Hello! How are all of you today! I'm crossing my fingers that my union sees sense and we don't go on strike at my work tomorrow. If they do, well, let's just say I'll have more time on my hands to write. No money to buy food during the school year, but plenty of time… Frak. Okay, here we go…
Blair sat perched on the edge of the bench, trying not to think about what stains her dress could be acquiring as she sat on "Public" property, and focused on edging the toe of her shoe towards the handle of her fallen purse. If she could just hook it and pull it closer she could get her cell phone, which was inside. She wasn't going to worry about the other contents that were strewn along the sidewalk.
She was so focused on what she was doing she didn't even notice the people who were headed towards her until she heard her name called out.
"Blair?"
Glancing over her shoulder her eyes narrowed on Jenny, Vanessa, and, unfortunately, Dan as they approached her from about a half a block away. Turning her head away from them she rolled her eyes heavenward and questioned "Why?" before turning her head back to them with her face a mask of the fake pleasantry she always tended to use around this group. Well, most of them anyway. Over the years Jenny and she had formed a loose friendship, and Blair held a grudging respect for the girl who went after what she wanted with the same zeal that Blair executed.
"Hello."
"I thought that was you!" Jenny commented smiling as they all now stood in front of Blair.
"Yeah, I told her she had to be delusional, but here you are. Does the Upper East Side know you've escaped or are you out on a day pass."
"Funny… It seems there are more people trying to break into the neighbourhood then break out… Interlopers you know… And you don't need a pass when you belong there." She said looking him up and down.
"Even though you're not Mrs. Chuck Bass anymore?" He seemed to take a snide pleasure in pointing out.
"I'm still Blair Waldorf, and believe me, that's more than enough." She shot back.
Sensing that these two together were like putting cats and dogs in the same cage, Jenny interceded. "So, Blair? What brings you down here? We were just checking out my new boutique down the block. Thanks for the flowers at the opening!"
Blair had been invited to the opening but had taken a pass given that in all likelihood Chuck would have been there. They all took note of the pinched look that washed over her face and assumed it was caused by that situation. Blair took the opportunity to change the subject.
"The best embroider in the city is run out of that shop." Blair gestured over her shoulder. "I had to pick up the clothes and blankets I'd had monogrammed. I was just about to call my car service when…" She indicated her fallen purse, and spared Dan and Vanessa a glance. "Would you mind…"
Glancing at each other they dropped down and began collecting the spilled contents.
"Umm…" Vanessa commented, and pointed to the puddle she just noticed. "Is that what I think it is?"
"No." Blair snapped quickly.
All eyes were on Blair now, and they were realizing that her pained expression might have less to do with her having to suffer their presence and more to do with the arrival of someone else.
"Blair…" Jenny began nervously. "Are you in labour?"
"I most certainly am not." Blair snapped. "I have a C-Section scheduled for two weeks from tomorrow. My parents, all of them, are flying in from Europe in two days, Serena is at a spa with Lars uptown, and Dorota is in Boston picking up the hand engraved cutlery set I ordered. Charlie is not coming now."
"Charlie?" Vanessa questioned with a raised brow.
Blair snapped her fingers and pointed to her swollen abdomen. "Charles Harold Bartholomew Bass II."
"Oh, god." Dan groaned. "Just what the world needs; two Chucks."
Once again ignoring him. "Now, if you'll just pass me my phone, I'll call for my car and you can be on your way."
Dan and Vanessa were happy to do just that, when Blair suddenly gasped and lurched forward, clutching the bench for support. Jenny looked at them, and they knew they weren't going anywhere.
"It will pass. Go!" Blair commanded when she saw that they had no intention of leaving.
"Yeah, I'm sure when the baby pops out of you you'll feel much better." Vanessa commented as she finished gathering Blair's things from the ground and then started looking around to hail a cab.
Blair would have snapped out a comeback, but another pain caught her off guard, and she leaned forward panting.
"Whoa!" Dan said, shock in his voice. "That seemed fast! Was that fast? That was fast!"
"Really fast." Jenny said, sitting down next to Blair and taking her hand. "When did your contractions start?"
"They haven't." Blair said coolly when she could catch her breath. "I'm not in labour. This is just Braxton Hicks, false labour."
Dan rolled his eyes. "Okay, so when did these 'false labour' pains start?"
Not making eye contact, Blair kept her gaze level on a tree across the street. "During breakfast… yesterday."
