Author's Note: I was completely blown away by the response to the last chapter so thank you so much for that. Apologies for the delay, but this week is also Chair Week and I found myself inspired by Sunday and Monday's prompt.
October 17, 2013
His brain feels foggy, his eyelids feel heavy, and his head hit the pillow only moments ago, but the cry pierces through his fatigue and beckons him towards the bassinet at the foot of the bed. The duvet tucked around him is pushed aside, and the cold air nips at his exposed extremities as he slides his hand across the mattress. His fingers snag the hem of his wife's pajamas, snag to pull her back down to the mattress.
"I've got him," he murmurs. And then he's sliding out of bed and his feet are hitting the floor as he runs a hand through his hair with an exhausted sigh. The wail grows louder, and he stumbles the few steps it takes him to reach the bassinet.
The baby's hands are flailing; the soft blanket in which he was swaddled in only moments ago having fallen open and allowing his tiny limbs to escape. The features of his face are scrunched, his mouth is open wide with a never ending wail, and everything about him is red and angry and indignant over his perceived abandonment.
One large hand slides under the baby and gingerly cups his head, gingerly cups his body and lifts the baby upward to be placed against his shoulder. The cry grows louder despite the hand sliding up and down his back in a soothing gesture, despite the shushing noises being cooed in his ear.
"Is he wet?" A feminine voice questions softly from the bed. Chuck glances towards his wife, jostles the baby as he tries to ascertain the answer to Blair's question, but the wails become louder and he immediately goes back to comforting Henry.
"Maybe you should feed him," Chuck suggests with a yawn.
Blair shakes her head, reminds him that she just fed him less than two hours ago, but the baby's cries grow louder and they are both at their wits end. She slowly, sleepily pushes herself up in a bed before reaching behind to adjust the pillows previously under her head against the headboard. Her fingers heavy with a blanket of sleep deprivation make slow work of the row of buttons down her pajama top, but eventually push aside the fabric to expose heavy, large breasts and the curvature of a tummy that has not flattened out as quickly as she thought it would.
But she is too tired to push and press and protest tonight, too focused on watching her husband rejoin her in bed and gingerly place the baby against her breast. Henry squirms and fights yet his parents work in tandem to hold him, to move a pillow under his body to support him. And when his mother cannot entice him to latch on, his father's soft fingers lift her engorged flesh and trace the nipple against Henry's lips in encouragement for the little baby to latch on.
His tiny lips wrap around his mother's nipple, but his suction is weak and lasts for all but two minutes before he detaches himself, turns his head away, and screams louder and harder and angrier. And his mother would feel self-righteous in her correctness over how he was not hungry were not for the fact that this is her baby, that this is her perfect little boy who just seems so unhappy with the world.
She had waited soul crushing moments to hear him cry, to hear him do anything other than let out a weak and tiny moan. Yet now all he does is cry and scream and wail and she finds herself at a loss for how to make him stop. And her fatigue and her frustrations are pushing her over the edge until more than just her breasts are leaking, until her cries become the echo to his.
And then Chuck is rubbing his hand up and down in a soothing gesture against her arm, whispering comforting words in her ears as he tries to calm her down. But his words are lost against his son and his wife's cries and tears, and he shifts away from her for just a moment so he can push aside the duvet and take a seat beside her.
"Let me," he says as he slides the baby out of her arms, and he presses a kiss against her temple when she loosens her grip on the infant. He creates a space between his legs and lays Henry down gently on the mattress; unfurls the blanket wrapped around his son's tiny body and concentrates his attention on trying to soothe one of those currently in tears.
"I'm a terrible mother," she cries. He stops in his efforts for just a moment, stops to look at her as she tugs on the shirt of her pajamas and fumbles with the buttons.
"You're not," he assures her. He pauses in his efforts to unsnap the buttons of Henry's romper, pauses to lift her hand to his lips. "You are an amazing mother, Blair."
"Then why won't he stop crying?" She asks in a voice that sounds more like a wail, in a voice that carries over the sound of Henry's screams. He has no answer for her because it is the question he has asked himself for weeks, asked each day since they brought Henry home over a month ago.
"Blair," he begins softly, but the indignant wail of his son cuts him off and he looks from him to her and back again as his sleep addled brain tries to figure out what to do. But Blair is sliding out of bed, padding towards the en-suite bathroom, and Henry is lying between his legs, screaming and crying, and he goes with the one that is closer to him.
He bends tiny elbows and little knees as he slides Henry's body free from the onesie, and even in his exhaustion he marvels over how tiny and perfect this little boy is. How he and the love of his life managed to create something so pure and wonderful – and loud – out of their love for one another. And he swallows the thoughts because they are his own, because they are only meant to be whispered in the ear of the woman who matters most. Because Chuck Bass is a romantic and only Blair Waldorf-Bass needs to know that.
And then he pauses for just a moment because Henry matters the most as well, because one day Henry Bass will learn that his father – the notorious playboy, the man who messed up over and over again, the dark knight – is a romantic.
