Here's the dream chapter, at long last in its proper place. Also, you probably guessed this already, but Chuck Bass has a dirty, guilty mind.
Again, if you're allergic to C/S smut, a forewarning: Serena does appear in a somewhat siren-esque form, but Chuck's encounter with her is not a very satisfying one.
Because I am the biggest nerd in the world, I decided to annotate the dream vision in order to explain its logic and symbolism. I tried to add html superscript and hyperlink to the footnotes below, but I guess the site doesn't allow it.
Chuck Bass was dreaming.
He was in a dark forest, a fairy-tale wood, walking a dirt path bordered with primeval trees1. Their trunks twisted upwards; their branches crisscrossed in an overhead vault, obscuring the sky and veiling the wood in shadows. He walked along the path, hearing leaves crunch in the darkness around him, the shuffling feet of unseen beasts, the mating calls of insects.
Suddenly he stepped into a circular clearing. Before him lay a fairy ring of mushrooms, illuminated by low greenish light.
In the center sat a beautiful boy, cross-legged, playing an ocarina2. He was about thirteen or fourteen years old, dark-haired and pale, with a pink flush in his cheeks and lips as red as pomegranate3. Chuck slowly approached him until he stepped on a twig with a snap, and the boy stopped playing and looked up at him. His eyes were black and fierce, as wild as the wood itself.
"Where have you been, lost boy?" said the wild-eyed boy with some impatience. "Don't tell me the old man hooked you again. I thought we fed him to the crocodile years ago4."
"Who are you?" Chuck said, amazed.
"Who am I?" the boy cried in outrage, jumping to his feet. He walked up to Chuck until their noses were only inches apart, and Chuck realized that they were the exact same height. "Who am I? I'm Peter Pan. King of Neverland. Ally of the Indian tribe, friend of the mermaids, captain of the Lost Boys. 'Who am I?'" he said, scoffing. "That's a question you should be asking yourself5. What are you carrying in that basket6?"
Chuck saw that he was indeed carrying a basket in his right hand. He flipped back the lid and saw a large fish flopping in the bottom, gasping desperately for breath.
"It's dying," he said in alarm. "I have to go throw it in the lake7."
"Turn around and go back down the same path," Peter Pan said. "And when you reach the lake, watch out for the sirenas."
"The what?"
"Sirenas. Mermaids. Once they've pulled you under the water they never let you go8."
Chuck turned and ran back into the woods, into its heart of darkness, heading for the lake.
Suddenly he was blinded by a flash of cold bright white light. He clenched his eyes shut as red and green circles danced and overlapped beneath his eyelids; he blinked several times, rubbed his eyes, and the world began to fall into place.
He was in a black-box theatre, surrounded on three sides by an audience that was veiled in darkness. He could just barely make out that they were in evening dress; he could tell from the stark contrast of white shirts and black ties, the light gleaming off the round lenses of opera glasses, the glittering necklaces around women's necks9.
He turned and saw that he was standing at the front of a square platform—the stage. It was completely washed out with white light. In the very center of it was a low bed, and in the bed, covered with a white sheet, was Serena.
"Chuck," she said, reaching out towards him with an imploring hand. "Where have you been?"
"Serena. I—" he hesitated. "I don't know." He shot a look at the audience, and then sat on the bed next to her and leaned in close to speak to her in a low voice. "Serena, what are we doing here?"
"Don't you remember?" she said. "We're putting on a show10. A benefit for Bass Industries. You have to kiss me." She laid her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him into a deep, passionate kiss.
Chuck broke away from her and saw that the sheet had slid down her chest, unveiling her naked breasts. "Serena, I don't know about this," he stammered, but she put his hand on one of her breasts and kissed him again, and from the stirring of his cock he realized he was growing aroused in spite of himself11.
"The tickets cost a million dollars each," she said. "We have to give them what they paid for." She crumpled up the sheet with one hand and cast it aside onto the stage, revealing her naked body, and laid down on the bed on her back. Chuck couldn't stop his eyes from roaming all over her body—her perfect natural breasts, her flat stomach, her long legs. She took his hand and pulled it towards her crotch; she parted the cleft between her legs with his fingers. Two of them slid inside of her—she was already soaking wet—and she began to moan.
