Disclaimer: I do not own Gossip Girl or "Happy Endings;" all characters and initial concepts/structures belong to their respective owners.

A/N: Starts during the Snowflake Ball, so Season 2. I don't know episode numbers, sorry.

B.

Bart Bass doesn't die in the car crash. In fact, there is no car crash because this isn't a fucking soap opera, people. He arrives to the Snowflake Ball on time and yells at Rufus. And at Lily. Repeat process. Blair and Chuck watch the scene with amused, sadistic smirks on their faces. Then, they disappear to suite 1812 to watch episodes of Mad Men and gorge on sushi. They can be surprisingly normal at times.

Bart decides that the van der Bass family is taking a trip to their house in Vail for winter vacation. They need to bond, he says, as a family. No outsiders allowed. Serena loudly protests, and scores Blair an invite. Can't live two weeks without her best friend. Besides, she's family.

It's freezing in Vail at this time of year. Blair starts applying moisturizer to her sensitive skin three hours into the five hour flight. She tries to force it on everyone at least twice. When Eric refuses, she sits in his lap and globs it all over his face. Bart admires the way she stubbornly argues with Chuck about it. Chuck eventually agrees. He's got a lovesick expression on his face, Bart notices. Hm.

Blair is deathly afraid of heights. Not plane heights (because it doesn't really feel like you're up high, right?). Heights where she's suspended, where her feet dangle above her so-called impending doom. Despite years of experience skiing, chairlifts still aren't her thing. She can't get over the height. The gondola makes her feel better, but it's still something that swings and sways.

Chuck is known to pay the ski bums who work the gondolas at least a hundred dollars per ride to put him in his own gondola. He doesn't ride with peasants. Yes, that is the word he uses. Blair, who has a little more tolerance and a lot more grace, calls him tacky. She would never do that, but she secretly appreciates it. She doesn't like peasants either.

Chuck and Blair like to ski hard. Bart wishes he could keep up, but he's gotten kind of old. His back doesn't hold up the way it used to. Sometimes he tags along in the morning, but as his energy fades, he has to join up with Serena, Lily and Eric. The proud bunny hill group. Blair always offers to slow down for him, but "slow" for her is zipping down a black diamond in the back bowl that's just gotten fresh powder. He can't handle that. Chuck snickers. Bart is embarrassed.

One day, Chuck and Blair get stuck in their private little gondola. A blizzard has just hit, and they don't know when they'll be able to start the gondola again. Blair starts panicking. Chuck tries to calm her down with a chocolate bar. iIt's only one of the many food items he carries around in his pockets should an emergency situation should arise. That emergency situation being his hunger. God forbid King Charles should ever go hungry.

"I don't eat chocolate."

"That's ridiculous. Who doesn't eat chocolate?"

"I don't."

"Why not?"

"It's fattening."

"Eat the fucking chocolate, Blair, or I'll force it down your throat."

"Okay."

He's never seen someone eat faster.

"Thanks," she says, stretching her legs in front of her.

He inches closer to her on the seat. The gondola shakes. She flinches. He puts his arm around her.

Chuck and Blair do what they do best in those three hours they spend on the gondola. Argue and make out. The making out part, Blair justifies, is a way to distract her from her fear. Chuck just calls her horny.

They spend the rest of the trip skiing and having sex. They think no one notices (with the exception of Serena, who wants to hear the details but also doesn't want to because it's kind of repulsive). Everyone notices. They're not nearly as sneaky as they think they are. It's pretty obvious when they lock themselves up every night in Chuck's room to "watch a House marathon," but the only things they can say about the episodes are that House was high on vicodin, Cuddy looked like a slut, and the patient was saved at the last minute. Yeah. Okay. How descriptive.

Blair drunks dial Chuck one night. She's out partying with Serena and she's pretty trashed. She hasn't heard from Chuck lately and her sober pride won't let her contact him. She will not be needy, she will not be needy, she will not be needy. Logically, she throws herself at a random guy. Makes out with him at a table. He kind of looks like Chuck if she downs enough alcohol and squints hard enough. But she's not drunk enough to overlook that his lips don't feel like Chuck's and that he doesn't taste the way Chuck does and that he doesn't set her skin on fire like Chuck does. Can she ever be that drunk?

So she goes outside of the club, calls him up, and cries to him about how he's ruined all other men for her and blah blah blah. He miraculously makes it there in five minutes, takes her drunk ass back to the van der Bass penthouse, and tucks her into his bed for the night.

The next morning, she asks him why he hasn't called.

"Because I thought you didn't want me to call."

"Why wouldn't I want you to call?"

"I thought you needed time or whatever. That we 'couldn't be anything.'"

"No, that's what you think. What'd you say? That we only have tonight or some other melodramatic bullshit?"

"I don't think that anymore. I thought that that, er, changed in Vail."

"Oh, so you just change your mind about the possibility of a relationship and don't bother to tell the other half of the potential relationship? What, am I a mind reader?"

"I just thought you knew."

"Well, I didn't. So thanks. I've felt like shit all week."

"You've felt like shit? I've felt like shit."

"You didn't call! I thought you, like, didn't want me anymore."

"A) Not possible. B) I thought you didn't want me anymore."

"I do. Want you."

"I want you too."

"Good."

"Yup."

"… What now?"

"Not sure. Should I make us official?"

"Please."

"Blair, will you be my girlfriend?"

"Yes. Gladly."

Predictably, the next thing they do is consummate their relationship a few times. When they're finished and lying in bed together, she looks up at him, blinks once, and tells him that she loves him. He smiles slightly and presses a kiss into her hair, mumbling that he loves her too. It's almost inaudible, but it's there, and Blair can accept a mumble. One day she'll turn that mumble into a formal proclamation. Maybe even a facebook status.

Everything continues as in A.