Everything is black and white and grey
The walls are shaking when you're touching me
Changes everything when you're close to me
Back to back, hand to hand, face to face again
Lovers end, enemies, then we're back to friends
Something left holding us pulls me closer in
Take a breath and the color will return again
Calling now, it terrifies me
and I don't know why
There you go, you paralyze me
and I don't know why
Everything is black and white and grey
The walls are shaking when you're touching me
Changes everything, changes everything
When you're close to me
"Munich"
The Fray
Blair walked quickly across the lobby and pressed the up button and waited for the arrival of the elevator. After her conversation with Chuck and the confrontation with Dan, she just wanted something easy. Coming to see Dorota and the baby were sure to put her in a better mood. She wasn't sure where she and Dan stood right now but she knew she didn't want to think about that mess.
When the doors opened Blair found herself staring down at a familiar face.
Will.
This would surely help her not to think about her situation, Blair thought bitterly. She was hopeful that at least the boy wouldn't remember her. Their encounter in the elevator hadn't been prolonged and the boy had barely looked up from his ice cream cone.
No, she reassured herself, he won't remember me.
"You're Blair, right," the boy questioned as she stepped onto the elevator.
Apparently he had a memory like an elephant.
"Yes," she affirmed with a tight smile. "You're…" she trailed off, pretending to not remember his name.
"Will," he said firmly, not fooled at all by her trick. "I'm Chuck's friend, we met in the elevator the other day."
She allowed her face to show a bit of recognition and just as she was about to confirm his statements, she was cut off.
"You were with some guy wearing a hideous plaid shirt and sporting an even worse haircut," he said with a slight smirk on his boyish face.
Blair stared at the boy, taken aback for a moment. No one talked about her boyfriend like that, she thought, seething.
She tried to think of a biting retort, but, unfortunately, when she thought back to Dan's red and blue plaid disaster, she realized the boy was right. She couldn't defend Dan's choice of shirts or his deplorable haircut. So she went for the next best thing.
"You are just like Chuck," she said, attempting to insert a sneer into her tone, "Always judging."
"I'll take the first part as a compliment," Will declared. "And as for the judgment part, is it judging if everything I said is true?"
Of course the boy would think being like Chuck Bass is a compliment, she thought. It's so Bass-like.
Her mouth opened slightly to gape at the boy. No one talked to Blair Waldorf like that and got away with it.
"I think not," Will finished with a satisfied smirk, clearly noting the lack of response from his opponent.
In that moment, as the smirk snuck across his lips, the boy captivated Blair. She could see it. She could see…him. He really was just like Chuck. Physically, the boy didn't look much like Chuck but the way he held himself, his expressions, his tone; the resemblance was uncanny and left Blair unbearably speechless.
"So," he began, choosing his next words carefully, "What's the deal with you and Chuck?"
She stared at him still lost in the similarities, "What?" she stuttered in a most unBlairlike fashion.
"The deal," he repeated, "You know how long have you known him, how do you know him? What's your history?"
The more she talked to this boy, the more he reminded her of Chuck, Blair decided. Of course Chuck Bass would be the only man on the planet that could find a boy that was just as annoying as he was at that age, and that, Blair thought, was saying a lot.
"You ask an awful lot of questions for someone I don't even know," Blair said with careful evasion.
"Inquiring minds want to know," he replied with a knowing smirk. "So what's the deal with you guys?"
"There's no deal," Blair replied, her tone purposely unwavering. "We're just friends."
"Yeah," Will grunted, "that's what Chuck said." And I didn't buy it any more from your lips than I did his, he added to himself.
Just friends, Blair thought with a pang at hearing what Chuck had reduced them to.
"Well, it's the truth," she retorted, trying to force the sick feeling that was rising in the pit of her stomach. The feeling of hurt, that all their history could be boiled down to that, made her ache. That after everything they had been through, their relationship would only be described as friendship. It didn't seem to do them justice. It didn't convey nearly enough; didn't come close to describing the depth of their feeling, the depth of her feeling. She had to remind herself that it was what she wanted and for the millionth time in her relatively short life, she was reminded that getting everything you wanted didn't always make you happy. In fact, some of the things she had never wanted to begin with had made her the happiest.
He continued to stare at her, seemingly challenging her to prove it. To prove that all she and Chuck were, was friends.
She had been wrong before- he was definitely more annoying that Chuck had been at that age.
"There isn't an elevator ride long enough for my history with Chuck," she relented.
Will looked unconvinced, noting that they still had four floors to go. He continued to stare her down, not moving his gaze from hers as he tilted his head to the side as if to say, 'I've got time.'
And maybe he did, but there was no way that Blair could rehash everything that happened with Chuck. Not now and certainly not with the boy who seemed to be Chuck's newest best friend.