"BLAIR!" The three yelled in unison.
"We have to get you to the hospital."
Finally spotting a cab, Vanessa started to wave it over, when a black car pulled up and they all looked at each other questioningly.
"It's my service." Blair commented not caring at this point how the car got there, but only that she didn't have to ride in a taxi.
Holding out her arms in silent command, Dan took her arm and helped her into the car. He stood back as if to shut the door after her, but Jenny cut him off.
"She can't go by herself. You need to go with her."
"Me? Why me?" He asked in disbelief.
"Because Vanessa is going to go get Nate, who will be able to find Chuck, and I'm going to go and get Serena."
"Why can't I go get Nate?"
"Because then Vanessa would have to go with Blair, and that would be a fate worse than death for both of them."
"Amen, sister." Vanessa chipped in.
"Well… Why can't I get Serena?" He questioned, desperate to get out of Blair duty.
"Do you really want to be the one to interrupt her and 'Lars' during couples massage?"
Dan groaned, glanced at the open car door and then back at his sister. "Just hurry."
It wasn't until he was speeding towards the hospital, that he realized the third option of Vanessa interrupting the porn, Jenny attending the birth of Satan's child, and him finding Nate. However, as a stifled scream broke from Blair all thoughts flew out of his head.
"Oh! I think he's coming!" Blair screamed.
Unsure Dan touched the hem of her dress. "Maybe I should take a—"
His ear would ring for a week from the slap that landed across his cheek.
They pulled up outside of Blair's hospital, and to both Blair and Dan's surprise there was a full medical team waiting to greet them. They rushed Blair onto a gurney and hurried her inside with Dan following closely behind. After a quick examination by her doctor they took her strait to a birthing room.
"Won't be long now." The doctor assured her.
"Wait! What about my epidural? If I have to do it this way, I want drugs!" She panted as they settled her into the bed.
"I'm sorry, Ms. Waldorf, you're too far along for that now. We'll just have to do this the old fashioned way." He patted her knee.
If Dan had ever seen someone about to commit murder, it was Blair in that moment. He caught her a second before she lurched for the doctor's throat. Falling back on the propped bed, she struggled to catch her breath as another pain shook her. She didn't even notice Dan mopping the sweat off her brow with a hospital towel until it had passed.
"This wasn't the plan." She moaned, fighting tears, and turning her head away from Dan. "He was supposed to have gotten over it by now. He had two more weeks to change his mind. He was supposed to be here."
Dan didn't need to ask who she was talking about, and he didn't know what to say, so he just took her hand and let her crush the bones in it as the next contraction started up.
Nate burst through the doors of the long shutdown Victor/Victrola, and sighed with relief after having finally located Chuck. He'd searched half the town looking for him after Vanessa had burst in on a private meeting to tell him that Blair was in labour. After helping his secretary up and then excusing her, he'd ignored Vanessa's judgmental look as she'd stormed out of his office, and he began calling around for Chuck.
With no success, he'd wracked his brain for where Chuck might be, and his first club was the only thing that came to mind. Now he saw him, sitting on the couch before the stage, an empty bottle of scotch in front of him and a second cracked open.
"Why are you just sitting here?" Nate demanded coming to stand in front of Chuck blocking his vacant stare towards the empty stage. "Blair's in labour!"
"I know." Chuck murmured, taking another drink from his glass.
"How do you…" Nate looked confused before he realized how Chuck would already know. "You've been having her followed."
"Yes… he called when as soon as her water broke. I sent a car for her and assembled her medical team. They've been on standby for weeks… they're probably thrilled she's going early so they can relax…"
It was like Chuck was talking, but he didn't really think anyone was there. Nate tried to break through to him.
"She's having your baby. You should be there. Be with her."
"I can't." Chuck said sadly.
"You can't what? Be a man?" Nate snapped, losing his temper.
"I can't watch her die."
With his words, Chuck finally looked up at Nathanial, and Nate was taken aback by what he saw in his friend's eyes. Chuck was tormented. Knowing he couldn't leave him alone like this, Nate poured himself a glass, sank into a chair, and settled in to pass the time with Chuck.
