Return of the Waldorf
Chapter 6
Day 6: Wednesday
Blair arrives at school on Wednesday nervous. She doesn't want to harm her chances of regaining her social status by a stray rude comment. Even though Blair's comments at Robert Nielsen's party the previous night seemed to have been received well by the students, Blair definitely lost control. Even though she had been sober, Blair recognizes that she just can't be trusted to keep her mouth shut.
So Blair's intention for the day is to stay out of sight. Unfortunately, the multitalented Blair Waldorf has many so-called superpowers, but none of them include invisibility.
Blair thus hurries into her first-period American Literature class and takes a seat in the back. She immediately puts her head down to take notes. She is very surprised when the girl sitting at the desk turns around, with a face that Blair recognizes vaguely as belonging with a name like Genevieve, and catches Blair's eye and smiles genuinely.
Blair bites her lip apprehensively, not sure if this is a good or bad sign. When the girl next to Genevieve also turns Blair's way and gives her an approving wink, Blair actually grins. When both girls grin back, Blair relaxes. Maybe more girls are switching back to support her than she had previously thought.
And maybe, Blair realizes, Hazel never really convinced all of the girls in the first place.
The thought keeps a self-satisfied expression on Blair's face for the rest of class.
Blair's newly regained confidence during class carries over into the break. Blair smirks noticeably at Jenny as she passes her in the hallway, causing Jenny to stop and glare.
Blair just shrugs and makes as if she is going to start walking again before Jenny steps closer and lowers her voice so the conversation is private.
"Look, I don't know who the hell you think you are anymore, but it's not anybody important, okay? So stop acting like it or you'll regret it," Jenny threatens with her best tough-girl pose.
There's a hint of a smile on Blair's face. "What are you going to do? Hide behind Nate as he tears me apart with his scathing wit?" Both Blair and Jenny know that Blair could beat Nate any day, verbally or otherwise.
"Besides," Blair adds, "who do you think you are?" Blair pauses and waits for Jenny to respond. It is when Jenny tries to answer that Blair continues. "You're certainly not me, Jenny, and that's who you need to be in order to rule this school."
With that, Blair turns on her heel and heads for the courtyard, leaving a bitter Jenny behind her. Blair is very proud: not only has Little J been properly insulted, but Jenny is also getting the hint that she'll be losing her newfound position of power.
Good. Blair wouldn't want Jenny to be out of the loop or anything.
At lunch that day, Blair is heading with her lunch tray over to where Serena and Dan are sitting on a bench in the corner of the courtyard when she bumps into Iz, literally. Blair is forced to stop for a second and Iz takes the opportunity to murmur, "Meet me after school in Tribeca, okay?"
Even though Iz doesn't specify before she walks off, Blair knows exactly where she is talking about. Blair had always preferred to have a location to meet and chat with her friends that wasn't quite as close to the Upper East Side and thus not as heavily monitored by Gossip Girl. Blair's favorite place was a no-name café in Tribeca that was near the waterfront. Blair is happy to out of Gossip Girl's sight, even if it is just for one afternoon.
Blair sits down next to Serena. "Tribeca after school?" Blair queries.
Serena looks quizzically at Blair. "What for?"
"Iz invited me," Blair does her best to sound nonchalant. "Why not?"
The corners of Serena's mouth turn down. "Blair, be careful with Kati and Iz."
Blair only raises her eyebrows in response.
"Look, Blair, they're tricky," Serena reminds her best friend. "They weren't our friends for so long because they were dumb. Besides, you never know what's really going on in their heads."
Blair nods agreeably. "A good point," she affirms. "But I'm still going. So are you with me?"
Serena looks at Dan. "I told Dan I'd hang out at his apartment after school…"
"It's not a big deal," Dan reassures her. "Go to your stupid girl-plotting thing and I'll see you afterwards."
Serena's face lights up and she hugs her boyfriend, who rolls his eyes.
Blair sighs. Sometimes her best friend was just so sickening.
Blair is very thankful for Serena that day after school, however. As they shared a taxi heading downtown, Serena speaks up.
