Title: We're Made Out of Blood and Rust, Looking For Someone to Trust (3/4)
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the show. The title comes from Honey and the Moon by Joseph Arthur.
Summary: Carter Baizen isn't her boyfriend, but he certainly is something.
Blair wakes up the next morning with a headache: she drank too much gin and champagne, and the music in that bar was too loud. She should have taken an aspirin the night before, but she was too preoccupied.
She looks at the body still sleeping next to her. He's facing away from her, and all she can see is his back and his tousled brown hair. It reminds her of Chuck, and she can't help it. Carter is more muscular than she remembers, and it reminds her of Nate.
Blair wonders if she will ever stop comparing every boy in her life to those two.
Carter groans softly and shifts his weight so that he is lying on his back. He looks at her with sleep-filled eyes; she looks back with her eyebrows arched, expectantly.
"Good morning, beautiful."
She should be annoyed. She should be disgusted. She should throw him out of her bed and out of her hotel room and put him once again on her list of mistakes.
But she doesn't. Instead she lights a cigarette and he smirks.
Sixteen: Blair Waldorf doesn't have sex with people she barely knows.
She has a rule about these sorts of things; she is not some whore. So she lets Carter stay as long as he wishes as long as he doesn't annoy her too much.
They drink and smoke and talk and fuck and for once Blair doesn't really think about where the relationship is going because the answer is clearly nowhere.
Blair doesn't want Carter to be her boyfriend or her sleeping partner or anything else, really. She honestly couldn't care if he was there or not. But she enjoys his company and their conversations and the sex is good.
Blair figures that if she had to run into someone from her past, he is not the worst person she could find. He is smarmy but sexy and he is able to hold a real conversation. He looks good no matter what he is doing and he comes from a good family, so it's not like she's sleeping with a plebian. And he speaks nearly flawless French, so she lets him stay around.
(She's not desperate, just bored)
But he is infuriating: he curses too much and he leaves marks without care and he constantly smells of smoke and he almost always knows what she is thinking.
What happened with Bass anyway?
It's been months but she still can't talk about him; doesn't want to talk or think about him.
So she ignores Carter's question and kisses him instead.
Do you want to fuck?
Sometimes she doesn't mind as much that he knows exactly what she wants.
Seventeen: Blair may actually like Carter, but he doesn't need to know that.
This thing with Carter goes on for almost two weeks before Blair decides she should figure out what to do about it.
She hasn't left her hotel room in a few days. She hasn't visited her parents, or the Louvre, or even gone shopping; she hasn't gone to any cafés or clubs. She's stayed in her room for approximately forty-two hours with a certain blue-eyed Baizen.
This cannot be healthy for anyone.
This is absurd, she thinks. She doesn't even know where Carter was staying before he invaded her hotel suite. She doesn't know how he keeps managing to look clean and pressed when she hasn't seen him change. She thinks – knows – this is probably a bad idea, but she really doesn't care anymore.
The sun is setting in Paris and Blair wonders what time it is in New York. She wonders what Serena is doing, what Nate is doing. She wonders if she even wants to know what Chuck is doing.
Carter is sitting by the window, smoking yet again, and she wonders if she should tell him to leave.
She wonders what he wants with her; wonders if he's just sleeping with her because she's easy. She wonders if he'll ever leave or get tired of her.
(She pretends that these feelings don't ignite something akin to fear inside of her)
Blair really needs to stop wondering and thinking so much – that is what Paris is supposed to about: changing and growing into the person she needs, wants, has to be.
Feeling her eyes watching him, he turns his head towards her. She's surprised when she blushes suddenly and tries to compose herself back into the sexy, confident, nothing-can-touch-me woman she's been trying to be since she came to Paris.
Carter laughs and smirks. He is aggravating to no end. She scolds herself in her mind for liking it.
He puts out his cigarette and joins her in bed once more.
"You're so cute when you blush, Blair."
"Shut up, Baizen."
She pretends that her heart isn't racing and that his eyes don't look like they're seeing right through her.
In true Blair Waldorf fashion, she pretends that this means nothing because Carter Baizen is not part of the plan.
But she was supposed to forget the plan and the ideals; she was supposed to come to Paris to reinvent herself, yet she just keeps falling back into old habits.
Eighteen: Blair may have fallen in love, but it doesn't need to mean anything.
Love has never gotten her anywhere but broken, lonely, guilty, stranded, alone.
Blair came to Paris to forget about all the love she had shared and lost.
She doesn't want to deal with it anymore.
There was a time when all she ever wanted was to love and be loved, but that time has passed and she is not quite sure she is ready for it to come back.
Carter is a gentleman when he wants to be.
He takes her to dinner and accompanies her when she shops; he listens to her talk about Monet and Rousseau and the French royals when he follows her on her sightseeing expeditions.
He drinks café noir and he smokes almost constantly, but he looks good in suits and has excellent hair, so she can take him to nice places without looking bad; and he has good taste in literature, so he's obviously intelligent.
He holds her hand when they stroll through the Latin Quarter, despite the fact that she didn't offer it. His hands feel too soft to belong to a male, but she figures that that's what a person gets from escaping manual labour his whole life.