"Our history is," Blair trailed off as she searched for the right word that would let her answer without giving too much away, "Complicated."
"Aren't they all?" Will challenged, cocking his eyebrow towards her.
Blair opened her mouth to refute him, but as she thought back on her life, all of her relationships seemed to be complicated-even her current one with Humphrey.
"What's your point," she said narrowing her eyes at the wide-eyed but not so innocent boy.
"My point is," Will started, not intimidated by her gaze. "No one said it would be simple. Lots of things are 'complicated.' Electricity is complicated-it doesn't mean you should turn off the lights."
"But just because it's complicated doesn't mean it's right," Blair challenged.
"No," Will conceded with an irreverent shrug, "But it also doesn't mean it's wrong either."
"We just," Blair began, but stopped quickly, her eyes dropping to the floor.
"We just what?'
"We just keep doing the same thing over and over again. We're friends and then we're…more and then we're nothing and I just, one day I realized I couldn't anymore," her eyes lifting at the end to find Will's brown gaze intently focused on her.
"And?"
"And what?"
"And are you happy?" he asked softly.
"Honestly?"
"No, I want you to lie," Will deadpanned. "Yes, honestly."
"No," she whispered closing her eyes as a tear slipped down her cheek.
"Then do something about it," Will said with a grim nod.
The elevator doors opened silently and Will stepped out, waving at the nurses as he made his way to his room.
Blair stood paralyzed in the elevator, staring after the boy.
Chuck sat in his spot, unmoved since Eleanor had left the apartment. His scotch glass had remained empty since her departure.
He had been surprised that Eleanor had been the one to tell Blair about the dowry; he had been certain that Jack had been responsible. Apparently he owed the Basstard apology.
Eleanor's words echoed through his mind for the thousandth time.
She'd be missing everything.
How ironic, since he was the one that currently felt like he was missing the most important pieces of himself. Like he was literally missing everything that mattered. Yes, his heart and lungs were still there but little good they did him. Little good anything seemed to do him without her.
And he knew it was his fault. Knew that though he had changed, it hadn't been soon enough and knew deep down that she deserved so much more than he could ever give her. But…but he had thought they'd be ok. Somewhere deep inside he had always believed that confession on the side of the road. He thought they could get through anything. That he had found someone who loved him the same way he loved them: unconditionally.
How had they gotten here? How had he been so wrong?
He walked slowly to the closet and pulled down the familiar shoebox for the second time in so many days. Holding it under his arm, he made his way to the bed, sitting down and placing the box in front of him. Slowly, he reached out, took the lid off and was met with Blair's beaming face. Unceremoniously, he dumped the contents onto the bed and began to sort through all of the memories that had made up their life together, searching for that moment where everything had gone wrong.
Her camisole from the night at Victrola, a picture of them from his father's wedding to Lily, a vial of Chanel No. 5, and a headband from their high school days lay mixed in with the photographs and letters, together they made the story that was Chuck and Blair. But what were they really? Only physical representations of what he and she had felt so deeply
He reached down and lifted the camisole from its place on the pile. He was about to lift it to his nose in an attempt to see if it still held her unique smell, when he felt a prick on his finger.
"Damn," he swore, dropping the camisole and bringing his ring finger to his mouth to suck off the blood.
"What the hell," he said as picked up the offending article, turning it over in search of what could have caused the damage.
As he flipped the camisole to the other side, he saw exactly what had caused the pain. Pinned to the underside of the camisole was a small, heart-shaped gold pin.
Blair's pin.
He had completely forgotten that it was there. Last year when they had been sneaking around, Chuck had snuck the pin out of her drawer and placed it in his "Blair Box." At the time, he had thought the gesture funny: that he had stolen Waldorf's heart without her knowing, but now, now it just felt like a brutal reminder that he was trying to hold onto something that didn't belong to him anymore. Slowly he removed the pin from the camisole and placed it on the nightstand, reminding himself to find a way to get it back in Blair's drawer without her knowing.
No longer in the mood to walk down memory lane yet again, Chuck picked up the remaining items and began to place them carefully back into the box. As he grabbed the last bit of photos and notes, an envelope caught his eye: a crisp, cream-colored envelope that he recognized as one from Blair's personal stationary. There were many such envelopes like this in the pile but this one stood out among the rest for one reason.
It was still sealed.
Anxiously he picked up the envelope and shoved the box to the side. Lifting his legs up, he leaned back against the headboard and contemplated the envelope. Turning it over several times, he noted his name written in Blair's carefully controlled script on the front. Taking a deep breath, he ran his fingers under the seal and steadily pulled the thick cream paper from it's home.
He closed his eyes and took another breath to steady himself and then unfolded the paper with shaky hands. Squeezing his eyes shut tightly, taking another steadying breath, and letting it out, he began to read.
