Title: Bittersweet Welcome
Author: BookCaseGirl (Abby)
Date: June 27, 2009 (Beginning)
Rating: This is rated T again.
Classification: Well, sad...but it'll get happy, or you can all kill me.
Summary: After fifteen years away in Hong Kong, Chuck Bass returns to the Upper East Side for a sad event. When he sees all of his old friends and acquaintances – Blair in particular – he decides to stay for good, and finds out several pieces of life-changing information.
Author's Note: I was sorta hoping for more than four reviews the last chapter, but this is for loyal readers, who always review and have stuck with this unfailingly. All of you are the greatest!
Disclaimer: I do not own Gossip Girl
Oh, this still isn't beta'd because I was impatient again. Sorry.
Blair woke up after a peaceful night of sleep. Wait, it was a full night. That meant that, at some point, Victor must have come home. He must have come home and seen...Oh, shit. Blair turned around to face Chuck. But what she hadn't realized in her panicked thoughts about Vic was that Chuck's arm wasn't around her. He wasn't in bed with her.
She thought for a minute, rubbing her temple and trying to remember the times she had woken up in the night. There was one time – at about four A.M. - when she felt Chuck shift and then his grasp on her tightened. When Blair had craned her neck to glance at him, however, he was completely still in bed – right next to her – where he belonged.
All of a sudden, she heard a noise that came from somewhere inside of her large apartment. Once Blair had rubbed her eyes and attempted to bring her senses to life more, it occurred to her that the sound was coming from the living room. Listening a little bit harder, she found that the sound of a television morning show could be heard.
Of course. That was where Chuck was, in the living room. He'd probably only fixed her breakfast and was awaiting her rise from the bedroom. Therefore, she got up from bed, walking over to her mirror to examine her just-woke-up appearance. She had definitely seen worse in her life. A few strokes of her brush and two Certs later, she had reached early morning perfection, Blair Waldorf style.
As she strode out into the bright light that bathed the rest of her home, Blair made sure to tiptoe. Somewhat like a child, she wanted to surprise him. She loved to see the huge smile that covered Chuck's lips when she came up behind him and grabbed his hands, which were often busy doing something else. She would press up against his back and he would...
He wasn't there, either. Adrianna was sitting in front of the television, eating a fresh bagel with blackberry jam, but Chuck was nowhere near her. Blair casually walked into the kitchen, expecting to find him hiding in the closet that housed her many Teflon pots and pans. Opening the door, it was obvious that he wasn't hiding in there, either. She checked a couple more places in the kitchen where her children had often played hide-and-seek when they were younger.
After sweeping her eyes around a few more places in the home, Blair finally deduced that Chuck had left. He'd left her again, and for some reason, this fact still surprised it. It shouldn't have been so shocking, since it was what he had always done. But, to her, it seemed like he had changed. His ways were different, and – overall – he was just a totally different person. That was before that he would leave her after a little nighttime tryst. He would slink away into the dark dawn of day, before she was aware of anything but the dreams in which she lived during sleep.
Now, though, Chuck Bass seemed genuinely reformed. It was as if he were a totally different man than the one she had fallen in love with so long ago (and had stayed in love with), but still he was the same. He had changed in the ways that she wished at her darkest moments in which she doubted everything she had. Like he could read her mind, he changed for her. And Blair had thought he was in love with her, as she was with him. Or was that whisper across her collarbone only the night before a vicious and cutting lie too – just like everything else he had said?
That was before, though. She was convinced that he had changed. Blair Waldorf knew Chuck and she knew when something had been altered in his state of being. He was an old book that she had paged through so many times – a dictionary in which she had memorized all the words and meanings. Chuck was a fond memory, but at the same time, he was an intense reality that she lived with now.
And those were the reasons that she went out into the cold and clammy air of the early Spring morning, in search of Chuck Bass.
*********
Chuck hadn't wanted to leave her like that, in the dead quiet of a New York morning. He had to, though. Knowing that Adri would be up in a matter of minutes for school, Chuck knew that he needed to leave. There couldn't be any drama around himself and Blair, especially when he was the one that was causing all of it. Still, he didn't ever want to leave Blair like that again. He hurt himself when he did that, because she always looked so angelic and at peace while asleep.
The thirty-three-year-old man was walking the crowded sidewalks of the Upper East Side, trying to clear his mind. As unorthodox as his method of calming down may have seemed on the surface, all of the honks and sounds of people chatting away on their cellphones was music to his ears. That noise was his escape, like having a mid-afternoon shiatsu at the parlor on Seventh.
Her moans invaded his inner ear and outer mind, though, and he could still feel her adoring nips on the nape of his neck, covered by the collar of his crisp cotton shirt. Blair was taking him over – she was invading every possible unoccupied (and even some that were occupied) space of his body and the fond memories he had of her refused to relent or let go.
Suddenly, a pair of large hands grabbed Chuck's shoulders and yanked him into a nearby alleyway. He assumed it was that asshole of a PI again, getting him back for his own previous assault of the man. Alas, it wasn't him. It was a boy no older than fifteen, looking him straight in the eye with an anger he hadn't seen in...Well, the last time Chuck had seen it was a very long time ago, when he himself had been wearing it.
"You son of a bitch!" Victor said, his voice cracking as it rose several decibel levels in too short an amount of time. The boy did nothing to harm him – Chuck suspected it was some sort of unconscious fright of hurting his own father – and only shoved him back against the wall before stalking away, pacing to the other side of the alley and slamming his hand into the brick wall before he stomped back (Chuck fought back a smirk at how alike they seemed at that very moment in time) and got right back in Chuck's face.
