Summary: Blair goes through with it, and no matter how cut and dry the contract made it seem, this is one business deal that will have repercussions neither of them anticipated. Because she's not as strong as she pretends to be. Because he won, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Because selling out yourself or your girlfriend is a much bigger deal than either of them ever considered.
Thin, beige paper cuts into his hand as he balls it into his fist. Leaning against the moulded column by her front door, he anxiously waits for her return.
What he'll do when she arrives, he honestly has no idea. All he knows is that his world is on its side, and between aloof best friends, power-hungry uncles, and would-be (probably) mothers, the only thing keeping him held up is Blair.
He loves her and trusts her, but more than that, he believes in her love for him. After years of believing himself completely unworthy of real affection from absolutely anyone, it took him him a long time to embrace her declarations of love and make one of his own. But now that he has, he knows to his very core that he loves her, and she loves him to the point where she would do anything for him.
He let out a heavy sigh, his foot tapping nervously as his eyes slip back to the door again.
They'd get over this. This was just doing what was necessary to win. No harm, no foul. They're bond was unbreakable.
He fingers his watch as the seconds, then minutes, then hours tick by. He momentarily tries to calculate the time it would take to complete the transaction, but shakes his head violently at the thought. Instead he busies himself with mentally picking out the perfect gift that would make them even.
He crumples the note in his hand and lets it fall to the ground.
Louboutins wouldn't be enough this time. Maybe he'd finally take her on that trip upstate she keeps hinting at?
Out of the corner of his eye he catches sight of the door swinging open and he quickly turns, hoping to see big brown eyes twinkling with the thrill of victory, only to have his heart drop at the sight of the Waldorf's older neighbors. Frustrated, he checks his watch again, and realizes it's well past midnight.
He quietly leans back against the wall again though and waits. He'll keep waiting as long as it takes for Blair to show up.
She never does.
---
It takes two and a half hours of walking aimlessly through the city before she finally admits to herself that she lost. Chuck won because he got his hotel back, Jack won because he got her. But as her aching legs slowly come to a halt in front of Victrola of all places, she realizes that she's the one left with nothing but pain, and guilt, and shame.
She knows Chuck would never be able to forgive her. He'd never be able to look at her again if he knew what she did.
She wonders if she'll even be able to look at herself.
She stumbles away from the busy club where everything once began, and hastily calls herself a cab, having finally made a decision of where to go, the only place she knows she'll be alone. She mumbles the address of her dorm to the driver and sinks back against dirty leather seats that somehow feels more clean than her.
Her skin has been flushed and burning ever since she crawled out of that bed that she'd spent night after blissful night in with Chuck.
Now all of that was ruined, probably beyond repair.
She hadn't even bothered to get dressed before leaving, only pausing to pull on her panties before throwing on her oversized coat and her shoes before rushing out of the suite she'd once practically considered home.
Her action are calculated as she stops briefly at her dorm room, just long enough to get her shower supplies and a robe before she's off to the communal bathroom, a place she once considered using to be a fate worse than death. Now she didn't have a choice.
She sheds her undergarments and immediately throws them (along with her coat) into the trash, trying not to remember how she'd originally picked them out to wear for Chuck that morning. The water can't seem to get hot enough and she immerses herself under its stream and starts in with the soap. Her movements are steady and controlled as she begins with her toes and slowly moves up, not missing an inch of her now tainted flesh.
You held a certain fascination when you were delicate, beautiful and untouched..
She pushes the luffa harder against her skin, biting her lip as she finishes scrubbing her neck, before reaching down to her toes and starting all over once again. As she continues up her body, subconsciously she begins to scrub faster, and push harder and harder, until she can see blotches of red left behind in a trail across her pale skim. After the fourth time, she finally concedes that she'll never be able to wash away the feeling of his fingers.
Padding down the hallway barefoot, she doesn't even acknowledge the strange looks she gets from the few stray student roaming the hall so late at night. Instead she rushes into her room and double locks it behind her, dropping her things into a careless pile by the door.
Immediately she sinks down to her bed into a quivering heap. All of the sudden she's very aware that she's sobbing and she's not very sure at all when it started. Her wet auburn curls soak into the pillow beneath her, and her tears streak against her pale cheeks.
