A/N: not going to lie, this is VERY personal thing to me, and I just thought, given how cancer was portrayed on the show (which, I found, be to honest, insulting) we needed a little injection of reality - though this fic, in fairness, is more me beating your over the head with a large wooden stick than an injection but, sure, who gives a mighty duck? Just warning you now, life doesn't happen like on Grey's Anatomy. Sorry
Reviewers, you're too kind, here's a kiss
Dedicated to anyone and everyone who has suffered from cancer, either personally, or with a loved one. I know.
My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light
Edna St. Vincent Millay
...
Just in case.
...
It's all those little things that you say, things you mean but don't. Not really. Not literally.
I almost died when I saw the new Gucci bag
It doesn't matter if they're not there when it slips out. Someone will give you the look, sometimes you stop yourself. They're always on your mind. Like a mouth ulcer. A baby. A tumour of your own, and you won't be well until it's gone. Either way, until it's gone.
It's not the end of world
It's a little sickening.
Life is short
Nothing is the same. The ordinary, the banal, becomes a guilty pleasure. Ice cream, nail polish, appointments at the hairdressers, your morning coffee, your nightly drink. Mouthwash, sleeping patterns, wearing perfume. A kiss.
Calm down. It's all right. Nobody's going to die, are they?
Theatre – because crowds could be fatal, all those germs. Restaurants – how can they eat? How can you eat? Nights in, and you start to feel claustrophobic. Your home smells like a hospital, that sharp surgical clean, rubbing alcohol, lemon jell-O, dying flowers, disease.
Drop dead
Even if you can't smell it, it lingers.
What would I do without you?
And it always lingers.
.
...
.
He's standing, leaning on the window, hand flat on the glass. Wearing latex gloves in his own home. Blows smoke out into the air where is dissipates quickly, becoming just more Manhattan gunge.
"Are you smoking?"
He doesn't bother asking what she's doing here. How she got in. Blair tries to snatch the joint.
"Have you actually gone insane?"
"Would you rather I smoke hash or shoot morphine? I would do heroin but supposedly that's bad for one's health."
"Are you in pain?"
Yes. Your eyes. You kill me when you look like you care.
A small smile. "Oh. Always."
She tries, again, but he holds it up above her head. He's never been tall, but she's always been small.
"Then take one of the pills the doctor prescribed."
"And throw it back up an hour later? You don't know what you're talking about."
Chuck exhales in her face.
.
...
.
Serena dials Nate.
"You owe me," she sings, "twenty bucks. Cough up."
He groans.
"Blair came to vent today – three days after you predicted she would."
"Well. Tell me. What got broken?"
"We saved the tea pot. Jenny protected it, she hid it under the sink, but then we forget where we put it and that was traumatic."
It's a very special teapot. It says:
Tea Club
The first rule of Tea Club is – you do not talk about Tea Club
Serena recounts the conversation.
"She came in, threw her stuff down. Then she threw her shoe– "
"At you?"
"No, just threw it in general."
"She must've been pretty mad."
"Yeah. And I'd tell you, if you would shut up for, like, a second."
Apologies.
"She rants for a bit, basically saying what an unbelievably selfish, stubborn ass he is, about how he doesn't appreciate anything she does, he's ungrateful and cold and he won't allow her help, her locks doors, he won't eat, he won't talk – Aaaaaaand she caught him smoking this morning."
"Cigarettes?"
"Hash."
Silence.
"Nate?" Serena commands.
"I thought you knew."
"Eh. No."
"It's opium-based, Carter Baizen gets it."
"Carter?"
"It's no big deal, okay. I've had some. It's clean. It totally knocks you out, S."
"Exactly."
"Look, it's Chuck ... I figure we're lucky it's hash and that he's not injecting heroin into his eyeballs or whatever."
"Eww. You can do that?"
She curls up on the couch, curls up her toes. Delilah plays on the rug. Experimenting. Serena wonders if Lego tastes nice. Like chicken?
"Do what?"
"Inject heroin into your eyeballs." Whispers it, just in case.
"And wow, you're easily sidetracked."
"Sorry." Yawns. "I'm pretty tired. Baby wouldn't sleep last night. No you wouldn't, no you wouldn't. Would you? You wouldn't sleep for mommy or daddy."
