I have to be honest, I didn't think I'd be doing this so soon, if not ever again. But I got a story prompt from the wonderful lnm8980 that I just couldn't resist. I hope you'll enjoy this little foray into something super light-hearted! Who doesn't love an enemies to lovers arc with a little academic rivalry? I have a couple more chapters of this already figured out and semi written, so let me know if it piques your interest enough for me to faff about with making them a bit more polished x

Blood-red soles tapped a defiant pitch against marble floors; dainty hands methodically cracked through each of their fourteen finger bones. Shooting looks left and right at faceless bodies with thick glasses and expensive clothes, she was reproachful, frustrated.

Don't they know what time it is? Shouldn't they be done by now? It's my turn.

She never usually allowed herself to get so openly agitated anymore, not unless something was deeply important to her. But this, this was that important, it was of utmost importance in fact. So, her foot snapped back to the ground again hard, restarting its impatient cycle.

Blair Waldorf was taking on the real world- where the sharks swam. They dressed up like businessmen and women, but one hint of fresh blood, of inexperience, and they'd eat you up and leave nothing behind. Yale was no longer a Kansas that ruby slippers could return her to.

Yale was where the scales had fallen away from her eyes and her sweet boyfriend had become her predictable, tiresome ex-boyfriend. The perfect Archibald she'd always wanted, and had fought tooth and nail to keep at her side until they could graduate and escape together, had paled into insignificance in New Haven. Hockey shirts, missionary sex and empty conversations were all Nate knew how to trade in.

Yale, where she'd chewed up every academic opportunity and scrap of reading material she could get her hands on, with a voracity that catapulted her to the top of her graduating class.

Yale, where she'd been able to dominate, thrive and, though she'd not admit it aloud, hide. New York was a city of dangers; a battleground she'd largely avoided since leaving for college.

This position though - smack dab in the centre of her battleground - this was hers, meant for her, and no amount of peace and quiet could stop her getting it. She had the track record, she had the thirst and the fervour. So, she'd packed her bags, shed the comfort of her boring, dependable boyfriend and come home to fight.

'Miss Waldorf?'

A raven-haired nobody in a bespoke suit had his back to her. He was shaking the hand of the man who had just called her name- thanking him for the opportunity. The poor soul couldn't have known he stood no chance and she almost lamented for him. Perhaps she'd afford him a kind word about his well-fitted jacket to soften the blow to his day, perhaps.

Blair rose- five feet ten in towering heels and bolstered by perfume and good breeding.

Truly, no chance.

Gathering her things, she looked down briefly. When her eyes refocused ahead, her jaw fell slack.

Clawed hands raking down red-stockinged legs, his yellow school shirt baying to have its buttons ferociously torn off.

'On me you'd be so much more.'

'Yes, but I can't be on you, remember? Because you don't want Nate to find out – and I don't want anyone to.' Her hair dangled over his cheeks- tickling, tormenting.

She could do nothing but stare at him. The illicit paramour, the boyfriend's best friend, the man who had thrown gasoline on her muted, un-stoked embers until they flared up hotly, then run away.

After he left she was told he'd locked himself away for years at a boarding school in France. Nobody had told her he was back- not that she'd asked.

'You disgust me. I never want to hear from you again.' The hiss was punctuated with a call-ending bleep.

But his dark hair, dark eyes, proud sneer and the jawline her hand itched to smack stood in front of her now. Not in France, not in Spain, Germany or Switzerland, but in New York, in the very room she now occupied.

Time had been kind to him, kinder than she'd have expected. Any hint of boyishness was gone from him now. He stood tall and trim, all angles and cheekbones, clothed in a meticulously-tailored suit. She was unsurprised to see he hadn't lost his flair for the ostentatious; a flamboyant cravat poking through the top of his crisp shirt. He looked handsome.

Like clockwork, the wave of desire she'd never quite been able to wholly dismiss when he entered her thoughts made its impact. Her knees quivered.

'Blair? We're ready for you.' Pressed the suddenly inconsequential man behind him, adjusting his jacket stiffly.

'Close your mouth, sweetheart. I don't relish that look on you so much anymore.' The words were scornful, and he rose one, long finger to her chin to guide it shut.

