The Most Unlikely Match
Sweetly Treacherous
Author: Sky Samuelle
Summary: Pre-series, a defining moment in the friendship between Chuck and Blair.
AN: Thank you to my wonderful beta, Halcyon Seraphim
If in her entire life Blair Waldorf were asked to pinpoint an off-key note, any detail which disagreed with the general pattern, she would surely have picked her friendship with Chuck Bass.
In theory, they were so very drastically different that they should have learned to loathe each other. Clearly, she is all that the word "respectable" represents whereas he is all that it doesn't, and she won't deny that his behaviour toward the female gender is sickening at best.
Somewhere along the years of their acquaintance, she convinced herself that she put up with his antics because they both take care of Nate, albeit very differently.
But she knows it's only half-truth.
Because Chuck has no problem with lying and being underhanded to get whatever captures his fancy, but he never bothers pretending to be something he isn't, which makes him oddly less of a liar in her eyes. He is also fickle, sarcastic, and too available to offer unwanted lewd, sexually-charged compliments which are completely uninvited but not as completely unwelcome.
He is pretty to look at--despite of that strange mix of delicate and bluntly strong traits his features compose--so it doesn't hurt taking a walk alongside him after a brunch.
His company is amusing because he always has something spectacularly nasty or improper to add to any conversation anyone is having in his presence and he dishes it out raw and crude, with a careless ease she both envies and resents, because Life must be so much easier if you are a brute.
So she decides Chuck Bass is her friend, despite her fierce disapproval of almost everything he does, and his relatively quiet mockery of everything she doesn't.
There's this manner he has of inclining his head and hissing in hushed conversation which makes him resemble so much the reptile he is at heart, than it's only wrong (?). Never mind the way he laughs, so low, fake and oozing with malice, so easy to mirror when she tries it out in his company and they are ridiculing the subject of latest scandal.
When Serena Van derWoodsen leaves New York without saying goodbye, the Constance Billiard is all a flow of mournful gossip and speculation. Sitting in front Blair and Nate at lunch, Chuck shrugs the subject off callously: "I never found her appealing."
"You flirted with her every chance you had."
"I never said she was repulsive."
Blair has always more or less intuited that Chuck's consideration for her best friend doesn't extend beyond the one he usually reserves for a toy he is mildly curious about trying out, but it isn't until now she realizes this pleases her.
--
On the Upper East Side, the word "scandal" equals "chaos". There's nothing that Blair Waldorf despises more than chaos, unless she's the one to wreak it, obviously in somebody else's life.
She can't avoid feeling like her father should have considered before running away to France with his handsome, young, gay boyfriend. Ugh, it's still difficult to toss that word around in her mind.
She hates liars and she can't accept that her father is such a big one, that her fashionably proper family was as fake as Paris Hilton's lips, that he was so dissatisfied with it every waking moment she thought they were okay.
Blair spends approximately twenty-five minutes on the telephone with Nate, trying to number for him all the reasons she was fine with this arising social catastrophe, all the reasons she would get through this unscathed. They are all some variation of 'I'm a Waldorf and Waldorfs are always prepared. For anything.'
Before she can get around to explaining why she actually feels betrayed by her adored father, before she can finally admit her anger to both Nate and herself, he asks if she wants to go out to distract herself and she finds herself shaking her head, coming up with some excuse to stay home and terminate the call.
After, she falls gracelessly back on her bed and presses her face against her cushion.
Her head is aching like it's about to explode and she needs so badly to work off some steam, but she has no idea how.
She isn't really angry with daddy dearest or Nate, anyway. She can't be. They are nice, they love her and they mean well, so she's supposed to smile and grit out a thank-you, even when it hurts. God, if it hurts.
This is still a mess and she can't believe Nate could even fathom the concept of her setting a foot out of her glass fortress in her situation.
She can't believe her father put her in this situation to begin with.
She can't believe Serena isn't writing or calling to check whether her best friend is freaking out yet or not. No boarding school is possibly that isolated.
Apparently absence doesn't make the heart become fonder. It's better not to go there, too many unanswered questions which rub salt into freshly opened wounds.
Her fucking world is fuckingly falling to pieces and those people who are supposed to understand how hard it is are behaving like they don't.
"Charles Bass is downstairs, miss Blair," Dorota says, and although Blair wasn't expecting his visit, she isn't exactly displeased.
On second thought, she isn't surprised he's there. The very essence of her relationship with Chuck resides in his habit to fill the empty spaces in her life. He systematically refuses to fit any role she might cast him, but flows through the cracks to fill the occasional blanks left by everybody else. Like Chaos Incarnate, he shifts according to his temporary mood from her other rival for Nate's attention – ready to snatch her boyfriend away for entire weekends or evenings without any regard for her plans or feelings- to the smarmy accomplice who has occasionally helped her to keep Serena from getting expelled by covering the blonde girl's tracks at the brunette's demand.
