Hello all!
I think this is the first time I've written a story where people have had this much sympathy for Chuck. I take it I'm improving on my characterization of him! Either that or I'm just putting him through more crap than I'm putting Blair through, for once ;)
So this is another chapter that borrows from the show, but less so than the other ones I think. I wanted to include the Georgina storyline from season one and I'm working on finding a way to do that without following the show too closely; we'll see how that turns out in the end. In the meantime, here's chapter seven.
Chuck had barely sat down with his sandwich and his geography textbook when Blair strode up to his table and slammed down a magazine in front of him. He jumped slightly.
"Have you seen this?" she cried.
"You mean the magazine you nearly hit me in the face with? It's currently in my field of vision, so I guess yes."
Oblivious to his attempted humor she opened the magazine and pointed to an half-page article. He leaned closer to get a better look.
"'Bassinette for Bass?'" he read out loud, scoffing at the headline.
"You haven't seen it yet?" Blair asked angrily.
"Give me a minute."
He grabbed the magazine from her and read through the article. It stated how Bart Bass might be becoming a grandfather, even though his delinquent son was still a teenager. It went on to say that the grandmother of the baby in question was none other than fashion designer Eleanor Waldorf, and then it scandalized about how Bart Bass' son Charles was only one of two possible fathers, the other one being Nathaniel Archibald, son of the very same Archibald who had recently been arrested. It said some other crap as well but that seemed to be the more notable parts. The article was illustrated by a picture taken of Chuck and Blair leaving a parenting class together.
"It's bad enough that I get slammed on Gossip Girl on what feels like an hourly basis" Blair complained. "Now I have to find stuff like this in actual printed media?"
"Well what did you expect?" Chuck asked. "The media loves this kind of stuff. And they love implicating my father in scandal. Which is why I've always been careful to fly under the radar and not flaunt my lewdness on page six like Serena."
"Well you're on more pages than just six now" Blair said. "More like being on six pages. I have never been so humiliated in my entire life!"
"You say that now, wait until you have your feet in stirrups while some doctor is feeling up your cervix telling you how many centimeters you're at."
"Stop talking about childbirth like you know anything about it, or will ever learn anything about it. Chuck this is a disaster."
"What do you want me to do about it?" Chuck asked.
"For one you can send one of your dogs on the trail and find out who blabbed to the press" Blair said angrily. "That person will have a public execution by the end of the week."
"It could have been anybody."
"I know, hence the need for a PI. I can't do all the legwork myself, not when I'm juggling school, a scandal and morning sickness."
"Any journalist who happens to stumble on Gossip Girl would find out this much" Chuck pointed out, tossing the magazine aside. "It doesn't exactly require hard-hitting journalism."
He really couldn't care less about the article. He had enough problems to deal with as was. Thanks to his future stepsister he was now even further from his father's good graces and had been kicked out of home for a while. Serena's old frennemy Georgina Sparks had been sending her lewd gifts for about a week, gifts she had blamed on Chuck, and naturally Bart had believed her over his own son. Not that Chuck blamed him for suspecting Chuck was behind it. But what did hurt was his father not believing him when he told him he was innocent. Chuck knew he was far from the son who made his father proud, but he always took accountability for what he did and if he had indeed sent those gifts to Serena he would have owned up to it. At least Serena was no longer fuming at him. Once she had realized who the real culprit was she had switched from yelling and screaming at him to whining that he had to help her out. In the spirit of not messing up his father's upcoming marriage Chuck had agreed. With all this he had quite a lot on his hands, and Blair's little meltdown over what would surely only be the first of many articles about them would have to wait.
"I cannot believe the biggest embarrassment of my life is being spattered all over the press" Blair moaned, not sharing his opinion that this could wait, hiding her face in her hands. "That article was downright nasty. They wrote me up as a slut who jumps from one guy to the next. Two best friends at that."
"Actually they only stated the facts. You did go from one best friend to the other. If people interpret that as slutty, which you're doing right now, then that's what you have to face for bedding us both."
"Oh shut up Bass, you're a hundred times the slut I'll ever be" Blair said, looking up at him. "Why aren't you more pissed at this? They weren't exactly nice to you either. You're described as a teen gone wild who doesn't even know if he got a girl pregnant or not."