But the cry pulls him out of his thoughts, and he finds himself murmuring soothing words as he places one hand against the baby's naked belly to hold him still. Chuck leans towards the nightstand, reaches into the top drawer, and pulls out a tube of lotion. He squirts a small dollop in the palm of his hand, rubs his palms together to warm up the cool cream after tossing the tube aside, and then he gingerly rubs the lotion into Henry's already soft skin.
His fingers fly over Henry's limbs as he searches out knots, as he searches out points of tension because massages calm down Henry's mother and the two are more alike than she thinks. And he manages to get Henry to quiet for a moment, for just long enough that Blair pokes her head out of the bathroom and looks at him with teary-eyed amazement. But his efforts are eventually shown to be futile, and the little baby is being scooped up into his mother's arms as she reminds his father not to use anything with chemicals or perfumes on his delicate skin.
"Why did you undress him?" Blair hisses as she snatches the soft baby blanket and wraps Henry up to ward off the chill of the evening air. Their bedroom is warm, kept at a constant temperature, but she worries about her son and is always fussing about hats and socks and gloves under the guise of accessorizing. "He's going to get cold."
She lays him back on the bed, bends tiny elbows and little knees as she slides Henry's body into the onesie. He continues to cry; his face becomes redder and redder in protest over how he is being manhandled and jostled about. And then halfway done with the snaps running from his knee to his chin, she pauses and her own tears begin to fall again.
"Henry, it's okay," she promises as she raises a hand and wicks away the tear rolling down her cheek. Her shoulders slump with a dejected sigh, and she looks to her husband with a resigned look on her face. "Maybe we should hire—"
"I've got him," Chuck promises as he moves his hand to replace hers, as he moves to complete the row of snaps. "I'll go downstairs and walk him around."
"It won't help," she replies, shaking her head. She's tried that so many times before – tried rocking him and singing to him and holding him night after night, day after day.
"What else is there for us to do?"
She doesn't know how to answer Chuck's question. She's called Henry's pediatrician, asked Dorota, and scoured the internet for advice, and every source tells her the same thing – let him cry himself to sleep, don't pick him up, he has just a touch of colic.
"Maybe he's—"
She cuts herself off because she knows that if he would just sleep, if he would just close his eyes for five minutes, then they would all feel better. But Henry is not having it no matter how she holds him or swaddles him or loves him. And then she's crying again, frantically wiping away the tears that cloud her view of her little boy who cries all the time and barely sleeps and her husband who is just as lost as she is.
"He just needs to sleep," she announces. "He just needs to sleep like he did in the hospital, like he did on the drive home."
There is a moment of pause before her eyes dart towards her husband's just as his dart towards hers, just as the same thought crosses their minds. Chuck reaches towards the cell phone on the nightstand, prays he remembered to plug it in long enough to have the necessary battery life to complete one call. He calls the number near the top of his speed dial and raises the phone to his ear as his wife raises the baby to her chest and sways softly as she waits.
"You're going to sleep, Henry," she whispers to the baby as her husband instructs the man on the other end of the call. "And then you'll feel better and Mommy and Daddy will feel better because you'll be happy."
"He'll be here in five minutes," Chuck informs her as he ends the call, as he sets the cell phone onto the nightstand.
She nods and offers him a small appreciative smile in response as he moves to retrieve their coats from their closets. He snatches another baby blanket off the chaise lounge in the corner before draping her coat around her shoulders and the blanket around their son. And then she follows him down the winding staircase from the fifth floor to the first floor, from their bedroom to the front door.
Chuck grabs the carseat used only once before out of the closet off the foyer, readies the myriad of straps and buckles, and holds it steady as she gently places the screaming infant into the carseat. She strokes her baby's cheek and fervently hopes this works as she sets about snapping the buckles and adjusting the straps. Blankets are tucked around Henry's body, and the hat covering his downy soft hair is adjusted despites his protests and cries.
His father hoists the carseat off the ground, holds it in his hand as he opens the door for his wife before stepping outside and locking it behind them. And then he follows her out to the street, passes the carseat to her when she is seated inside, and moves to join her. The partition is already lowered, and the question is asked as they check and double check the lock of the carseat to the base strapped to the bench seat.
"Where to, Mister Bass?"
"Just drive, Arthur," he instructs with a yawn. "Around the block, through the Park, to Brooklyn – just drive."
The chauffer nods his head, raises the partition that separates him from the piercing cries of the product of previous limo rides, and pulls the car away from the curb in front of his employers' townhouse. Traffic is light – almost none existent – given the time of night, and he easily completes multiple loops around the city. And when the sun starts to peek between the buildings, when Arthur hesitantly lowers the partition to ask if this was enough of 'just driving', the scene he sees in his rearview mirror in one he hoped to see since he drove Mister Bass and Miss Waldorf home from a burlesque show at the age of sixteen and nearly seventeen, respectively.
Because in the backseat of the limo is Chuck Bass and Blair Waldorf-Bass holding hands with heads pressed together as they slumber and their infant son sound asleep in his carseat enjoying his ride in his daddy's limo.