AN: Did you guys read Promise of Forever? I just wanted to say… Santa Maria del Fiore (Duomo) is where Blair and Chuck got 'married' in Part 10 of that fic. I was reminiscing the story towards the end of this.

Part 7

He always thought his wife was cute whenever he saw her at the courtyard writing in her notebook like a little nerd. She always thought she was too cool and sophisticated to be branded like that, and for the most part she was. That was why no one ever called her a geek or a bookworm. But still he smirked every time he saw her writing her notes, her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth in a thin line showing her focus.

Compared to the rest of the breakfast club, she was a nerd.

It was often adorable, he had to admit. But this time, when he glanced at what she was writing down, the sight of her planning their itinerary was disheartening.

He reached for the notebook, and she slapped his hand away. "Go look out the window," she commanded, as if he were a child.

"There's nothing but clouds," he drawled.

She hushed him, then plucked the airline magazine from its place and handed it to him. Chuck took the glossy periodical and browsed through it. He spotted an attractive advertisement and opened his mouth to suggest the tourist destination, then noticed the already full page on her notebook. He returned to his magazine.

About an hour later, the pilot's voice came over the PA and announced that they were approaching their destination. Her exclamation interrupted the pilot's statement, so he turned to her and found her with a grin of pride on her face. She held her notebook out to him.

Chuck took the notebook and read the items with their corresponding time allotment. Even bathroom breaks were scheduled in for ten minutes each occurrence. "If I have to go pee, you have to go pee?" he asked pointedly.

"And vice versa," she confirmed.

Chuck's eyebrows met. "Wake up at five, coffee and breakfast at six, then hit four medieval churches by one. Lunch at one?" He shook his head. "No, no. I'll be hungry by eleven if you're making me eat breakfast at six. Speaking of which—"

"Look at seven am!" she said sharply.

"Seven eleven."

"Or any convenience store," she clarified. "I'm going to buy power bars and candies so you can eat something quickly on the road. We're only here for a week."

"So let me get this straight: You want me to nourish myself on power bars, wake up at five and go attraction-hopping, scheduled my rest time down to the last minute…"

She nodded.

"Mrs Bass, you expect too much from me."

"Not my fault that you expect too little of yourself, Bass," she pointed out. "You're capable of so much more."

Chuck blinked. "Wait, what?"

She shrugged. "We're sticking to the itinerary."

The itinerary that left little or no time at all for the sidetrips he had busted his ass planning for a week. "We're not sticking to this," he told her, setting her expectations. "This is ridiculous." He tossed the notebook over to her lap. "And we're waking up at ten."

"Why?" she demanded. "Because instead of going to these amazing places that have been standing for hundreds of years, you're planning on going to bars and getting drunk? You can do that at home, Chuck," she said, her voice acerbic.

"If I wanted a headache, I wouldn't need to get hung over. I can just listen to you talk," he muttered.

Blair gasped. "That is awful!"

"Glad you know."

She pursed her lips, then picked up her notebook. "Fine." She tore the page she had been working on for the latter half of the flight. She ripped the page up to pieces. "Any suggestions?"

He watched the little pieces of paper float to the airplane floor. Chuck smirked. His wife was so dramatic it was funny. She probably thought of all the negative parts of this entire marriage.

If she could even think of any. He made this entire thing so easy for her that he was never prouder of himself and his scheming. "I planned this honeymoon," he reminded her. "Of course I have ideas."

She rolled her eyes. "When you planned to honeymoon with your wife, you probably thought you'd spend the whole day getting some."

The moment he decided, in that drunken haze he had been with Nate, that he was going to swallow his pride and figure out a way to skip the apologies and get hitched to Blair, Chuck knew it would be abstinence for a good while.

"Is that a suggestion or a request?" he asked with a grin.

"Neither!"

The pilot's voice sounded in the plane. "We are hitting a patch of turbulence during our descent. Please make sure your seatbelts are fastened."

The plane hit the rough air and shook. "Oh my God," she whispered. Chuck felt Blair's hand grip his. He turned his hand over so he could twine their fingers. With his free hand he checked the lock on her seatbelt and pulled to test it. It was a good twenty seconds, and then the descent turned smooth. He took his hand away from her seatbelt.

The plane landed quietly, and they sped through the runway. Her hand was still tight on his, her eyes squeezed closed. The plane stopped, and Chuck raised their entwined hands so he could kiss her knuckles.

"We're here," he whispered.

Blair's eyes fluttered open. She glanced out the window and released a deep breath.

"Okay," she breathed. "We're okay."

He nodded. His eyes fell to her parted lips. There was just that slight tremor on the lower lip. Nate never told him Blair got nervous in turbulence. He racked his brain trying to figure out who else had flown with her, and why he never knew about it. Her eyes were wide, with just that hint of fear. He swallowed, moved closer. He touched his lips on hers, and it wasn't a kiss really. He did not press deeply, or urged her to open further. He did not use his tongue or hold her head. It was just that—a brief touch of his lips on hers.