Around them on all sides he heard the audience murmur appreciatively, and upon looking down he realized he was not only naked—he had a raging erection. Serena reached into his lap and began to stroke him with a pleasurably tight grasp; he groaned with pleasure and continued to penetrate her with his fingers.
In the audience he heard the rustle of a program being read; someone else unwrapped a piece of candy; another person coughed.
He looked up, distracted and annoyed, but Serena sat up and wrapped her arms around his shoulders.
"You have to have sex with me now," she said, loud enough for everyone sitting in the front rows to hear, and a cavalcade of whistles and catcalls rang throughout the theater.
"Serena, I don't know if I can," Chuck said, looking around at the audience, but she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him on top of her. She didn't even have to guide him inside—he slid into her almost instantly, and he gasped as he felt her envelop his cock.
She was so hot and wet and tight that he was momentarily overwhelmed, and, in an unthinking, automatic way, began to fuck her, but then he heard the audience laughing and cheering, and he looked up. All around them he saw a scatter of little lights flash-flash-flashing, and he realized that everyone in the audience was holding out a phone, snapping pictures. Suddenly there was a woman in a business suit standing onstage with her back to him; he couldn't see her face. Silhouetted by a spotlight, she cooed into a microphone: "Gossip Girl here, boys and girls. Who says you can't catch a bass with his pants down12?"
Chuck screamed and twisted himself away from Serena. "I can't! I can't! This is beyond fucked." He covered his face with his hands, and the room fell silent.
When he removed his hands from his face, he saw that everyone had disappeared, and the theater was empty. Somewhere above him he heard a rustling noise. He looked up into the air, and he watched as four thick red curtains unfurled themselves from the scaffolds13. They plummeted downwards, flapping, like the sail of a ship in the wind, and hit the floor with a velvety sound.
The red curtains enclosed the stage on all sides. Looking down, he realized that he was dressed again.
Suddenly, there was Blair, sitting beside him on the edge of the bed, looking as though she might cry. She was wearing a ruffled white dress and a red cape and hood, and she held a basket on her lap14.
"Blair," he said, beyond grateful to see her. "What's wrong?"
Her bottom lip trembled, and tears pooled in her eyes and spilled over onto her cheeks. "I'm sorry," she said in a choked-up voice, "but I ate all the goodies in the basket15."
"Oh, that's okay," Chuck said in a consoling voice, putting his arm around her and rubbing her shoulders. "That's okay."
"I was supposed to take them to grandmother16," Blair wailed, letting her head fall against his chest.
"Well, we'll just go out and buy some more," Chuck said, pulling her tighter against him.
"There aren't any left," Blair said, sniffling. "That's all the goodies there were17."
"Don't worry," Chuck said, grabbing her shoulders and turning her towards him. "Blair. From now on you and I are going to take care of each other."
Blair still looked a bit unsure.
"Don't you hear me?" Chuck said, tucking a curl of hair behind her ear. "Neither of us has to walk through the woods alone anymore. I promise."
He reached down, took her hands, and raised them to his lips; he closed his eyes and reverently kissed her on each palm18. "I love your tiny little hands," he said, looking into her brown eyes, which were still rimmed by tears.
"I love you," she said.
Chuck leaned forward to kiss her ruby lips—
And then woke up.
He was sitting on the mod sofa in his Empire suite, his legs spread out, still wearing his shoes and suit jacket. In his right hand was a sweating glass of scotch with a half-melted ice cube floating in the center. He looked at the clock—3:40PM. He couldn't have been out for more than 20 minutes.
"What a crazy fucking dream," he muttered, rubbing his eyes.
Then he heard the click-clack of high-heels on the hardwood floor, and turned his head to the side. There, standing in the doorway, with arms crossed, was Blair Waldorf. And she wasn't crying.
1 In addition to the pun on Serena's name (van der Woodsen), the woods have an association with danger and the unknown. They may also represent a crux in one's life, and/or threshold into another world. See the opening lines of Dante's Inferno, Canto I: "Midway on our life's journey, I found myself in a dark wood, for the right path had been lost." I also think of Sondheim's musical Into the Woods, the namesake of this fanfic, in which various characters from fairy tales venture into the woods in pursuit of their heart's wish, but soon discover that their actions have unexpected consequences.
