr. Bass's room is at the penthouse."
"Thank you," she smiled, and headed to the elevator. It really was a beautiful, romantic, unworldly little place, almost Acapulco-themed, with the lush greenhouse smell from the plants emanating into her nostrils. It made you feel like you were in the Carribbean and it wasn't f-ing ten degrees outsde.
The officious ding of the elevator seemed perfectly in step with her light, feathery gait. She knocked on the door, three light taps.
Various loud profanities could be heard through the other side of the door, but Blair, determined not to lose any of this hope, waited patiently for him to open the door.
A woman opened the door.
A curvy, scantily-spangled, fake-blonde, one bra strap hanging loose, gray irises crossed in confusion, fat fire hydrant red mouth open in confusion and drunk stupidity.
Blair saw through her to Chuck, hair elegantly rumpled, bare-chested, his lip falling open in dismay, hurt, his eyes looking ashamed, but she couldn't pull herself together enough for that.
Her lungs felt too full of oxygen and yet not enough at the same time, and the hotel devastatingly floated before her eyes. Her knees bended beneath her, and she felt herself collapsing into darkness.