Her lips fused back together, teeth clamping hard enough they might have cracked and shattered. She pushed his hand away.

He chuckled at her silence and hummed. 'That's better. I'd almost forgotten how pretty you are when you're following orders.'

It took all her power not to let her mouth drop open once again.

Disappearing through the doors she'd positively breezed through not long before, Chuck Bass took all her primed and practiced confidence away with him.

'Blair?'

'Yes.' She breathed. 'Apologies. I'm ready.'

The interview, the one she'd prepared so thoroughly for, passed by her in a sickening blur. Blair could hear the meaningless words falling from her mouth and do nothing about stringing them into sentences. Everything she'd learnt, everything she'd planned to say, it had all vanished in the blink of an eye. Her mind, it seemed, had gone right out of that door the second he had.

'Well, I think we have all we need. Thank you, Blair.'

'No, I-'

The pained eyes of her interviewers looked on, expectant, but she had no lifeline to grasp. Out of her depth with hands above her head, Blair sank to the depths of humiliation.

'Yes. Thank you for your time.'

She maintained her composure until she was out of the airy office block and on the street.

'Serena.' She whispered into her phone, feet pulling her towards the most decent looking, and closest, bar she could spot.

An excited squeal was the noise that acknowledged her muted greeting. 'Tell me how it went, B!'

'Awful.'

'Awful?'

'Yes.'

'What do you mean? You worked so hard on your prep, how can it have been awful?' Serena's words were heartening, but she generously forgot that Blair had never spent one day of their lives indulging in false modesty.

'Two words. Chuck Bass.'

She could hear her friend's bemusement through the device in her fingers and made use of her short pause to slam the door of the drinking establishment open, sliding into a lonely seat by the bar. She didn't have to look around to know that every seat in there was a lonely one.

'What? What's he doing back in the city? Last I heard from my mom, he was in Switzerland.'

'I wish he'd stayed.' Blair grumbled, her eyes lighting in mischief at the thought of one entirely charming activity that he could have partaken in there.

'I won't pretend to understand what it is you still have against him, but there's no way Chuck Bass outperformed you in an interview. You're formidable, B. Have a little faith.'

'You weren't there.' Blair signalled blithely for a martini.

'So, why did you choose to apply for this role, Blair?'

'Well- I, I uh-' Blair was swallowing gravel as she watched her carefully contrived five year plan whirl down the drain.

'Trust me, it was not good.' She cringed internally. 'I can't explain now- I've got a date with my sorrows. Bye.'

'Talk later.' Serena agreed as the call ended. They probably wouldn't, Serena was slammed at work, she'd been lucky to even get her ear for two minutes.

Blair exhaled deeply, watching her drink slide onto the mirrored bar in front of her. She swallowed it quickly and requested a second.

After their brief stint as doomed lovers had met its abrupt end at cotillion, he had disappeared from all of their lives, taking the secret of their passionate trysts with him and, to her surprise, keeping it. Too proud to ask Serena, she'd subsequently heard of him only from Nate's unreliable mouth, and his stories became fewer and farther between as the months, and finally years, stretched by.

It hadn't stopped her guiltily thinking about him in the slightest though, especially on the occasions when her boyfriend's fumbling fingers had failed quite spectacularly at taking her to the same heights his best friend's once had. It was a shameful secret, but sometimes all she could do to tolerate Nate's incompetence.

In her loneliest moments, when the two, enduring fair-headed companions in her life had seemed ill-prepared to really understand the finer intricacies of Blair's mind, she'd admit she had missed him for more than just his skill in the bedroom. She missed the dark counterpart, the knowing confidante who seemed to read her mind when she needed him to most. But then his long absence began to make her forget, and Blair had spared Chuck very few thoughts indeed over the span of the past year.

Serena was wrong about one thing though, Blair didn't hold anything against Chuck- if anything she supposed she should have thanked him for his tight-lipped resolve when it came to their brief affair. It was he who had avoided and loathed her all those years that had passed between them; it had been Blair's choosing Nate that had driven him away and kept him there.