2 A hodge-podge from fantasy literature, reinforcing the idea that this is a liminal space between worlds. Here there are echoes of The Hobbit, Alice in Wonderland, and The Legend of Zelda game series, as well as traditional fairy tales and, of course, Peter Pan.
3 Pomegranates are a reference to the myth of Hades and Persephone, and often symbolize sexual awakening and/or the loss of virginity. We can see that Chuck is preoccupied with Blair here; his mind has drawn from her physical appearance in order to generate Peter Pan. The most obvious link is the color of their lips.
4 The fact that Peter Pan calls Chuck a "lost boy" comes from his memory of his night with Serena, as well as his troubled childhood, which makes "lost boy" such an appropriate appellation for him. The "old man" who "hooked" Chuck again is, of course, his father (or his father's legacy). Here Bart Bass is conflated with the villainous Captain Hook, who was eaten by a crocodile in the Peter Pan story.
5 The theme of the dream emerges. Chuck is in the middle of an identity crisis. The fact that he is the same height as Peter Pan suggests that he realizes that he, too, refuses to grow up.
6 The basket casts Chuck in the role of Little Red Riding Hood, vulnerable and alone in the woods. It's also a pun on Chuck's name: bass-ket. Dreams create meaning through visual/linguistic association, and often an object is substituted in place of a word or concept.
7 Another obvious pun on Chuck's name: I have to THROW (chuck) the FISH (bass) in the lake. Chuck realizes that he is in a dangerous situation.
8 A pun on Serena's name, and a reference to the sirens of Greek mythology. Chuck seems to be warning himself that women, especially seductive women, represent a major threat to him and his happiness.
9 Very much an upper-class audience. There is also an oblique reference to the opening scene at the opera in Wharton's Age of Innocence.
10 Here Chuck and Serena's affair is publicly exposed. This is, of course, precisely what they did when they sent their story to Gossip Girl.
11 Some reviewers complained because they thought that this dream meant that Chuck was still attracted to Serena, but this is clearly an anxiety dream and is a deeply unpleasant experience for Chuck. The fact that he becomes aroused doesn't change that fact; the sense of being on display ends up negating all of the pleasure here.
12 Gossip Girl's metaphor is mixed and doesn't make much sense. Language is often garbled in dreams.
13 The red curtains represent the incursion of another liminal space—the threshold of revelation. (It's also a wink at David Lynch, who often employs this motif in his surreal cinema.) Their color is also a link to the red dress that Blair wears. The fact that they seem to have a calming effect on Chuck is not a coincidence.
14 Little Red Riding Hood again, obviously. In casting Blair as Little Red, Chuck may be casting himself in the role of the wolf, which would make sense given the story's obvious sexual undertones. However, it's important to remember that identity is extremely unstable in dreams, and often there are shifts and/or merges in the various dream-personae. Here we see that Chuck, per his earlier statement to Dan ("[Blair] is me"), strongly identifies himself with Blair, since earlier in the dream he was alone, walking through the woods, and carrying the basket.
15 This statement has many potential meanings. It seems to indicate that Blair is unable to control her appetite; this may be a reference to her bulimia, but it also works when applied to her sexual appetite, of which Chuck, having just seen her with Dan Humphrey, may be feeling a tad judgmental. On the other hand, since the dream does not clearly delineate Blair from Chuck, he may actually be judging himself, thinking "I can't control my sexual appetite; I've destroyed everything good about myself/my life."
16 Another reference to the Little Red Riding Hood story, which represents the fear that one has disappointed/failed to meet one's obligations to one's elders. This is, of course, a major concern of Chuck's.
17 Again, Chuck fears that everything good about him is irrecoverably gone; it can't be bought back, he may not be able to redeem himself.
18 In complimenting her "tiny little hands," Chuck somewhat infantilizes Blair. This may represent his desire to "take care" of her, but through the dream he may also be acknowledging that he himself feels like a "motherless child," or "lost boy," in need of someone to accompany him through the woods. Again, his unconscious mind does not (perhaps cannot) clearly separate his identity from Blair's. In the deepest parts of him, there's no way of telling where "Chuck" begins and "Blair" ends.