A/N: Thank you so much to the seven people who reviewed! (I don't normally do 'shout out's' but I'm in that mood today I guess: ChairloveK, Krism, Ita, Batgirl2992, thegoodgossipgirl, ronan03 and HnM skinnys ... you guys are amazing!) I don't really know what I'm going to do with this story ... but I'm tentatively continuing it (I don't know for how long) Review please if you have time (:
The rain drips down her nose, onto the pavement and into the gutters. She's soaked, shivers sparking up and down her spine as she clutches the collar of his jacket. Trying to keep her teeth from chattering, she looks up at his angular jaw and he pulls her further into the warmth of his coat. Blair is anything but flawless in this moment, thawed vapour rolling off her lips, the cold pressing against her cheeks, damp curls frizzed around her neck, but he covers as much of her as he can and she barely notices the storm.
Four weeks ago she graduated from high school and now she's two thousand miles away from home, and the man holding her is legally hers. She has no idea how it got this way, how it manages to be so intricately confusing and yet make any sense. She's trailing a new path, only she doesn't know where it leads and yet, she's never felt more ... love.
Water continues to pour from the sluggish grey clouds that move across the London skyline and she hooks her fingers around his ear, tracing the stubble on his cheek with her own. Hours pass, maybe only minutes, seconds even ... she can't tell ... but she knows that she doesn't want to move from this bench, the tiny park they stumbled upon. She wants to sit here just a little longer, stuck in the rain, coveted by the blaze of Chuck's adoration beneath the evergreen trees.
They are their own hide-out.
There is an intimacy that she can't quite categorize in the way he looks at her, glitter in the corners of his irises, and when he speaks it's pliable and soft. "You're freezing," She feels him loop his arms tighter around her waist, "If we stay out here any longer you'll get sick."
Chuck Bass, concern lining his words, a fret almost. It's unbelievable.
She thinks of her marriage to him, this reformed version of the boy who used to show up to her birthday parties drunk on scotch and giddy with the news of half-naked women flanking his fathers' side, and it's the stupidest most rational contradicting thing she's done but she never wants to take it back.
Blair rests her head on his shoulder, watching the raindrops fall onto the grass and she can barely think of anything but the burn of Chuck's fingertips on her flesh, the plains of his face, the body underneath his grey shirt.
How did this even happen? Weaknesses watered down, signed on the dotted line of marriage certificates, travel visas, a slew of foreign countries and vibrant hotels. A honeymoon patched together in the sincerest of ways. A year ago she didn't even know he could exhibit anything but lust and alcoholism, much less commitment and it draws her to him, keeping her lost in his presence.
"Fine," She relents with a dramatic sigh, peeling herself from the bench, "Let's go."
He's smirking, that smile she knows so well, a thousand secrets locked on his tongue, as he grabs her hand and they run across the street. She laughs, throwing back her head, because her husband is beautiful and right now, under the afternoon clouds of a Sunday in Manchester, they belong to each other, before other things begin to filter in.
Soon, they will have to face New York and she knows it won't be easy to keep holding his hands, guarding his heart, but she's committed to something, anything, that keeps him beside her. She'll fight for whatever this is because it's strong enough to make her dizzy with appreciation and he's so much more than she ever knew he could be.
They are simpler together than apart.