She wondered abjectly if he knew about the still-fresh demise of she and Nate's relationship, whether or not he'd be happy to hear it hadn't worked out for them. He'd always been the first to point out their differences, and she'd hated him for it. How smug he'd be now to know he'd been right all along.

'Another please.' She murmured, not looking at the barman.

'Actually, miss.' He cleared his throat. 'There's a gentleman over by the lounge who would like to invite you to join him for a drink.' He moved a glass of champagne towards her. Blair narrowed her eyes.

'What's the vintage?' She sighed. Perhaps if it was good enough, and he was cute enough, she'd consider it. It had been so long since she'd been so boldly propositioned by anyone, and she was in the mood to forget the events of the afternoon.

'It's a 1995 Dom Perignon, the finest we have. He requested it specifically for you.' He chirped, far more wooed it seemed than she, by the apparent extravagance of the gesture.

Blair's heart stopped in the few short seconds it took for the barman to announce the calibre of the champagne she'd been gifted. She'd had stopped believing in fate and coincidence long ago, and there was only one gentleman who would scheme to send her such a glass. She spun on her chair, scanning the room for him.

Sure enough he was there staring at her, sprawled casually in the centre of a plush couch across on the other side of the room. She scoffed and shook her head slowly. Always too confident.

Blair turned back towards the bar and smiled sweetly at the bartender. 'Thank you, but no.' She spoke. 'I'll take that martini now instead.'

He shrugged and began preparing her drink.

She felt him come up behind her not long after her rejection, of course. Somehow he still had the power to suck all the air out of the vicinity.

'Blair.' He purred, making her tremble. 'What a surprise it was to see you today.'

'Stalk me much?' She spoke, employing her haughtiest tone.

He ignored her. 'Don't tell me I remember wrong?' His voice was like velvet, no, silk. It raised every fine hair on her body.

'I haven't drunk Dom in three years.' Blair lied, pushing the base of the glass away from herself like it itself was traitorous.

'Well, there's certainly no time like the present to start again. Reminisce with an old friend, won't you?'

She saw him slide into the empty seat beside her from the corner of her eye.

'We were never friends.'

'Oh, I don't know about that. If memory serves,' he regarded her, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips, 'and it does, we became very friendly with each other at one time.' His taunts were dripping with seduction.

His attitude, though remarkably perplexing to Blair, had sent her body thrumming into action since the very first utterance that left his lips.

She refused to really look at him, angry at her own nerves. 'What are you doing here?' She bit out. 'I thought you were in France.'

'I thought you were in New Haven.' He returned.

It didn't matter that she'd lied about thinking he was in France when she knew he'd been in Switzerland. What mattered was that he had been following her too, keeping abreast of her life and its details.

'What are you doing here?' Blair asked again.

'Getting reacquainted with an old love.' He murmured, soft as could be, no doubt watching gleefully as her breath got stuck in her throat. 'You remember my soft spot for this city.'

Always teasing, always toying with her, even now.

'Good to see you've grown up.' Blair grumbled. 'But you know what I mean. Why are you going after my position?'

'Your position?' He chortled. 'Presumptuous.'

Blair stayed silent.

He shrugged easily after a moment. 'It's good experience, my father always said he wanted me to be ready to be at the helm of Bass when I turned twenty-five, I figure why not fulfil the old man's wishes.'

At this, Blair felt a pang of guilt. In truth, she had wanted to be there for him when his father died, to put everything behind them and go to him as the friend she knew he needed. But something selfish that made her afraid of confronting their past had stopped her.

But she ignored the information, her remorse and pressed on. 'Nice try. How did you know I'd be there?'

'Just a happy coincidence.' Said the insincere sentimentalist.

'Nothing is ever a coincidence where you're concerned.' Blair protested, her fingers clamping to the polished mahogany beneath the bar, afraid of what might happen if she didn't stay rooted to something.

She heard a low laugh emanate from his direction 'While I'm grateful for the nod to my omniscience, I don't care what you do anymore, Blair. It has been years.'

There was something about the way he said her name, something that made it sound like poetry- like it never had from the mouths of others.

'Drink your champagne.' It was a command.

