Disclaimer: Don't own.

A/N: Alright, ladychrysanthemum, I did my best to get this out as soon as possible and even partly forgot Christmas :). I hope you enjoy it! And thank you to all of my other reviewers, especially nondescriptf, Krazy4Spike, HnMSkinnys, BirkinBag, libertine84, ellibells, 86kay, SweetDarkling, notoutforawalk, Taylorr x333, Chris2035 and many and all others who review (those are some that I can remember, probably because they are consistent). You are all wonderful and it is very much appreciated! But I won't bore you any longer…

Chuck got home late that night, completely exhausted. His father had run into Blair and Lili on their way out of the office and after exchanging pleasantries, Bart stalked into Chuck's office…and wasn't pleased at all.

Chuck had accomplished nothing that day that had anything to do with Bass Industries. And to put it plainly, Bart completely reamed him out, demanding to know what the hell Chuck had been doing the entire day. Chuck stumbled over the curt explanation that it was personal business, to which Bart grew even more furious, exclaiming that Chuck had promised that his current mess with Blair would not affect his job.

So after making a few phone calls and being dragged to an investor's meeting, Chuck carried himself to the penthouse, dreading what would await him. Sure enough, as he got out of the elevator, Liliana launched herself at him, chattering endlessly about all she had done after her mother had picked her up.

Thankfully, from what he gathered, she had not asked her mother about "unresolved sexual frustration." She went on and on about how she had modeled for Eleanor and how Blair told her she was well-behaved at the "lawyer office." Chuck just kept nodding at her, hoping that there would be some form of respite eventually. He looked up hopefully when Blair finally emerged, but it was only to tell him that she and Liliana had already eaten and he could order up room service, and then promptly disappeared again. Lili continued to yammer in his ear, even talking while he ate. He supplied her with the occasional "Oh really?" and "That's great, Princess" which forestalled any suspicions she might have with his behavior.

But he supposed that he must have become too absentminded, because Liliana suddenly stood up, her feet balancing on his legs while he sat, and faced him.

Chuck drew back as she reached for his face, a light frown clouding her expression. "What's wrong?" he asked quickly.

The little girl didn't respond at first, only touched his mouth, her fingers brushing him like a feather as they played with the corners of his mouth and travelled up the side of his face. Her fingers moved like a painter's as they traced his down-turned eyebrows and then drifted away.

"You're thinking," she said softly. "You're thinking far away…"

Chuck felt his breath catch at the small sentence and he searched her eyes, as if he somehow expected her to figure it all out. "I'm sorry," was all he could think to utter. But she seemed indifferent to his apology, still drinking in what she could of his face. He watched her and tried to mask his feelings or betray anything that might confuse her.

But he could see that she was already there…already puzzled by him. He had seen that look a million times…while he was with Blair, when she would try to figure out something serious—a problem that really bothered her.

Liliana took in a deep breath. "Do you—"

Blair appeared at the doorway. "Lili, it's time for bed."

The reaction was immediate, and so comical that Chuck had to laugh. "It can't be!" Liliana spun quickly on Chuck's lap, causing her to lose her balance and if not for Chuck's steadying hands, she would have been flat on the floor. But the near-fall did nothing to impede her complaints. "It's only been, like, seventy minutes since Daddy's been home!"

"Daddy got back late, darling. Check the clock."

But Liliana sank back down on Chuck's lap and shook her head. "I won't look at it." She squeezed her eyes shut for good measure.

Blair rolled her eyes. "Look at it or don't look at it all you like. Bedtime is bedtime."

"Mommy, please!" When she saw that her mother would not be moved, she turned to stare at Chuck, lip trembling. "…Daddy…"

Chuck knew this was the time for his expected intervention, so he stood, lifting Liliana with him. "Sorry, kiddo. Mommy can tell time better than both of us. I'm afraid you're down for the night."

Blair did manage a small smile at Chuck as he put the reluctant child down and Blair took her hand to drag her up the stairs. When they had reached the foot of it, Liliana turned back with the word "Traitor" plainly on her mind. "Daddy, two stories tonight! You promised! You gotta come up too and read to me! And tuck me in!"

Chuck looked up at the ceiling. "Just shoot me and get it over with."

"Daddy!"

"Coming, Princess…" Chuck grumbled before following after them.