"Hey, Blair?"
Blair, who is thumbing through her Palm Pilot, answers distractedly. "Yes?"
"What exactly are you expecting out of this?"
"Nothing, really," Blair says vaguely.
Serena fixes her best friend with a knowing stare. "Nothing? Then why are we going?"
Blair doesn't rise to the bait. "Kati and Iz might be able to help us."
"Really? What if they're working for Hazel?" Serena asks challengingly.
Blair finally turns to face Serena. "Hazel doesn't have half the subtlety for this kind of stuff, and you know it. But Kati and Iz do, which makes me think they're running it on their own. I don't know what their goal is, but I'm for anything that Hazel is left out of."
Serena contemplates this thoughtfully for a moment. "I guess we can give it a chance," she says finally.
"Good," Blair motions to the door of the now-stopped taxi. "Because we're here."
Blair and Serena enter the café and quickly spot Kati and Iz sitting at a table with five or six other girls. Blair recognizes among them Hazel's sidekick Nicky and the two girls who smiled at her this morning in American Lit. She and Serena sit down at the two open seats left for them with a fair amount of trepidation.
"So, what's going on, Iz?" Blair directs the question to the person who invited her.
Iz and Kati exchange glances, apparently deciding who will explain. Finally, Iz explains delicately. "We need to…alter the social structure around here."
Serena raises her eyebrows skeptically. "Why would you want to do that?" She asks, disbelieving that Kati and Iz would want to do something that would help her and Blair.
Kati and Iz share a disbelieving glance before turning back to Serena. "Have you noticed that an incompetent skank is running the school?" Iz responds incredulously.
"It's not even the sluttiness," Kati explains. "I mean, if it were just that it would be okay." Iz nods in confirmation as Kati continues, "But she doesn't even understand social anything! Decorum, secrecy, everything is like a joke to her. In like five days, she's inadvertently exposed at least three secret relationships that girls in the clique have-well, had."
Two of the girls at the table all sigh in annoyance at this.
"It's like she doesn't even care about the preservation of order, you know?" Iz adds. "I mean, girls are defecting fast."
"Really?" Blair asks, intrigued.
Iz sweeps her arms, gesturing towards all the girls at the table.
Iz sighs, crossing her arms. "It's going to split the school."
Kati laughs. "As if there's going to be anybody left on her side by the end."
Nicky laughs. "So true," she mutters.
"Are you guys going to be?" Blair asks outright.
Iz and Kati look at Blair pityingly, almost. "You know we're on your side, B," Iz says finally. "As if we could stand even another week of that loser in charge."
Kati nods in agreement. "We'd officially defect to you right know, Blair, if we didn't think we'd be infinitely more helpful getting information from Hazel's side," she explains.
Blair's eyebrows furrow as she contemplates this unexpected windfall. Suddenly, her plot to return to power is no longer on the fringes of the social consciousness. Now, it is expected, even anticipated, by the girls at Constance Billiards.
"So what are you thinking?" Blair asks finally.
The girls around the table all share a conspiratorial grin. "We were hoping to expose a few secrets about Hazel herself," Genevieve, the girl from Blair's American Lit class, explains.
Blair and Serena listen attentively as the rest of the plans are laid out for them. By the end of the meeting, Blair is convinced that these girls are truly on her side. If nothing else, Blair reflects, at least they hate Hazel just as much as she does.
However, time fades away and Blair has to race back uptown to shower and get ready at her apartment before that evening's meeting with the Rodriguezes. And, of course, Chuck Bass.
Blair opens up her web browser and checks the Gossip Girl homepage as she blow-dries her hair. She sees the main headline and nearly chokes.
C and H hook up!
Blair clicks on the link and is confronted with a huge picture of Chuck and Hazel making out. She scans the text below it.
As Gossip Girl can exclusively confirm from many independent sources, C and H were all over each other at a party last night. After B took on the entire ruling clique (and by many reports, won), C and H apparently drowned their sorrows in each other. They weren't seen together at school today, but rumors abound that C has asked H to 'hang out' again. Will C and H be the UES's newest power couple? Stay tuned!
