If there was one thing Chuck Bass prided himself on fully and completely understanding it was people, more precisely women. Many would make the correct assumption that Chuck's women, the oh so many of them in their wide variety of exquisite packaged beauty, were dispensable. Consumed and forgotten much like the slice of tiramisu Chuck had taken great delight in a short hour ago to accompany his scotch. Those same people would however be incorrect in their assumption that the only pleasure Chuck had in his women was the mere consumption. The sex was indeed what he signed up for, the quest and the one true destiny. The path traveled however offered an education quite opposite to what his peers had received over the years and this on itself offered a rare pleasure of it's own.
Chuck took delight in having woman of great variety, this extended from the usual differences of race and age to those of social standings. He had been with hotel employees, servants and many other brands of blue collars he could get his hands on to woman of society, models, actresses even. He liked to experience it all. And experience he did. And with the sex came the personalities constantly combating his born need to dominate. It was within these struggles where he learned his most integral lessons about people and what it would take to coerce and to rule. It was to make it seem like it was their idea.
He smirked now, watching Serena from afar. Even from here he could see it. She stood taller, straighter, and the dead look in her eyes reached him where he stood. She was back but not before the heavy bludgeoning they had all taken to shatter the egg shell she had taken refuge in for sometime now. Off was the cover, a powdered wind as she stood now in her legged blond glory. And though she looked the same, physically, the air around her changed and she was suddenly more beautiful and terrifying than one could ever have imagined.
Chuck had stepped back, sure. He left her alone all summer to stew over her broken heart. It was really the picket fence she cried over. Not a literal one of course, but it was one where she the affectionate, beautiful puppy of Dan Humphrey would be kept within and barred from the wild. But she had been kicked out with nowhere to go, so she perched up along the nearest tree and mourned away the summer. In her mind she mourned for the affection and the home. But in truth it was all due to fear for what she would gain or regain while in the wild then sorrow for what was lost.
He had let her be, believe as she wanted and resist the freedom and the right of nature to crawl back and be caged again inside; cradled in Humphrey's light of good and all that was right. He had let her because he knew women, he knew that he could no more shake them out of their fantasies and of their inner movie of choice anymore than he could convince them of the senseless of fairytales at the age of five.
But there had been something this time. Even as she dangled from Humphrey's arm. There was that light, the soft sparkle that was so essential to all that was Serena. And it was back. Perhaps she had built the fantasy too high in her mind and when reunited, Humphrey wasn't all good nor completely right. Or perhaps it was her lips having skimmed the edge of the wild and to go back without a taste, a mouthful even, built a yearning in her mind.
She had however strolled out, willingly this time. She was back, not completely but enough so that Chuck saw her, the real Serena, through the cracks. He could see her longing to break through, there was that glint accompanied by hunger in the blue of her eyes, in the careless pitch of her laugh. He could sense it at all times.
She couldn't break through on her own. She was too weak, too scared. But it was nature and so everything was set out to let her back. Humphrey. Blair. Everything and everyone. But there had to be a spark, initiation to the reaction which with it was really spontaneous, ready to reach its most favorable affinity.
"Welcome back sis."
She stared at him a moment and absorbed his knowing smile. And through those dark dead eyes broke out a smile.
"Cheers."