'I'd almost forgotten how pretty you are when you're following orders.'

'Don't you think it's a little pre-emptive to start the celebrations?'

'Celebrations? Are you referring to my new job, or our serendipitous reunion?'

'I see you've not misplaced your wit.' She sneered, finally turning her full body towards him, where she was stunned to see his poise so relaxed, almost welcoming and intimate in its informality. He was the most dangerous kind of shark.

'I see you've not misplaced your pride.' His cat-like eyes were tight and unkind.

'Never.' She muttered.

'May the best man win, I suppose.' He hadn't forgotten his dark smirk, neither had she.

'Woman.'

They were quiet a while, ignoring one another in awkward agony as the tension burned and crackled between them. Blair stared at the olive bouncing and floating around the base of her martini glass as she turned the stem back and forth, allowing her mind to wander back.

Three years, it had been three entire years since she'd even heard his voice. It was a moment of weakness that had made her call him then, one of the first times she'd started having doubts about her white knight, about the way his eyes had always travelled over tanned limbs and blonde tresses with a glint in his eye that she, his own girlfriend, had never truly inspired.

'Waldorf.' Came the drawl that both numbed and heightened her senses. 'Are you drunk dialling again?'

'No, I- I need to ask you something.'

'Don't tell me you need help with gift ideas for Nate? Couldn't you just tie a bow around your best friend and send her his way to save us both the hassle?'

Her hot, heavy breath communicated the pain those words had caused her.

'You're still angry with me, even after all this time.'

'Angry?' He laughed, it was a callous sound. 'Blair, let me make it clear for you, so we don't have to do this again. You don't have any impact on me.' His last sentence was so harsh it almost caused her to hang up the phone on the spot.

But she didn't. She waited, pushed him further and felt the crushing blows of his indifference towards her ever harder. He'd said she disgusted him once, now he didn't even care enough to hate her anymore.

'Hello?'

Confused by his sudden greeting, and rather perturbed by the stunted memory that had been crawling its way around her mind, Blair turned to him. He was watching her with a devious glimmer in his eye, one hand pressing a phone to his ear.

'An almost-immediate unanimous decision, you say. Is that so?' A grin spread across his lips, and her stomach fell south. She knew exactly what was happening and didn't care to wait around to hear him gloat.

'No.' Blair breathed, standing from her seat. She was anxious to get away before the next part of his conversation played out, but he'd snatched her wrist tight, determined to lord it over her.

'I'd be delighted to join the team.' He said, holding his prisoner fast and strong as she fruitlessly twisted and wrestled. 'How soon can I start? Monday sounds perfect. Thank you.'

'Let go of me.' She whispered, eyes moistening with tears she didn't want him to see. 'You didn't even need it.'

'And you did?' He scoffed, relinquishing his grasp on her aching wrist. 'Please, Waldorf. You're sitting in an upscale bar in the middle of the day, drinking thirty-eight-dollar martinis. Do you expect me to believe you needed it?'

'It's not about that. I worked hard for this.' She spat. 'I have a college degree from an Ivy League school; I am better and more suited to this than you in every sense of the word.'

'Evidently, they did not agree. But it seems I have something to celebrate now after all.' He lifted her still-fizzing glass of champagne to his lips and drained it in one, long gulp. 'You might want to rethink that egotism- it doesn't suit you.' He added, clearing his throat with a champagne-fuelled gasp.

'I hate you.' She spat, grabbing her purse and scurrying away.

'No hard feelings though, right?' He called out to her retreating back. 'I know a few clubs that are probably hiring cocktail waitresses, you might still be young enough.'

The early September air was suffocating as she stepped out onto the street, hailing the first cab she could spot.

He didn't deserve it; he'd done nothing to deserve it beyond carry the Bass name around like it meant something. Everybody in their circles knew his father had left Bass Industries to him, that he could step in as CEO the very second he desired to. That job was supposed to be her fresh start.

Blair's phone buzzed in her pocket and she fumbled for it. Swiping at her eyes, she answered the call and held the device up.

'Blair Waldorf speaking.'

'Hi, Blair.' The voice was familiar. 'This is James, I conducted your interview this afternoon.'