She tells him at least a hundred times to not call her 'baby', but he does it anyways. He is exasperating, vexatious, maddening – yet she continually has to tell herself that she does not like it and that this means nothing.
They visit the Eiffel Tower, but only because she was planning on going no matter what and he wouldn't leave her alone.
He kisses her when the lights go on and he tastes like alcohol and cigarettes and strawberries, and she can barely admit to herself that she kind of loves it.
Nineteen: Carter Baizen isn't her boyfriend, but he is something.
They're lying in bed one night, but Blair doesn't really know what day it is anymore. There is only a small lamp giving light to the room, and she thinks it would be romantic if it weren't him.
He's smoking, again, but she stopped minding a long time ago.
She's trying to read Madame Bovary for the third time, but she continues to be distracted by Carter and the way he exhales after every puff of smoke. He's just sitting there, his legs resting against her own, his arm slung over her shoulders, his fingers playing with the strands of her hair – as if it the most normal thing he could do.
Blair wonders why this feels so natural to him.
(But then again, it feels sort of natural to her too)
She puts her book down, resignedly, and he takes notice. She pulls his cigarette from his lips and puts it to her own. She notices the slight smile that graces his chiseled features and he pulls her towards him.
When he kisses her neck, she realizes that this could possibly be the most functional relationship she's had. With Carter there are no games; there is no pressure from their families; there is no pretending to be in love; and there is certainly no trading of each other for real estate.
She doesn't really know what his past relationships have been like, but she knows that they include a string of flings and one-night stands, her best friend and a future Nascar mom in-the-making that he only used for money. Blair doesn't really know where she ties in there.
Their relationship – if you can call it that – is based purely on need: she needs someone to converse with and to drink with and to tour with and to sleep with, while he – well, maybe he's just bored or needs someplace to sleep. But this is not love or like or lust, or anything in between the three. This is just her finally taking what she wants.
Blair's not sure what all that says about her, or him, or them.
But she doesn't really care because he is angling her body against his in a perfect way and she does not want to think about anything at the moment; she just wants to feel, feel like she hadn't before she ran away across the Atlantic.
He kisses her shoulders and pushes her underneath him. The cigarette they shared has been discarded, but the taste hasn't left her mouth.
Blair is continually surprised every time they have sex. It's not like she's hasn't done this a lot – she dated Chuck Bass, for God's sake – but with Carter it is different.
Even the first time, all those years ago when she was trying to find who she was after losing everything, he was not what she expected.
He is rough and passionate and selfish at times; but he is soft and deliberate, too. He always gives her exactly what she wants and she is never displeased.
He is nice afterwards. He lets her curl against him or push him away, and he doesn't make comments about it or asks her to do anything else. He kisses her when she lets him, and doesn't mind if she pulls away.
He kisses elegantly, like a bad boy isn't supposed to, but Blair likes it anyway. He says her name in way she has never heard before – like a combination of a purr and a growl – and he looks at her like she is the most beautiful creature he has ever seen.
But he dated Serena van der Woodsen, so she highly doubts that that is how he truly feels.
She tells him one day that she is having dinner with her parents that night. He asks to come with her and she laughs in his face.
But he is serious.
And when she denies him, she watches as his blue eyes flicker with what resembles hurt and she thinks she may be falling for him.
She shakes off the notion and tells him he can come because it's not like you have anything better to do.
He looks at her too intensely for her liking, so she looks away and continues to brush her hair by the vanity.
"Besides, Eleanor adores you so that's a plus."
Blair pretends that his smile matches his eyes as she catches his reflection in the mirror.
The dinner goes well.
Carter is polite and well mannered. He makes pleasant conversation about politics and economics with Harold and Cyrus, and he gets compliments from Roman on his shoes. And despite everything, her mother still thinks he is lovely.
Lovely is not a word Blair would use to describe Carter Baizen.
But really, Eleanor wanted her to marry an Archibald. Blair presumes that her mother would sooner take a Baizen than a Bass.
(Blair pretends like it doesn't matter)
He puts his hand on her thigh when they sit down, but it never moves. He smiles at her every now and then, and she finds herself smiling, too.
Twenty: Blair doesn't quite know what to do with Carter Baizen.
Blair tells him three days before she is supposed to go home that she is leaving.
He looks at her like he is not affected, like it doesn't hurt that she is leaving him - but she can tell through it by the way his eyes flicker with something unknown.
But he knew she had to leave eventually, right?
"Don't pretend like you didn't know this was going to happen, Baizen. I have to go back eventually. I have school, friends, a life…" She tells him this because it is the truth.
"Of course." His eyes don't match his mouth, and she realizes that they both lie the same way.
"In three days you can go back to your philandering, wanderlust ways." She tries not to choke on the words that are about to die in her throat.
He looks at her, and she swears that she could die in his eyes and not care, but then he looks away.
"But until then…" she whispers it coyly, as she kisses his neck and tries to make the hurt that isn't supposed to be there stop.
Blair doesn't understand. This wasn't supposed to mean anything. She never meant to meet anyone, let alone someone she already knew.
Paris was supposed to be about freedom, not love.
Hope you enjoyed. Only one more part to go. Comment and review, if you like - they make me happy.