"Vic, look..."
"You do not call me that, you jerk-off!" He yelled, slamming his fist into the wall only about a foot away from Chuck's face. Okay, maybe there were a few things to be worried about.
"I'm sorry I was never here." Chuck said this simply and softly, hoping that it would suffice, because it had been all he had wanted to hear from his own father at that age. He'd figured Vic would respond as Chuck once would have, but he sure as hell didn't.
**********
"Oh, so you think that's what I'm talking about, you asshole?!" Victor pinned Chuck once again, anger pulsing through his veins and tears burning the backs of his retinas. He moved his hands from his...his father's...chest and moved away again, backing towards the brick wall.
"What else would you be talking about?" Chuck asked, his eyes shifting uncomfortably. Good. Vic wanted the bastard to feel uncomfortable.
"I saw you, pawing my mother last night. Your hands were all over her like she was some hooker you picked up at a goddamn bar, you motherfucker!" He knew his words were slightly uncalled for, and probably disrespectful to his newly-acknowledged father, but at that point in time, he really did not care.
"Victor..." Vic silenced Mr. Bass with a glare that could have easily broken glass. "Kid, it wasn't anything that wasn't mutual, got it? We're both adults...we knew what we were doing." The older man's voice contained finality and almost a...fatherly tone, strangely enough. The shitface barely knew him, yet he still had the nerve to speak to him with the authority of a father.
Nate was his real dad, he knew it. This was all a fucked-up fluke. Maybe he was lying in a hospital bed somewhere, in a coma, or just dreaming, and it was all a damn dream. It could have been a hallucination, a figment of his imagination. Perhaps, to passers-by, he was only speaking to thin air, swatting at nothing in particular, and looking like a general, run-of-the-mill ignorant idiot.
This Chuck character...he wasn't real. He couldn't be real if he hadn't been there for Victor. Deep down, he knew that he really was a decent person, who deserved to have had a constant dad for his entire life – not a man who was a fraud and liar (though he knew that Nate did have his best interests in mind). As Victor let out a sob, though – vulnerability oozing from the seams of his being – he felt this man's arms wrap around him in an awkward mimic of something like a hug.
It was meant for comfort, he knew, but all it was was supplementation. The grasp of Chuck was something that Vic never really knew he'd been missing in life. It was a necessity, an essential puzzle piece in his adolescence (hell, his entire damn life) that just felt right. The warmth of his father's (the word was thought with confidence and pride now; the man in front of him was his father) hands on his back was a comfort, and like a ray of light that had come from out of the blue, everything was right again.
The moment was bittersweet, to say the least. And that was when Victor Waldorf chose to welcome this Chuck Bass fellow into the role of father with open arms and encouragement.
**********
Blair looked outside as all of the buildings whooshed by the window of the limo she had called. She felt the need to be noticed – though in the Upper East Side of New York, limos were not exactly uncommon. There, on the right, was Central Park. She politely asked the driver if he could just drop her off there, saying that she would most definitely be calling back later for a ride home.
As she walked through the bright green grass of the well-kept park, Blair admired the tall trees that were just beginning to bloom into their Summer selves. On the bottoms of their trunks were circles of flowers, peppering each patch of dark brown mulch and adding a liveliness to the outdoors that Blair had never really noticed before. Aesthetics hadn't ever really been her thing, but now that she was older – wiser, even – the woman realized that one needed to appreciate these things.
Blair looked up and moved her eyes around, scanning the park meticulously, making sure she took in every detail possible. There was a man on a park bench that was close to the eastern edge of the expanse of emerald grass who looked exactly like Chuck, but when he turned to her – obviously sensing a creepy and strange woman who was stalking him for no reason – she realized that his face lacked the eyes that she so adored.
While she continued to travel through the park, she thought of Nate. Back in high school, they had spent loads of time here. Granted, most of the time, he was stoned. Then, though, Blair had been far too naïve to care about it. Now she realized that at that time, he never really loved her. But in the past thirteen years, Nathanial Archibald had given her his name, and a beautiful baby girl that was showered with love day in, day out. She should have felt upset, angry at him for the way he left things when he passed away.
Somehow, she knew that he wouldn't have wanted her to hold such a grudge. Deep down, Nate was a smart man who knew so much about life. He was wise beyond his years and knew how to let people in and love them. But when he got hurt enough, he would burn bridges and tear down the years of love he had with that other person. That was all that had happened.
However, with passing on came closure and forgiveness. Not only had Blair unthinkingly forgiven him, but she was sure that with his death came his own acceptance of her and the way that she was. This was the reason she couldn't feel guilty about Chuck. Nate would have wanted her happiness above all, and she knew that if that meant riding an elephant off into the sunset of an African night, he would have been as happy as she.
Blair belonged with Chuck. And Nate understood, she could feel it. Even from beyond the grave, he gave his nod of encouragement and consent to live her life happily and close his chapter, because he was gone.
Finally, when Blair reached the southern-most edge of the large park – after nearly forty-five minutes of walking – there he was. He sat on a park bench, head in hands, face wearing the expression of concentrated contemplation. Suddenly, Chuck perked up and looked at her, his eyebrows raised and face breaking into a heartbreaking smile.
Nothing else mattered except him.
End Note: Last chapter tomorrow...I'm so sad...But at the same time, it feels great to put another story under my belt, to have another chapter of my imagination filed away in the virtual-ness of FanFiction, haha. Review please? Thanks.