With a final push that was accompanied by a gut wrenching scream, Blair felt the baby flush from her body. She held her breath until she heard the sound of his enraged cry at having been expulsed from his warm womb. Her relief at that cry allowed her to try to breathe herself. Almost immediately the doctor placed her goop-covered son on her chest, and after finally taking her son into her arms, it was as if a part of her had been missing, and that now that he was here, that hole was filled. Her eyes swam with tears and as she blinked they escaped down her cheeks.
"You're worth it." She whispered breathlessly against his damp cap of dark hair. "You're worth it! You're worth everything!"
Blair vaguely registered the doctor handing Dan the scissors to cut the cord, and him doing it with a look of awkwardness and awe on his face. All too soon a nurse was whisking him from her arms to weigh and measure him, and the doctor was encouraging her to bear down so she could deliver the afterbirth. Blair accidentally caught a glimpse of it as the doctor dropped it into a waiting bowl.
"Oh, my GOD!"
"What?" Dan jumped.
"That's placenta? It's disgusting! I can't believe I have that put in my hair!" She bemoaned touching her lustrous locks.
She was distracted from the thoughts of what other beauty treatments she used without a thought to what they actually were, by the return of her son to her arms. Her eyes were glued to the wrinkled little face, and soulful dark eyes that looked up at her. She spoke to Dan without looking at him.
"I swear to God, after what I've just gone through, if you don't tell me he's perfect I'll strangle you by your skinny tie." She commented with a smile on her face.
Dan looked down at the baby chuckling, having been just about to make a comment about the baby's horns being barely noticeable. "He's perfect. A credit to his gene pool."
It was then that Dan glanced at Blair's face and he was brought up short. It was a side of Blair he had never seen. Her face was alight with true joy, as if she held everything she could ever want in her arms.
Through the euphoria a pain broke through as she looked at her son. "Chuck should have been here."
"Chuck's an idiot."
Much later that night, long after the many visitors had come and gone, paying their respects to the new heir apparent to the Bass fortune, and quite possibly of the Upper East Side, Blair slept in her private hospital suite.
Chuck had just come from making a sizable donation to the hospital, and he stood in the doorway for a moment, before slowly walking in to stand at her bedside. Once there he just looked at her. He stared for what seemed like forever as he tried to reassure himself that she was alright. She looked tired, but ultimately intact. He let out a breath he felt like he had been holding for 38 weeks. She hadn't been taken from him. Chuck couldn't resist reaching out and tracing the perfect line of her jaw with his index finger.
It was then that he heard him. Looking over to the other side of the bed, he spotted the bassinette he hadn't noticed before in his distraction of assuring himself Blair was fine. The tiny mews and gurgles brought Chuck to stand over the bassinette and look down on his son. His first thought was to smile at how the baby was clearly swaddled in a non-hospital issue chenille blanket, and sporting an Egyptian cotton cap with his initials embroidered across the top. The baby started to fuss and Chuck glanced over at Blair and saw her stir. Not wanting to wake her he looked back at the baby and awkwardly lifted him into his arms. Nothing had felt more foreign or more right to Chuck in his entire life as he held his son for the first time. At this close range he finally looked at his face, and was blown away at seeing, even at this early age, a perfect melding of Blair and himself.
Just a few feet away, Blair had come awake to see Chuck take Charlie into his arms for the first time, and she had kept silent as she experienced the moment she'd waited for all of these months. She could see Chuck fall in love with him.
Then anger swept through her. It was too late. He was too late.
"You shouldn't be here." She broke in coldly.
Chuck looked up at her and didn't register her tone. Instead he spoke with awe what he was thinking. "He's perfect."
"Yes." She agreed holding out her arms. "Yes, he is. And he's mine. Give me my son and leave."
For a moment Chuck looked like he might just walk out of the room and take Charlie with him, but he reluctantly handed him to his mother. Blair immediately cradled him to her chest protectively and tried to stare Chuck out of the room. She froze as he stepped forward and placed a soft kiss on her ridged cheek.
"Thank you for my son." He whispered against it before turning to leave.
"He's not your son." She said bitterly. "You signed him away."
Chuck turned back, looked into her eyes and saw she was preparing to do battle. He didn't acknowledge her words as he left the room. He would walk away for now, but nothing would keep him from getting back his wife and son. Nothing.
TahDaH! There you go! I hope that you all enjoyed that. At like 2am yesterday I started watching season one again. Just the Chuck and Blair stuff mind you. Gotta love early Chair. If you're looking you can see that Chuck is already half in love with her before Victor/Victrola. They better still be together when the show comes back in September.