Blair's mind rushes with conflicted emotions. She is naturally proud that Gossip Girl has reported her as winning in her verbal argument against Hazel, not that it was much of a contest. She is disgusted that Chuck and Hazel, two of the most promiscuous people on the Upper East Side, have hooked up. And is that jealousy twisting Blair's stomach into knots?
If it is, Blair certainly is not planning on admitting it. She tries to forget the way she feels when Chuck sends her his usual lascivious look or kisses her senseless. Briefly, she is thrown back to Saturday night, and she sighs. It is so hard for her to admit to enjoying the caresses of a boy who alternately begs for her and tosses her away.
She takes out her curling iron and applies eye makeup as it heats up. As she smudges her eyeliner into her lash line, Blair pretends to herself that she had always been planning to dress sexy for the dinner with the Rodriguezes.
Although Blair is usually prompt, she decides that tonight is a good time for a more dramatic entrance. She sweeps into Balducci's ten minutes late, after she is sure that every other person attending has already arrived.
"So sorry I'm late," Blair chirps as she kisses her mother's cheek. She gives a polite wave to Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez and Bart Bass. She turns to give Chuck a curt nod when she sees her.
Hazel sits there, smirking, wearing a dress with the lowest neckline Blair has ever seen, the v-neck shape plunging nearly to her navel.
Blair swallows the bile rising to her throat and forces a smile onto her face. It doesn't reach her eyes.
Blair sits down in the only empty seat at the table, between little nine-year-old Tommy Rodriguez and her mother. Chuck sits across from her and Blair just knows that Chuck will take this opportunity for footsie. Again.
As the table awaits the arrival of their drinks, Blair makes polite conversation with just about everyone, charming all. Even Tommy seems placid and nothing like the tiny terror Blair remembered from a week ago. The only person left out of this socializing is Hazel, whom Blair ignores completely.
Blair's mother turns to her daughter during appetizers and keeps her voice low as she asks, "Why are you ignoring that girl, Hazy? I told you that you could bring a date as well."
Blair puts on her best remorseful face. "Was I? I didn't mean to at all, I just didn't have anything to say to her."
Blair raises her voice to a normal level and turns to Hazel with an unreadable expression on her face. "So, Hazel, I didn't realize you knew Chuck. How do you guys know each other, again?"
For the first time that evening, Chuck actually looks at Blair. Even when Blair had been asking obligatory questions about Victrola, he had focused on other people at the table when answering. He is scared of losing his cool around her. Hazel may have had on an unusually slutty dress, but her overt propositioning was nothing compared to Blair's sensual sexuality literally glowing around her.
Chuck observes Blair coolly, not bothering to help his date as she struggles with an appropriate answer. Finally Hazel comes up with some ramble about how she and Chuck had been dating for a few months now and it all sounds so ridiculous that even Bart Bass is raising an eyebrow at Chuck.
Chuck just shrugs nonchalantly at his father. Not his problem that Hazel's crazy. Bart Bass looks to Hazel for a moment, then to Blair, and then back to his son, beginning to piece together the true social landscape of the teenagers on the Upper East Side.
Chuck proceeds to ignore his date for the rest of the night, leaving Hazel annoyed and alone. Chuck instead focuses on containing the seemingly boundless energy of Tommy Rodriguez, awoken by the first sip of his soda. Tommy alternately devoured and picked at his food and managed to upend his cup three times despite being under the watchful eyes of Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf.
The third time that Tommy upends his glass he manages to completely soak the upper half of Blair in Coca Cola. Blair's jaw drops and Hazel smiles for possibly the first time that night.
As Blair dabs futilely at her now-ruined dress, the Rodriguezes apologize profusely. Blair suspects that it is this guilt that causes Alexandra and Joseph Rodriguez to agree to fund a substantial investment into Bart and Eleanor's proposal.
Nevertheless, Blair hisses to her mother as the dinner is ending, her mother so owes her.
"I'm sorry, darling," Eleanor whispers back. "You know I didn't mean for your dress to be ruined."