"Again, that's just the facts" Chuck shrugged.
"Ugh! Why do I waste oxygen talking to you?"
She got up with a huff and stormed off. He watched her go and then continued eating his sandwich.
Blair stomped up to Serena, who was sitting with Dan at a different table out in the yard, and sat down next to her.
"Thank you so much for convincing me to stay in New York" she griped.
"The article?" Serena guessed. "Yeah I saw that too."
"Everybody saw it" Blair said. "I am humiliated. Again. My life has become a humiliation bingo and I'm dangerously close to five across. All I need now is to have pictures of my stretch marks appear in the media."
"Blair you're barely showing" Serena said calmly. "Nobody can tell unless they see you without your shirt on."
"With my luck I'll be the size of Homer Simpson within two weeks" Blair said, before turning to Dan. "You can leave now."
"You know, I think I will" Dan said, getting up. "Pregnant women are scary. Especially when they're you."
He gave Serena a kiss and Blair made a disgusted face. Then he walked off, leaving the two girls to themselves.
"Having a hard day today?" Serena concluded, taking a bite from her apple.
"I'm sorry, S" Blair said, suddenly more sad than annoyed. "It's just… well, everything. It never seems to get any easier, with any of it. They say morning sickness goes away after the first three months, but obviously that doesn't apply to the spawn of evil because I still wake up feeling like crap."
"You're just barely into your second trimester" Serena pointed out. "Give it time."
"Do you know what the only way to get rid of the nausea is?" Blair asked. "Eating something. How messed up is that? Eating is the last thing I want to do when I feel like I'm going to hurl all over the place."
"Why don't you go to the bathroom and do just that, then?" Serena asked. "Always helps when I'm feeling really nauseous."
"Not in this case. If I start, I'll be there forever." She sighed and picked a fruit cup from her bag. "All I can do is force this fruit down my throat and pray for it to go away."
Serena gave her a sympathetic look. Blair opened her fruit cup and stabbed a piece of pear with little enthusiasm.
"You know, people had finally stopped staring at me and whispering behind my back" she lamented. "Their interest went down after a while since I wasn't showing. Now that I am starting to show I've been basically counting the days until I can't hide it anymore and the whispering and pointing start up again. So it sucks all the more that this article had to come now, reminding everyone of why it was so fun to gossip about me in the first place."
"Oh B, I'm sure they'll forget in a few days" Serena said, putting her hand on Blair's.
"If you're planning on causing any further outrage this semester then now would be a glorious time for it" Blair said. "Take one for the team."
"Sorry" Serena giggled. "No scandal planned. This is a brand new Serena, who is done causing scandal. I'm doing better at school, I'm dating a reliable guy! Unfortunately I am also now living with Chuck Bass, but you can't win at everything."
"Dan Humphrey may be reliable but he gets the blood going about as efficiently as a puddle of mud" Blair said, shoving a piece of pineapple in her mouth.
"Speaking of blood, you should try to keep your blood pressure down" Serena said dryly.
"That will have to wait" Blair declared. "I can relax after my litany of crises is over. At the nursing home when I'm eighty-eight. Ugh, and on top of all this other misery I also have to deal with stuff that isn't the side-effect of sleeping with Chuck Bass."
"You have problems in your life that aren't derived from sleeping with Chuck?"
"S, you said 'derived'" Blair cooed like a proud parent. "Good for you. You learned a new word! I see you're also trying to do well on your SATs. Which are of course one of the major headaches I've got right now that aren't related to Chuck."
"I'm sure my soon-to-be stepbrother will be relieved to learn that there are problems in the world that aren't caused by him" Serena said. "And yes, like every other high school junior in the country I am studying for the SATs. Dan and I are meeting for a study session at his place tonight."
"You try to make that sound romantic, but it just sounds pedestrian" Blair snorted. "Real people hire professionals to help train them."
"Oh do they now?"
"Yes" Blair said, and then sighed as she shoved the last piece of pear in her mouth. "Unfortunately for me, the problem has veered straight back into Chuck Bass territory."
"You seem to enjoy saying his name an awful lot…"
"No I don't. I hate his name! His first name rhymes with 'yuck' and I think that's less a coincidence and more Bart's reaction when he first laid eyes on him." She groaned when Serena raised an eyebrow. "Because I'm so busy suffering through the hell of pregnancy, most likely on his account, I am at an even further disadvantage with my SATs."