Liliana made sure that both of her parents were there for her tucking-in process…but it didn't take long for Chuck to begin to refer to it (in his head only) as a Tucking-In Ceremony. The kid not only required two stories (Liliana never forgot the debts that were owed her) but also a glass of warm milk, her hair done so it wouldn't be a tangled mess when she woke up, and Blair's soft singing. By the time, they trudged out of the room, it was an hour and a half from when it had first begun. For the most part, he had watched from the shadows, and when he was actually called upon to do something, he had felt like an idiot and could feel Blair scrutinizing his every move. Why couldn't he have been dropped into a universe with a stupid wife?

As they moved down the stairs, silently and together, Chuck glanced at his watch and couldn't believe the time. It was only eight o'clock! And worse, he was exhausted enough to go to sleep right at that moment…but then he remembered Blair's promise at the office and he almost emitted an audible groan.

After everything that had happened today, he didn't think that he could mentally handle another talk. He would have to put it off at all costs.

"Chuck?"

He was spurred out of his thoughts by the sound of her voice and he looked around to see her leaning against a chair, eyeing him. There was a question in her eyes…but he couldn't move. His legs had frozen and he just stared back at her.

It was Blair. Standing there; lovely. Her dark eyes filled with something, maybe worry, but he realized that was perhaps one of the reasons he…enjoyed her company so much. Her eyes were always filled with something. He had never seen her look empty in all of the years that he had known her. Nate would occasionally get an insubstantial look when he had been smoking, or before, when Chuck knew that he was thinking about Serena.

And Serena, there was a slight but constant emptiness about her, though she tried to hide it with other things…compensating with her stark beauty and sunny disposition. But they all knew that she was searching and she always would be, because whatever she was trying to grasp just wasn't there. Serena only thought that she wanted to run…but Chuck always thought that what she really wanted was for someone to stop her.

Whether Blair was infinitely happy, or calculating, or pained—there was always something in those eyes. And when he was at his worst, and he had wanted to just lay waste to himself and forget it all, he would call her and just have her there. And he could drown in the something that was assuredly in her eyes. It could fill him too.

Blair. His friend, standing directly in front of a fireplace. Waiting for him and not Nate. It didn't get any easier no matter how long he stayed here. Granted, he had only been here for twenty-four hours, but Chuck still couldn't wrap his mind around how strange and wrong this place was…because there were many instances when it felt very right. And those moments of right were at their most blatant when he was with Blair. It hadn't been long, but Chuck could tell that she and Other Chuck had been a good match.

And if this stupid situation had gotten him anything, it had shown him how important Blair was to him as a friend and confidante…and how much he noticed things about her that he hadn't even done consciously.

But it wasn't love and it never would be. It couldn't be.

"Chuck…" she said it so softly that she could have sighed his name. She said his name a lot, like she knew that it sounded so good coming out of her mouth. But there was no way that she could have known that.

"Blair," he countered. He was beginning to wonder what she had in store for him.

When he finally addressed her, Blair turned slowly, almost coyly and walked towards the master suite. Chuck followed after her like a man possessed and almost immediately regretted it.

"No,no, no, no, no," Chuck paled and muttered quickly to himself as he averted his eyes. As soon as Blair had walked into "their" bedroom, she unbuttoned her blouse and shimmied out of her skirt, leaving herself in nothing but lingerie…very sexy lingerie.

Blair must have heard him under his breath, because she turned to look at him with eyes too wide to be completely innocent. "Did you say something?"

Chuck was still looking away from her, feeling very uncomfortable. He wouldn't sleep with her. It was out of the question because he could sense what a mistake it would be. She was too good.

Abstaining from anything…especially sex, was something that he never did. And Blair (who he found he was unbearably attracted to) stripping in front of him would serve to do nothing but drive him insane.

"I'm going to the down to the bar." Chuck refused to look at her and pivoted quickly to leave the room. Predictably, Blair sashayed to his side, grabbing his arm.

"Chuck, no! We need to talk!"

He finally looked down at her, noting her every perfect curve, her smooth, white skin and the chocolate curls falling around her shoulders. "This is talking?" he asked incredulously. "Or are you just trying to make me lose control? What is this, a game to you?"

Surprisingly, she was smiling in the face of his frustration, before dipping closer to his ear, her perfume reaching his nose gently. He was beginning to sweat. "That's exactly what this is."

Confused, Chuck pulled away from her and took a step back. "So now you want to play games?" He didn't understand where the hell she was coming from, and he was getting angry. He didn't like the constant turning of tables that was springing up between them.