Blair strolls regally down the stairs, without hurry, not forgetting to check her appearance in her bathroom mirror and fix her rebellious curls first.
Predictably, Chuck greets her with a lopsided grin and a shamelessly wandering gaze which manages to quickly but leisurely slide up and down her body, all while communicating a certain appreciation of her good looks.
"Hello, Beautiful One. Your serving knight has sent me to check me on your mental health."
Blair inclines her head aside and purses her lips in a knowing smirk, but doesn't openly contradict him: since she talked with Nate barely an hour ago, it's highly improbable this justification is anything more than an excuse.
It would be just Chuck's style to be this cheeky only to satisfy his morbid curiosity, but she likes considering him capable of actual concern over someone other than himself once in a while.
You must keep alive your faith in the human race, somehow, even among high society.
Blair bestows him with her most transparently, pretentiously false smile.
"Oh, I think we can agree I'm doing just perfect. For someone who is being ridiculed at every corner of the Upper East Side and is not allowed to forget it in the peace of her home, that is."
Her voice drips with sugar as her gaze deliberately seeks his and doesn't waver, a clear challenge flashing in its chocolate depths, her chin bravely jutting out.
There's something about the Blair Waldrof particular brand of temperamental uptight-ness which Chuck can't avoid finding entertaining, regardless of the circumstances.
"Like you would ever allow yourself to not obsess over a random stain on your glamorous existence"
A few seconds of silence follow, as Blair silently fumes and tries mustering the inventiveness for an adequately scathing reply.
Random stain? Ah, that must be the understatement of the century!
"Excuse me, if I don't just… prowl throughout life doing and saying whatever I want with no concern for what other people might think about it."
Apparently she hasn't yet reached the point where she can wax ironic over her situation, because her outrage isn't translating into the appropriate amount of sarcasm.
"Glad you've finally begun to appreciate my talent, B."
"That was hardly a compliment," she deadpans, but her friend's smug grin only widens.
"I'll take what I can get."
She rolls her eyes and sighs, an aura of bored disdain exuding from her lithe figure "You better not be hoping for additional juicy details over my dad's dirty affair. Nosiness might make me violent."
"You low opinion of my decorum insults me."
"I'm surprised you even know the meaning of that word."
"Besides, I already know you are a terminal case of repressed violence. I wouldn't risk it. Unless it is under more pleasant circumstances, if you catch my drift. "
"Don't you ever get tired of being such a pervert?" Blair waves a manicured hand to silence his upcoming answer, right as she sees him actually opening his mouth to respond. "Forget it. I suppose I should be grateful your sex life comes before anyone else's for you."
"Any other mental disposition would be highly unnatural, don't you think?"
"Well-"
"But you should have guessed I'm not really here to discuss philosophy with the lovely miss Prim-and-Proper Waldorf, so why don't we cut all the pleasantries and get on with the real business?"
Feeling conflicted between her irritation over his nerve to interrupt her and a legitimate curiosity about his motives, Blair bites the inside of her cheek to repress a nasty comment, narrowing her eyes on him expectantly.
Unfazed by her reaction, Chuck stays silent and looks back into her eyes with a mysterious glint in his gaze that alarms her a little, prompting her to solicit him with a moderate grade of aggravation in her tone: "Which would be?"
For a moment, she is irrationally, insanely terrified he will say something sickeningly sentimental, something like what Serena would say if she cared enough to be here, something like what she would have liked to hear from Nate earlier but isn't able to define at all. Something which would sound so totally wrong out of Chuck Bass' lips that Blair Waldrof couldn't bear to face him again, for the shame of it.
But Chuck only swaggers closer to her, closing the gap between them- a smartass expression on his attractive visage- until he is almost breathing in her face, and she is stepping back, self-conscious of the sudden proximity.
"Come on, you can't tell me you aren't considering orchestrating a new scandal to wipe out the current one. Were you going really to leave me out in the cold? You know nobody loves bloodshed as much I do."
Blair was planning nothing of the sort and, judging by the undercurrent of tentative suggestion she can perceive underneath the superficial humour in his voice, he knows it as well.
It won't deter her from pretending otherwise, thus grasping at his challenge like the lifebelt it is, because communication between the two of them will always be all about the subtext.
Oh, the possibilities his proposition has to offer … Her mind is already reeling, giddy for all the delicious perspectives before her. Before them. Who would consider Charles Bass' brain cells to be actively functional and potentially brilliant, when he spares the effort to steer clear of unsavoury substances?
She shocks herself by reasoning that although his presence in her life makes absolutely no sense, in the most unlikely and dysfunctional way possible, he is the best friend she has ever had.
"I wouldn't dream of excluding you," she singsongs, her eyelashes fluttering innocently. "You've met Priscilla's cousin, haven't you?"
End