Blair glares a little at her mother.
Eleanor sighs. "Look, let me just say good-bye to Bart, Alexandra, and Joseph, okay? Then we can just take you home from here and you can change." She snaps her fingers. "Wait! I just thought of something." She rummages through her oversized Betsey Johnson bag and extricates a thin slip of a dress. "I have this left over from a photoshoot the other week. You can wear this until we get home so you don't feel so icky. Won't that be better?"
Blair accepts the proffered dress grudgingly. It would certainly be nice to not have Coca Cola all over her. Too bad her mother didn't remember the spare dress earlier.
Blair makes her way to the family bathroom in the back hallway of Balducci's and is dressed only in her bra and panties when she hears a knock on the door.
Chuck had watched Blair courteously excuse herself from the departing group to change her outfit and he seized his one chance. He made up some gibberish for Hazel about how he needed to go retrieve something from the maitre'd, and when Hazel wasn't looking followed Blair into the back hallway.
"Blair, let me in, quick, before somebody sees," Chuck knocks on the bathroom door frantically.
Blair logically knows that she wants to keep Chuck away from her, but she figures that it would be better for him to not be out there giving away the fact that they still had somewhat of a relationship. So without thinking, she quickly opens the door and motions him in. She leans over to deadbolt the door once he is inside so that no wandering dinner guest will enter.
Chuck is in shock. Blair is wearing nothing but a lacy demi-cup bra and thong panties, showcasing every glorious curve and the endless smooth skin of her body. His eyes travel her body leisurely, his own pants tightening.
Blair flushes as she realizes how she is dressed, quickly reaching for the slip and pulling it over her head.
Chuck frowns as her luscious body is covered up, but consoles himself with the fact at least her long legs are still visible for his ogling pleasure.
"Bass, what do you want?" Blair hisses.
Chuck gives her a once-over, lingering on her (sadly concealed) breasts and hips. "Do you really have to ask?"
Blair rolls her eyes in annoyance. "I mean, other than that. Don't you have a girl that can satisfy those needs for you?"
Chuck gives her an incredulous look. "Are you kidding? You know you're the hottest girl at Constance," he tells her.
"You told me you didn't want me anymore," Blair says slowly, as if to a child.
"And you believed it?" Chuck's silky-smooth voice glides over Blair and makes her shiver. She pretends the shiver is due to her current state of dress.
"I'm not your toy," She sighs. "I can't just wait around for you."
"But you have, Blair," Chuck tries to convince her. "You could have moved on with that boring, stuck-up Nate substitute, but you didn't. You're still waiting now. I'm here with you. What's the problem?"
Blair looks at Chuck in annoyance. "The problem is you. You can't even commit to me! I'm sick of you just using me as some sort of fuck buddy."
"But you like it so much," Chuck purrs, reaching out a hand to stroke her shoulder. "Besides, isn't it fun?"
Blair steps back from his outstretched arm. "That's not the point, and you know it."
"Oh, isn't it, though?" Chuck muffles any further objections by sweeping Blair into another kiss, taking the opportunity to smooth his hands over her silk slip.
After Hazel waited outside the restaurant for several minutes before realizing that clearly, Chuck was going to take a while with the maitre'd and she wanted to use the occasion to follow Blair and get some dirt on her. Hazel slips back into the restaurant and presses her ear against the family bathroom that she is sure Blair is changing in.
She is just in time to hear the tail end of the opening line of what she assumes to be a phone conversation Blair is having.
"…what do you want?" Blair's voice floats clearly through the bathroom door.
Another voice that Hazel can't place comes through more muffled. "Do you really need to ask?" Hazel figures it must be some secret lover of Blair's on speakerphone.
Hazel glances down at her own phone, which is recording this conversation. It will be the perfect way to further the ruin of the reputation of Blair Waldorf once it is released on Gossip Girl.
A/N: Thanks to maz4pj for the beta! I hope you all enjoyed Blair and Chuck finally having it out! :) I will be posting these chapters close to every day now because I have four more chapters and one epilogue until the story ends and my self-imposed deadline is next Monday.
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