He was calling to deliver the bad news, she ought to have hung up on the spot.

'I can appreciate this isn't the news you're hoping for, but we have selected another candidate this time.'

'Understood.' She said, tempted to let James know just how gargantuan the mistake he'd made truly was.

'However, my colleagues and I were very impressed by your achievements- valedictorian at Yale- how many people can say they've done that?' The jovial tone sounded forced, uncomfortable.

'If that's everything, I have to be going.'

'Ah, yes, just one more thing. We were wondering if you might consider joining us in a different role?'

Anguish followed victory. Work with him?

'How different?'

'Same department, different responsibilities. I'll send over the details to you via email now. Let me know if it would be something you're interested in by the end of the day.' He spoke. 'I know it's not exactly what you had in mind, but we'd hate to lose you altogether.'

'Thanks.' She muttered. 'I'll have to think about it.'

'Of course. I've sent through the contract, if you're happy with it just sign and send it back.'

She mumbled her goodbyes and dropped her phone back into her pocket. It would be a victory indeed to float in after him on Monday morning, to see his smug face fall when he realised that he hadn't entirely won, that they'd wanted her too. But working alongside him- competing with him? She wasn't sure it was the wisest decision.

'Sorry to call again, S.'

'No, no. It's alright.' Serena stifled what was an obvious yawn, she was always tired now.

'I got the job.' Blair started, only to be quickly interrupted by her friend's celebratory squeal. 'It's not what you think. He got it too.'

'There were two jobs?' Serena spoke the words as though they were ill-fitting pieces of a puzzle.

'Not exactly.' She said, staying quiet for a moment. 'The point being, I don't think I can work with him- can I?'

Serena sighed. 'Blair, I'm working a badly-paid publicity job with a bitch for a boss. I don't think I'm your best port of call for a properly considered response here, I'd do just about anything to get away from KC, even work with Chuck Bass.'

Blair silenced her pitying laugh- Serena had endured enough of them. Back when they were in their final year of high school, she'd received her acceptance to Brown, and was determined to go too, until one of her Serena-branded crises of self had reared its head. She'd rather drastically deferred her entry and just never went back to it.

For a while, Serena hunkered down in New Haven with Blair and Nate. After just a few months she decided she missed New York too much, so dragged herself sheepishly back to Lily's place for a settling of scores with her disappointed mother. Now, Serena worked for the hardest-faced woman in the publicity industry, and she hated every second of it. She didn't need the money, none of them did, but still she couldn't quit. Lily was holding everything over her head, it was her punishment for Brown.

'You're right. Sorry.'

'I made my own bed, didn't I?' It wasn't a question, not really.

'You should come stay here.' Blair said, peering around the empty penthouse she'd not been back to in so many moons. The place was so lonely without her mother bustling around, yelling at interns about the cost of fabrics they were destroying between the teeth of their sewing machines.

'Take the job, Blair. You'll bury your head in work, avoid him and be on to bigger and better things in no time.'

'I think you're right.' She lamented, lifting the lid of her laptop and watching as it sprung to life, lighting the way to her self-made execution.

The email was there as promised, the details of the new job more or less the same as the one she'd interviewed for. It was a marginally different title and a matching salary, but nonetheless, offered her a less than gentle knock from cloud nine. She nodded at the screen and attached her signature to the contract before firing it back.

'It's done.' She sighed. 'Thanks.'

'Congratulations.' Serena was obviously attempting to repress another wide, mid-sentence yawn. 'Dinner tomorrow to celebrate?'

Blair agreed, though she knew Serena would cancel last minute. Ending the call, she hauled herself up to her childhood bedroom. There was a chill in the air and, though everything was pristine, the space seemed dusty somehow.

Perched on the edge of her own bed like a stranger, she shed the day's clothes and crawled beneath the familiar and unfamiliar ice-blue covers.

There was a message flashing on her phone screen, the number unrecognised, so she flipped it open.

Not even one day on the job and I've been promoted to manager- lucky me. I'll see you at work – CB

No. He couldn't be- could he?

The phone buzzed again.

I hope you remember my lunch preferences.