"I want out."
Chuck glances over at Blair who is standing in the living room of their New York apartment, her hands crossed over her chest, watching him. He doesn't fully register what she's saying, tired from a full day of traveling and annoyed that she hasn't done her usual modus operandi of leaving town the day before he arrives, heading to St. Bart's or Paris or anywhere besides near Chuck Bass. Fifteen years and they've become two people who are very adept at avoiding each other.
He wasn't surprised to find Blair there when he finally made it to the apartment. His assistant had told him that Mrs. Bass had called and asked for his flight schedule, which meant that Blair wanted to know exactly when he'd be arriving, which meant she'd be waiting for him, which she was. He'd expected she wouldn't give him time to settle before coming to him with her latest demand.
"Are you listening to me, Chuck?" Blair asks. He nods yes, but he's not actually listening. He doesn't want to have this conversation, not when he's been flying all day and what he really wants to do is fix himself a drink and take a shower. Blair does this every once in a while, mostly about Henry and boarding school, and argument that Chuck always wins. He's sure she's going to tell him she wants to take him out again. He's going to tell her that their son will have the best education available and that means he stays. They'll go round and round but in the end Chuck always wins and Blair always cries. Their entire marriage has become the push-pull of two people grappling for advantage, and Chuck is almost always the victor.
"I don't think you heard what I said, Chuck Bass. I want out."
Blair walks over to him and stand directly in front of him, her face impassive, her voice strong, and Chuck thinks this is different. She's not asking, not pleading. She's dictating the terms. It's going to be a long night.
"Out." Blair says even more forcefully.
Her words finally filter into his tired brain and Chuck finally asks what Blair what she's talking about, what she wants out of, feeling annoyed and snappish.
"This," Blair says, her tone determined. "Us. I want a divorce."
This manages to take Chuck by surprise. "What?" he says, not fully understanding what Blair is saying.
"A divorce, Chuck. Our marriage has been a lie for a long time now. You don't even live in New York anymore. You never see our son. I want to make something that we've both known for a long time official."
It's strange because these words actually hurt, and Chuck thought he had managed to get himself to a place where he was the only one who could do the hurting. He thought he'd worked to keep everyone in their place so no one could hurt him. But somehow she'd managed to do it.
"Why?" Chuck asks, standing in the suit he'd been wearing all day. He shivers a little because New York is cold and he misses the heat of Dubai. He still wants a shower and and a drink and to not be having this conversation, "After all these years, why now?"
Chuck asks even though he knows the answer.
Blair's eyes are dark and wide as she watches his face. She says nothing for a few long seconds, then her lips part and a partial truth comes out.
"I need to move on."
He thinks of the folder that had been delivered to his office a couple weeks ago, the black and white photos that had spilled out and how for just a brief moment his gut twisted with something he might call jealousy. Chuck had pushed it down. If you don't want to get hurt, the first thing you do is stop caring. If you care, you get hurt.
Chuck walks to the bar and pulls out a cut crystal high ball. At least he can have his drink. He pours a decent amount of whiskey into it then walks to stand at the floor to ceiling windows of their apartment, staring out over the New York skyline that was sparkling against the night sky, his back to Blair. He takes a sip of the whiskey and it burns his throat.
"And Henry?" Chuck asks, also knowing the answer to this question, staring at the reflections in the window, Blair standing behind him, looking small. He has made his life's work being a good businessman, and one of the most important parts of that is information. He rarely asks a question that he doesn't know the answer to.
"I'm pulling him out of boarding school."
Chuck smiles. There it is. The same old argument.
Blair continues, "I'm taking him to Paris with me."
The pictures had been from Paris and part of Chuck had felt relieved that after all his dalliances and affairs, it appeared that his wife finally had her own. But this...this was different, a more personal kind of betrayal. It was one thing if they fucked other people, but Chuck Bass wasn't going to face the public humiliation of the world knowing that his marriage had fallen apart.
Chuck takes another drink.
"No." he says quietly, almost offhanded, still staring out the window. Blair would not be leaving him. "you made your choice, Blair. You married me. You will not leave me. Not for that humdrum Dan Humphrey. Not after all these years."
His eyes meet hers in the window and he sees that he's managed to surprise her. Yes, Blair, Chuck thinks, I know. You are part of the Bass empire, a representative of Chuck Bass to the world and he makes it his business to know everything about all of his assets.
"How?" Blair sputters, her face finally moving from impassive to shocked. Chuck turns back to her, a smug smile across his face. He will win this particular game.
"I've had someone keeping tabs on you for years now. I can't have my wife doing something that would endanger Bass Enterprises, can I?" Chuck says smoothly, arching one eyebrow. Check mate, Blair, he thinks to himself. You won't be getting out. Not any time soon. He wants to laugh a little at the fact that his wife had thought she could just come here and tell him she was leaving him.
"I don't care if you fuck him." Chuck continues. "Go ahead, you have my blessing, but we will stay married and as far as the world is concerned, happily married."
Blair looks like he's dealt her a death blow. "You don't understand, this isn't some tryst or affair. I can't...he won't…" Her voice trails off.