"That seems to be the only language you speak these past two days! That and sex." Blair said, matching him with her own irritation. He couldn't even appreciate the irony of her saying sex was on his mind when they hadn't even had sex and all he could think of at the moment was how he would manage to maintain his self-control. "Apparently, that's what we've reverted to…again! You, hiding things. You, doing something to destroy us! This…it's just like it was before! I feel like…"

"Like what?" Chuck asked softly. It was clear that Other Chuck was not always Mr. Wonderful, at least, the way Blair was talking about him right now. Other Chuck sounded no better than the Chuck standing before her. He was consumed by the sudden curiosity to know what had happened between them all this time, but he couldn't ask. And he didn't want to make her mad.

"Like…" Blair stepped away from him, running her hands down her face. She looked so flustered. "Chuck, I can't go back to the way it was. The way it was before—in high school, before Lili…don't you understand that? You know that!"

This was getting too heavy. He honestly just wanted to get to the bar downstairs and get wasted and forget about all of this. Better yet, he wanted the first plane out of here to a place where no one knew him. And it wasn't even because he hated the life here. There were certain aspects of this life that he couldn't imagine and things that he loathed…but others, Blair and Lili…he didn't know how he felt about them. And that's exactly why they were so dangerous and terrifying. He didn't want to hurt anybody, most of all, himself.

He was brought back to reality (whatever form of it he was currently ensconced in) by Blair's hands. Blair's hands on his cheeks, like Lili's had been only two hours ago. "See, you're doing it, Chuck. I don't have you right now. I don't even recognize you."

His hands were on her wrists, pulling them down gently. She looked down at the motion of it, his hands pulling hers away, and then let out a little laugh. But it wasn't a happy laugh. "Actually, that's not true, I know exactly who I'm seeing."

Chuck held his breath and waited as she stepped back again and found slim, silk robe to wrap around herself. His hands were playing with the buttons on his jacket, letting them free one by one before he held his arms up to her, almost a gesture of surrender. "It's me. I'm just here, Blair."

"I know it's you…" she said uncertainly. "But you're different now. You aren't like this."

"Then what am I like? Why won't you tell me what is really the problem instead of treading around it?" Chuck demanded.

Blair gave him an ironic smile. "I don't know what the problem is, though. If I tried to tell you what's running through my mind at the moment, you would think that I've lost my faculties completely."

"I highly doubt it," Chuck threw in dryly.

She tied the robe and she looked up, as if searching for answers. "I just know that you aren't you…you are and you aren't. And I can't explain that."

Blair didn't even look willing to talk to him anymore, but Chuck didn't want to leave the conversation in this limbo…where it was sure to be brought up again or continually hanging around them like a dark shroud. He was grasping at straws, trying to think of a way to make her believe him without telling the truth. To heal the wound without the right medication.

The alacrity of his movement appeared to surprise her when he took a few quick steps toward her, softly covering her arms with his hands. He gazed at her imposingly, until she was forced to meet his eye, their nearness warming each other. With a practice hand, he stroked her cheek, pushing a lock of hair from her ear and trailing down her jaw. "You can't tell me this doesn't feel natural," he murmured.

She swallowed. "It does." Then she raised herself on her tiptoes and rested her forehead against his, taking refuge in the timelessness of it. They were transcendent. "But I know him."

He didn't refute her choice of pronoun, but allowed the intimate connection that she had forged with him, hoping that it would convince her. But it didn't.

All of her features posed a challenge to him as she backed away. "Tell me I'm wrong."

He shrugged, so he could play off the way his legs felt like jelly. Chuck was out of his league with this Blair. "You're wrong."

For the slightest second, he caught something in her reaction that scared him, but it wasn't anything that he could pinpoint. But then, it was gone as quickly as it had come and she sent him a bright smirk. "You were always one of the best liars, Bass."

He wasn't sure what they had settled upon but then she was kissing him, long and hard, and he compulsively responded to her before she pulled away far too soon. "I'm going to take a shower. Alone."

He was torn between being put-out and feeling relief. He was still very aware of the damage she could inflict on him just through sex, though he still wasn't sure how he knew it. "As you wish…"

"I do wish," she grinned as he let his hand linger on her stomach as she passed him. "No need to conserve water anyway."

"No."