She tries desperately to get control, to breath in and out slowly and somehow quiet herself, because she knows she's hitting rock bottom and smashing into pieces, but instead ends of chocking against her emotions.
All she can think about is Jack and his too rough fingers digging tightly into her hips, his hot breath unwelcome against her ear as h whispered mocking words, his too harsh, painful movements, and his unshakeable ego as he smirked at her unshed tears.
And then there was Chuck.
Chuck, who had just been completely screwed over by the only family member he had left, who had been tricked cruelly into thinking his mother he thought he'd killed had come back only to have her ripped out of his life once again, who had spent his whole life being criticized and judged and an embarrassment to his own father. He didn't deserve to lose everything he'd worked so hard for on top of that too, and that's why she did it.
It was worth it, right?
She sobs harder, pushing her face against the pillow to muffle her cries. Her whole body aches, every muscles cries out in agony. Even her eyes are sore from how hard she'd been squeezing them shut, and now from crying. She's so tired and she wishes she could just cry herself to sleep, but it proves impossible.
Her heart is to heavy and her head hurts, but she still stays up, her mind swimming with thoughts of Jack and then of Chuck, and back to Jack again and she cries out into the darkness of her room for something, when all of the sudden something changes. Suddenly there's not just thoughts of Jack and Chuck, but Jack and Chuck and the mini-fridge in her room. She bites her lip and the answer seems so clear, but so wrong at the same time. Her sobs quiet of their own volition, and even though she's staring towards the window in her dorm, all she can picture is that fridge. She can sense it behind her, knows exactly where it is, can even guess the amount of steps it will take her to get there. There's nothing but silent tears rolling down her cheeks now as her throat constricts with need and familiarity. Even her muscles are calling out to her to move, knowing the sheer exhaustion she'd feel afterwards would surely be able to lull her to sleep.
She takes a breath, shakes her head, and counts to ten as her mouth begins to water.
She cannot do that. She is stronger than that.
A shaky sigh escapes her lips and without another thought she's pushing herself off the bed and taking the three calculated steps to the fridge.
Maybe she's really not as strong as she pretends to be.
---
The elevator dings and opens and he hesitates before stepping out into the place he'd fought so hard to claim.
There is an odd air hanging in the penthouse of the Empire, and it leaves a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Everything looks pristine, as if nothing completely vile had gone on inside these walls just hours before. But the silence is so loud it's deafening and he's scared of what happens next; like someone is going to jump from around the corner and tackle him.
Cautiously he inspects each room, feeling more and more at ease as he sees not a trace of Jack is left anywhere. All of his artwork and personal belongings seem to be back in place, almost as if the last two weeks never even happened. He looks in Nate's room, the den, the kitchen, and feels the tightening in his chest slowly unravel, to the point where when he finally finds something out of place, he doesn't even flinch.
Stepping into his room, he quickly stalks across it, prepared to throw away what appears to be a forgotten shirt of Jack's, when he stop dead in his tracks. His fists tighten at his sides and his eyes widen in absolute rage.
There, laying pooled in a forgotten pile on the floor, was the was the dress he'd had sent to his girlfriend earlier that day. He glares at it until he's sure the image is burned into his retinas for eternity, before his gaze slides menacingly to the king size bed beside him. Beige bedding, neatly folded and made with pale blue pillows perfectly placed almost mock him from where they lay.
Blair's side is the on right. She's always slept on the right side, and him on the left, ever since she held him when he cried himself to sleep the day after his father died. The last time she spent the night with him in this bed, they had sex three times because they were celebrating him opening his heart to his 'mother' and her and she feel asleep with her head on his left arm and it went numb, but he didn't care because she's beautiful when she sleeps.
He stagers a step back, his mouth dropping in pure anguish as the weight of everything finally hits him. He moves towards the dress discarded on the floor and picks it up, silk slipping in between his fingers and he almost can't quite hold on (he refuses to acknowledge that he's shaking) and he makes his way to the wall where he slides down to sit on the floor.
He can picture it, he can imagine it and almost see it play out before his eyes, but he can only smell Blair's perfume on the dress.
He won, but what he won isn't what he wanted. What he's won is hollow walls, silence that hurts, and a girlfriend that never came home.
He wonders if there's any amount of money he could pay to take this all back.
TBC? Feedback appreciated...