When he lifted his lips from hers he felt her breathe, felt the air against his mouth. "You're okay. I wouldn't have let anything happen to you."

She nodded. "It was crazy last time. Your private jet fell a good nine hundred feet before the pilot got control back."

He had not heard about that. "Last year?"

She blinked, forced her eyes away. "Yes." The seatbelt light died, and she unsnapped herself and stood up. "Good thing Ben was calm throughout."

He watched as her back straightened, and she picked up her purse. Ben. The guy who introduced her to Marcus. She had a scare on the flight that he should have been on. Chuck combed his fingers through his hair. Since she was in the aisle seat, it was easy for her to make her way to the exit.

"Blair," he called out.

To his surprise, she stopped and waited. He almost stumbled moving after her, which was stupid because the spaces were considerable in first class.

"Thank you," he said when he reached her. The simple comment seemed to make her happy because she nodded and her face relaxed. "There's a car waiting for us outside the airport," he informed her.

"Straight to the hotel?" she asked as they deplaned.

Chuck's hand closed around her elbow as they walked to the baggage claim. "No. You can rest in the car. We're driving to the hills outside Florence. I have a table reserved for us in San Michele." He had spent two days of the last week searching for the best restaurant he could take her to for the first night of their honeymoon. "It has the best view of the city. We need to be there by sunset so you can watch."

She turned to him and her eyes were shining. Her grin made the hassle of reserving a table at the restaurant from the US worth every minute and language barrier pain. "Chuck," she said, stretching her words, obviously about to tease him, "did you make an itinerary of your own? Is that why you insulted mine?"

He spotted her bags coming on the belt. "I insulted yours because it was worthy of insults," he told her. He reached for the bags and heaped them on the floor. "And I don't have an itinerary."

She shook her head. "Where are we going after San Michele?"

"The car will take us to Excelsior," he pointed out. He loved the surprise in her eyes, and wondered why that would be there. Of course he would take her to the most luxurious hotel in the heart of the city. She deserved nothing less. "We're going to sleep."

Chuck's single bag rolled in front of her, and she grabbed it. Chuck reached for the handle, but she already lifted it off the belt and onto the floor. "Stay here. I'm getting a trolley."

"I'll get it," he protested.

She threw over her shoulder as she walked away, "Guard the bags."

She was insanely stubborn. When Nate talked about her—and he always seemed to think back to Nate's rants and raves because they were the only clues he had to how a relationship with Blair worked—he never referred to this type of stubbornness. In fact, Nate had made Blair sound so obedient and caring, fawning to a fault.

His wife seemed like such a different person from Nate's ex girlfriend. But that was impossible.

He picked up his bag and turned the numerical lock, then unzipped the hidden pocket. He took out the small box and opened it to reveal the diamond earrings he had gotten to match his mother's engagement ring.

Sunset at San Michele and confession on the first day of their honeymoon.

He couldn't give her a dream wedding, but this honeymoon was going to be straight out of her dreams.

Over their famous thin vegetable soup, red wine and ravioli, he would tell the words she had been waiting for, let her know the company was not in jeopardy.

Fuck. He was going to look her in the eye and admit how much a loser he was that he couldn't just say sorry. Instead, he had to come up with a huge plan to get her good and married to him.

She looked pretty pushing the trolley back towards him.

He hoped the diamonds were bigger, because if she remained unimpressed, he was headed for an annulment.

He lifted the bags onto the trolley, then took the handle from her. "Thank you, Mrs Bass."

"So where are we going tomorrow?"

"I'm not anal enough to program our honeymoon," he told her. Besides, it all depended on whether or not she was still talking to him after San Michele. "But I was thinking it would be a good idea to visit the Uffizi gallery first, then we can talk a walk down Ponte Vecchio." She would go insane over the jewelers all along that bridge.

"We're not going to the Duomo?"

"The day after," he said swiftly. Did she think he was so uncultured that he would forget one of the most important sites in Florence? The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore was the first site he programmed in his head when he decided honeymoon would be in Florence. "We'll go before we leave for grape-picking down at Chianti."

Blair laughed softly, shook her head. She sounded pleasant.

"What?" he asked.

"It's just that you said you didn't do itineraries."

"I don't," he insisted. Blair walked ahead of him. "You brought the red dress, didn't you?"

"You saw me bring it."

"Wear it to the restaurant," he suggested. "We'll stop by the bathroom before we go to the car."

If she got mad after his confession, then red was the perfect color for war. If she was happy, which he desperately hoped she would be despite Nate's reservations, red was the color for those three words he would try not to choke on.

Yeah, he thought of these things too. Just not itineraries.

tbc