The door to the bathroom clicked shut before he even breached the insurmountable confusion that Blair had piled on him. She suspected he was different, but knew he was the same…she believed the something was wrong, but didn't believe herself…

The amusing part of this all was that he had no more answers than she did. And he was the one that was supposed to be intentionally guarding secrets from her. She didn't seem angry with him, but she did seem very wary. He didn't blame her, but he needed a way to make her trust him. He knew that Blair was, at the end of the day, a realist. And she wouldn't put her trust in something completely ridiculous and outlandish. There was a part of her in there that was convinced that Chuck was nothing more than a little off, and he had to appeal to that part.

He had to go back to doing what he did best with Blair Waldorf.

And the worthless Carter Baizen and the chaos he had created was just the assistance he required.

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Chuck rubbed his face for the thousandth time that day as he stared at the mound of paperwork that Bart had stacked (rather, he had a gopher do it, but who was keeping track?) on his deck. He was largely ignoring the fact that it was there, unconcerned with anything that didn't have to do with getting him back to his own time or world or reality, etc. His secretary had been in and out, helping him fill it out and looking increasingly bewildered every time she entered his office. But Chuck didn't care…Linda the secretary was only a blip on the map of people that had to believe that he was Other Chuck. And she was on his payroll, which meant that she was making money in part to put up with him and his mood swings. But with her assistance, he had completed about half of what he was left to do.

Chuck was preoccupied. Last night, Blair had made a barrier out of pillows down the middle of the bed to prevent herself from ending up on top of him. But much to his delight and her chagrin, she had managed to burst through her makeshift wall and woke up the next morning curled around him with his unconscious embrace reciprocating.

Chuck, of course, couldn't stop making jokes about it from the time they woke up to when she slid out of the limo for work (which they inhabited alone today, since little Liliana was safely in Dorota's care). But she took his ribbing about as good-naturedly as he would expect Blair Waldorf to in the face of any teasing…which led him to wonder if this had occurred before when she was with Other Chuck. He was almost sure that it had. But it didn't change how dire his situation was or the fact that he needed to find some footing where Blair was concerned.

Linda entered the room a half-hour later to hand over the files that Mike had sent over. Chuck texted the man a quick thank-you, promising some bonus while the secretary had to make several trips in order to deliver it all to Chuck. Upon skimming through some choice files, Chuck could see that Mike was definitely telling the truth—Blair barely appeared in any of the files, and when mentioned, Chuck would see her name and maybe an extremely vague description of an incident. That pre-nup was literally one of the stupidest things that Other Chuck had done.

Chuck was beginning to divide the files into two piles: negligible and significant, when a phone call from Linda interrupted him again. "Sir, I'm very sorry to bother you again, but Mr. Humphrey insists upon seeing you and as he's your brother-in-law—"

"How did a Humphrey even set foot in the building?" Chuck mused over the line with disgust. "Does Bass still possess its standards?"

"He claims that it is about your sister…"

Sister? Oh, Serena. Serena…his sister. Right. "Yeah, fine, let him in. And bring the disinfectant in to me immediately after I get rid of him."

Chuck dropped his phone with a sigh. He would never get out of here when surrounded by these incompetents…and what the hell did Humphrey think he had business here for? Chuck would certainly not even consider lending a scrap to the snotty pauper from Brooklyn (what did he do for a living anyway?).

But Chuck wasn't expecting the Dan Humphrey that appeared at his door. This one was on a mission, a desperate mission, from the looks of it. His face was shadowed with dark stubble and he looked like he hadn't slept very well. But his eyes were the tell-tale sign…they were the picture of panic, flitting around the room comically as he came into the room.

Chuck made an attempt to speak, but Humphrey cut across him. "Look, I know that you don't like me and I have to admit, that the feeling is mutual. So you have to understand how far out of options I am when I decide to come to you."

"Charming," Chuck said sarcastically. "I would ask you to take a seat, but I'm not keen on being insulted."

Dan waved an impatient hand. "Let's skip the exchanging of un-pleasantries, if you don't mind. I want you to tell me what's going on with Serena and Carter Baizen and I want you to tell me now."

A/N: So we have more people coming into the mix (who were technically already "there" but whatever! Though the story will mainly focus on Blair, Chuck, and their kid…there will be other players. It wouldn't be fun without the people! I wrote over Christmas to get this out, and I would like to wish every a belated Merry Christmas, since I neglected to in the last chapter…and if anyone wants to bestow a late present on me, they are MORE than welcome to review. Please and thank you!