"How were you at a disadvantage to begin with? You scored a 2200 yesterday."
"2200 is a lousy score when you're trying to beat Nelly Yuki" Blair snorted.¨
"Why do you want to beat Nelly Yuki?" Serena asked.
"Serena you are never going to do well on your SATs if you keep forgetting to plug in your brain in the morning" Blair said. "Nelly Yuki has her sights set on Yale too. What are the odds of them accepting two girls from Constance? You have no idea how onerous this all is. I'm at a clear disadvantage here, and it's against an Asian girl with enormous ugly glasses, more extracurriculars than there's rice in China, and no baby in the oven."
"That's 'bun' in the oven" Serena corrected.
"Whatever. I need to kick her well-rounded ass."
"And they say you've lost your edge" Serena grinned.
"Nelly Yuki must be destroyed" Blair growled. "Ugh, the only problem is that the brilliant plan I've concocted only works if I have minions to help me carry it out."
"So concoct another plan."
"I need to find Nelly Yuki's Achilles heel and use it to squash her like a little four-eyed bug" Blair said. "Care to help me, S?"
"I told you, I've got a study date with Dan" Serena said.
"And I told you, that's totally lame. Help me out and you and I can study together. With tutors and people rubbing our feet. The way you're meant to study."
"Sorry B" Serena said.
"Nobody is on my side anymore" Blair sulked and walked off.
Serena watched her go and could barely conceal a giggle. Good thing she hadn't told Blair about her recent Georgina Sparks problems. She really didn't want to know how Blair would react if she found out Georgie was back in town.
Chuck paused the DVD he was watching when his phone rang. He picked it up and didn't bother looking to see who was calling.
"I'm so stupid!" a voice moaned on the other end.
"Serena" he noted.
"So, so, so, so, so stupid."
"You sound drunk, not stupid" Chuck generously offered. "What have you been into?"
He listened with smug interest as Serena gave him the details of how she sort of ended up not studying with Dan in favor of getting hammered with Georgie. This was Chuck's favorite kind of Serena and he was pretty pleased to see her back in action. Clearly though she wasn't too pleased about it herself.
"Can you help me?" Serena finished off her litany of woe.
"Say you need me" Chuck grinned, only to get his name whined back at him. "Hearing you scream my name is more than enough. I'll take care of it and pick you up in ten."
He hung up and made a call to Dan, enjoying every second of playing the helpful brother doing his poor, sick sister a favor while the Brooklyn hobo huffed and puffed on the other end. Then he got up to go pick up Serena. Just as he was about to leave there was a knock on the door. He opened it and found Blair.
"My, my" he said. "I'm quite popular tonight. Need someone who can take the SATs for you? Normally I would tell you to find someone on your own, but since you are the loving mother of my-"
"Shut up" Blair snarled.
"Motherhood placates you."
"I need help. And since I'm now all out of minions, thanks to being all out of dignity, and also all out of a best friend since Serena is with Dan the drone… Point being, you're going to have to help me."
"Get in line" Chuck said. "I have another wayward soul in need of my assistance and I'm on my way out as we speak."
"Call the skank up and tell her that you're busy" Blair said, striding past him inside the suite. "This is more important."
He was about to tell her that the skank in question was her bff, but he had a sneaking suspicion that Serena didn't want Blair to know what was currently going on. He closed the door, albeit reluctantly, and leaned back against it.
"You've got five minutes."
"I've got five months" she replied, motioning to her due-in-five-months belly.
"What is it Blair?" Chuck sighed. "I can't really do much about an article that's already in print, now can I?"
"That's not why I'm here. I need help destroying Nelly Yuki."
"That makes sense" he nodded. "Her extracurriculars can kick yours' asses in their sleep. And she's likely to outscore you on the SATs."
"Thank you, Captain Obvious" Blair fake smiled.
"The question is, what is all this to me?"
"I need to find her weakness so I can exploit it, and I'm running out of precious time" Blair complained.
"That did nothing to answer my question."
"Chuck I need your help" Blair said. "Come on, you know how hard it is for me to turn to you of all people."