"I need to get unpacked and showered," Chuck says dismissively. This conversation is over. "You can stay here tonight or you can head out to wherever you usually go to escape me. I don't really care."
"No." Blair says quietly. "Not this time Chuck. I've let you walk all over me for too long. I'm not going to back down. I'm going to call my lawyer."
Chuck's eyes narrow. This isn't the way their discussion usually go.
"You won't get any of my money," Chuck says, still watching her, waiting for her next move.
Blair laughs, a sharp, tinny almost hysterical sound, "I can get a job, Chuck. A job, like you do. If I'm no longer Mrs. Chuck Bass I don't have to play the role of Upper East Side housewife and hostess anymore for your clients and the world. Plus, I have money from my mother. And I can always go back to Waldorf Designs. I have options."
Chuck feels his veneer of calm being stripped away bit by bit. Maybe this isn't the game he thought it was. Maybe he doesn't know all the moves.
"You won't get Henry." he hisses. "I'm make sure of that. He stays here, with me, in boarding school."
"Really?" Blair spits out. "I'll fight you tooth and nail for him. A father who lives overseas, who sends him away, how wants to raise him with nannies and a mother who wants him by her side. Who has his best interests at heart? And if I have to, I'll go public. I'll tell the world exactly what it's like to live in your world, be your wife. You want to threaten me with money? I'm betting I can get some money with a book deal. A New York Times best seller all to drag you through the mud. I'm taking Henry with me."
This might hurt Chuck if he ever allowed himself to get hurt. He might feel like he was facing yet another person in his life who is rejecting him. His mother. His father. In the end no one actually wants Chuck Bass unless he has a way to keep them tied to him. Now Blair is being added to the list.
It seems like a lifetime ago that she stood on that rooftop and chose him, and they seem like they were different people back them. He'd wanted it to work, wanted to be the kind of husband Blair could rely on. They had both failed, partly because most of their relationship had been based on manipulations and games, so when the love faded even a little, manipulations and games were all they had left. And while Chuck had never been very good at loving someone, he had always been very good at manipulations and games.
"You try to destroy me," Blair whispers, her voice deadly, her face serious, "and I'll destroy you first. And you know, Chuck Bass, if there is one person in this world who could take you down, it's me."
Chuck smiles at his wife's threat, so much like the Blair Waldorf, Queen B that he fell in love with and feels his anger start to slip away. He laughs a little Blair blinks, looking a little taken aback at his response considering that she was leveling every threat she could think of at him.
"This is what we've always been best at, isn't it?" Chuck murmurs. "Lying, cheating, playing one game after another. We've been our happiest when we're trying to destroy each other but even that isn't fun anymore."
"I don't know if we've ever been happy," Blair says quietly and Chuck can feel the truth in her words. She's right.
"And you love him." Chuck says, the anger is gone now and in its place is a strange calm, and acceptance.
"I think I always have," Blair answers, and then in a rare moment of stark honesty, she says to him, "do you know what it feels like to live your entire life knowing you've made the wrong choice? I barely feel like I can breathe these days."
Chuck finds that he actually cares about the fact that Blair looks more in pain than he's ever seen her. He feels his heart clench, and not because of a business deal gone sour or winning another contract. It's because he still cares for Blair and hates to see that she's hurting like this.
That's the moment Chuck lets her go.
Because under all of his games, all of his jockeying for position, there is still part of Chuck that loves Blair. Not the Blair that fights with him and avoids him, the one who looks at him with resentment in her eyes, but the one who chose him over the person she truly loved all those years ago. He'd been happy, truly happy, for a little while, until things started to fall apart and they'd fallen into their old patterns and old games. But he sees that Blair again as she tells him one of the few truths they'll ever tell each other. She has never loved him the way she loves another man and she can't continue to live the lie they've been telling themselves. They'd never been meant to last and now Chuck knows it's because Blair was never his in the first place.
"I don't," Chuck says flatly, "Because I never made the wrong choice. I loved you."
She notes the past tense. "Chuck!" Blair gasps his name as she starts to understand what's happening. He's letting her go.
"He won't leave Serena?"
She runs a hand through her hair, looking genuinely distressed.
"God, I don't know. I really dont. It's...complicated and I haven't even talked to him since Paris, and he's not like us Chuck. He doesn't play games and put on a different face for the world. He loves her and they have kids. I just...I just can't live this way anymore, even if I don't have him. I can't lie to myself and the world. I have to be who I'm meant to be, and it's become clear that I'm not meant to be your wife anymore. I can't stay here, stay married to you. I want out, no matter what the consequence."
She stops talking, almost breathless and watches his face, looking for his response to her words. Chuck thinks for a long moment, his gaze locked with Blair's.
"Okay." he says,.
"Okay?" she echoes.
"Okay. You can get out. And Henry can go with you. I just want to see him now and then, maybe at Christmas, or over the summer. He's still my son and he's still the heir to the Bass fortune."
Blair makes a strangled gasping sound and then she's laughing and crying, throwing herself at him, wrapping her arms around him and Chuck holds her tightly one last time.
TBC