I got a special request for more info about the five Christmases Chuck and Blair spent together before the events of 'Silver Bells & Cuckoo Children'.
Just as a general FYI, I would place Chuck and Blair's age at around their late twenties, and Blair is married to a prominent businessman. Chuck is not married, has never married, and has not loved since Blair. He has, however, had a series of unsuccessful and short-lived hookups with dark eyed brunettes who were somehow never quite right.
So here it is: Christmas #1.

Christmas #1

He sits by what must constitute a roaring fire for the modern age – a line of space-age geysers spurting jets of flame in an endless, orange line. His suit is black, his hair is tousled, and he can't help wondering why he didn't stay in Singapore for the holidays. Just the sight of the huge Christmas trees in every store window managed to dredge up bad memories of doing silly, stupid, saccharine couple things: like ice skating.

New York must have laughed itself silly.

There is a knock at the door, which is strange in itself. And, when he gets up to answer it, stranger still is the person behind it.

Blair.

She is thinner than she ought to be and a lack of sunlight has turned her hair two shades darker, but she still smells the same; her perfume washing over him like flowers and spun gold. He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them she is smiling apprehensively.

"Merry Christmas."

"What are you doing here?"

Her eyes blaze momentarily before calming, their own geysers retreating back into deceptive, doe-like depths. "I haven't seen you since my...since...since we died."

The day we died: that was how she referred to her wedding day. Some artistic person (Serena, probably) had added her heart pin to the froth of lace at one sleeve and Blair had plucked it free, pressing it into his hand. 'Today we die, Bass,' she'd said softly, her eyes glowing with unshed tears. 'But I want you to keep this.' Her smile had been brave, a tiny candle shining in the darkness of all his despair. 'It's yours, after all.' One last kiss with the salt of tears – both their tears – as a silent, terrible third party and she had left, off up the aisle towards a destiny in which he played no part.

"He's out of the country, and I thought...maybe I shouldn't be here."

"Maybe you shouldn't," he agrees, but leaves the door open as he turns away anyway. He feels more than hears her follow him in: the warm presence at his back, that perfume stealing further into the room and his senses.

"You're reading Les Liaisons Dangereuses," she comments, lifting the book from the arm of his chair and turning it over in her hands. "My second favourite."

He pours himself three fingers of scotch and drains the glass, not caring that she is watching. "It reminds me of a girl I used to know."

She stiffens – shoulders jumping together, spine stiffer than a ramrod – before whirling on him, her dress flaring out around her knees like Marilyn Monroe. "I know you're suffering, okay? I get it! I get it better than anyone! But how do you think I feel?" She advances toward him, knocking over the scotch glass and paying no heed as it first bounces, then rolls across the carpet. One hand grasps his chin, forcing his face up as it has so many times before. "The drunken texts at three in the morning: 'I'm a prick and I'm still in love with you'? How do you think I explained those? How do you think they made me feel?"

"You don't feel."

"I don't feel?!" Her grip becomes bruising and she pulls him down to her, lips pressing against his in an agonising kiss of fire and loss. Her hand leaves his chin to rake across his scalp and his arms go automatically to her waist, to that tiny waist that he wants to squeeze until it snaps and let them die together all over again. Blair's tears are mingling with his once again in a fiery baptism of body and soul, and he barely notices as the objects around them smash, only aware of the sigh of silk as her dress slides from her body and his sombre black suit is somehow abandoned to the floor.

They end up on the floor that time, on the sheepskin rug in front of the space-age fireplace. His fingers trace the mesmerising curve of her arm and she smiles sleepily at him.

"Oh, that's nice. I missed that."

"What, the sex or the post coital glow?"

She laughs, laying her lips to his shoulder by way of recompense for all those long months of absence. "Both. But more – more you being you, I suppose." She looks at him with her large dark eyes. "There's no one like you, Charles Bass. There never will be."