"Do I now? 'Cause I seem to remember you having a very easy time turning to me with a previous predicament. What was that again? Oh, right. Losing your virginity…"
"You know what?" Blair said. "This was a mistake. Consider me gone. I'll just lose to Nelly Yuki, go to some horrible G-grade school like NYU or Smith, and live out my days in a trailer with a white trash brat and no career."
"Alright drama queen" Chuck said, refusing to move out of the way and let her pass. "I'll see if I can dig up some dirt. But until then I've really got to get going."
"Remember to use double condoms this time" Blair said with poison as he moved aside and she left his suite.
Chuck had barely gotten to school the next day before he was accosted by an indignant Dan Humphrey, joining the growing club of people who blamed all of the problems in their lives on Chuck. Then Serena came hippedy-hopping up to them and helped make matters worse by failing to remember the cover story for last night Chuck had fed her for breakfast. Naturally his so called sis couldn't keep the peace in her so called romance for more than three minutes and Dan stormed off. Well at least that meant one annoyance less.
"If it's really that bad why don't you just tell him about her?" he had to ask Serena.
The wheels seemed to turn in Serena's head for a few seconds.
"I can't" she then said.
"Well you're lucky that my paternal instincts seem to have kicked into gear or I would have had enough of bailing you out of trouble" Chuck said. "Especially when you can't even remember that I said food poisoning."
"I'll see you later" Serena said and walked off.
Chuck rolled his eyes and headed off on his second mission for today. This one involved finding Blair, which wasn't too difficult as she was the only pale faced girl fighting to keep down her breakfast on account of nausea. He took a seat next to her and she recoiled with a frown.
"Lovely day, isn't it?" he said.
"What do you want?"
"You asked me for help."
"Oh. Right. Well what did you find out?"
"That boring geeks like Nelly Yuki really are boring" Chuck said. "There's not much dirt to dish. She hates Flo Rida because of some break-up thing with her boyfriend at a concert, but I don't think you can blackmail her on account of having once liked Flo Rida."
Blair's nauseated facial expression turned into a musing one.
"This might actually be useful" she said.
"How?" Chuck scoffed.
"That's nothing you need to concern yourself with" Blair said sweetly and got up. "You just worry about… well, whatever you tend to worry about. And I will take care of Nelly Yuki. Have an adequate day!"
She strut off to commence operation Take Down Nelly and he watched her go with a smug smile. She was endlessly entertaining when her deviant side shone through. Too bad she wouldn't let him in on the details.
Two days later Blair stepped out on the streets after completing her SATs and felt like she had just completed a marathon. In the past forty-eight hours she had managed to convince Nelly Yuki that she really wanted to be her friend in lieu of better prospects, and had subsequently exploited Nelly's breakup to disrupt her chances at doing well on her SATs. It wasn't nearly as rewarding as Blair would have thought. She had always looked forward to the SATs, seen them as an opportunity to show Yale and everyone else that she was Yale material. Actually taking them had felt more like a walk through hell, and now she just wanted to go home and go to sleep for circa one month.
Dan Humphrey came walking up to her, but for once she didn't feel like bitching with him. She wondered if he had seen Serena. Blair had looked for her before the SATs had started but she hadn't seen her.
"How did you do?" she asked Dan.
"Uh, not my finest hour" Dan said. "I finished, but I… kinda' had a lot on my mind."
"I'll keep calling" Blair said, trying to reach Serena again.
She dialed Serena's number but then something caught her eye. Nate and that yucky Brooklyn camera girl Blair so despised. Together. As in together. Blair took a second to decide whether she should faint or puke, and her body seemed hot on option two.
What was Nate doing with another girl? With that girl? It was one thing that Chuck was still probably sleeping with everything with a pulse and the lack of a Y-chromosome but Nate was dating? That girl?
She felt tears start to well up in her eyes as she stood frozen, watching him get in a car together with that girl. Here she was, pregnant and ostracized, possibly with him being the baby's father. And he was running around with some girl. She felt humiliated even worse than before and her heart seemed to break all over again.
Suddenly the SATs didn't matter anymore. Finding Serena didn't matter either. All that mattered was to get home as soon as possible, before her hormones decided to get the better of her, and she would start sobbing out on the street.
She pushed past Dan, who tried to say something to her but she didn't care to listen. She had to get home. Karma truly was a bitch.
Thanks for reading! Please review =)