Nate has to clear his throat.
"Where was I?"
"Blair."
"Oh, yeah, okay. So she finishes yelling, then she yells in French for a bit and I have no idea about that, other than a lot of merde. And then she starts crying, does the whole, I'm a horrible person, he has cancer, I can't yell at him, blah blah blah. Nate, we've got to do something. It's totally unfair."
Nate is awkward. "Serena– "
"I know he's sick, Nate. I know. And I know he's in pain and I know everything sucks. I can see it with my own two eyes, you don't have to tell me. But he can't take it out on us. Blair's been trying really hard."
Nate is diplomatic. "Do you think she's trying a little too hard? She has been gone a while."
"She stayed, Nate."
Nate is stumped.
"She did." He nods. "She did." He sighs. "What do you want me to do S? I can try talking to him, but– "
"Brick wall. I know. I was just there."
"How is he?"
"He was asleep, actually."
"Alone?"
"No. Mom's there."
"Could she do it?"
"She won't. She's on his side."
Nate swears.
"I really don't want to, S. Call me chicken, but I do not want to have that conversation. I'd feel like such an asshole."
He's being painfully honest here. It's one of the side-effects. Everyone is more honest. Living under the shade of the biggest lie, there is no energy left for tiny shoots.
Telling yourself, every night, when you switch out the light, that the phone will not ring at three AM. It will not. It cannot. That's the lie.
"He's being an asshole. You're entitled to be one back."
"You do it, then. You're a better bitch."
"If it's a bitch fight, we're sending Jenny."
"Jenny's on his side," Nate confesses.
"Eric?" Serena suggests, tentatively. "But he's ... on Chuck's side. Rufus?"
"Switzerland."
"Vanessa?"
Nate snorts. "Like she'd come all the up here for that."
"Chuck funded her last movie, she owes him."
Delilah starts sucking on her toes. Serena has to stop at marvel. Babies are such beautiful creatures. Lies down beside her, content to just breathe in that smell. Powdery sleep and the sweetness of milk and her strawberry shampoo and love. Delilah grips her mother's pinky in a chubby fists, all smiles. All smiles. Babies are heavenly creatures.
"Dan?"
"He'll be back from Boston on Thursday. I can ask."
"On second thoughts, don't. They'll end up talking, I know it, and I'll feel like a failure."
"Or Dan could just punch him."
"Ah." Nate smiles. "Those were the days. We were young, carefree, innocent– "
Serena snorts.
"More innocent than we are now," Nate amends, and it's true. There were so many things they did not understand at seventeen, back when they were invincible, boundless, floating in a world of tomorrow where no one was too tired for sex and relaxing meant a glass of wine and reruns of House or a foot massage, when one could go to Spain on a whim – go to Butter on a whim – when wearing the same t-shirt two days in succession was a penal offence, when no one knew the meaning of the words just in case.
.
...
.
I fear the Greeks, especially when they come bearing gifts.
Richio, the doorman, holds the bags. Jenny holds up empty hands.
"I come in peace."
He stands in the doorway, unsure.
"With groceries."
Eyes the brown paper bags with grave suspicion.
"Oh, move already."
She unloads the bags, item by item, perched up on the counter. He settles himself by the sink. Just in case.
"Okay, so we have, orange juice, ginger ale – I saw it was nearly empty yesterday – 7-Up, popsicles." Holds up the box. "It won't put itself in the icebox."
Chuck takes it from her, opens it with a knife. Without nails he can't grasp the cardboard flaps.
"Strawberry or blackcurrent?"
"Lime."
"Fuck off."
"Orange," she compromises.
"Strawberry," he decrees.
"I bought them."
Chuck raises an eyebrow. Or not.
"Fine. Strawberry." Rips back the plastic, talks with a full mouth. "But I call dibbs on orange next time so you'd better not eat them all."
He likes Jenny because she says things like next time. He did never not like her, per say, but after Blair left, after Serena left and Nate and Dan and female Brooklyn, even Eric, left – well, they were the only ones left. Dan is his brother-in-law (Van der Bass-Humphrey lacks a certain panache), but Jenny's his sister.
"Cream crackers. Oatmeal. Hard candy – they didn't have any of the fruit ones, so I got mint. That cool?"
He nods. He can't taste anyway. It's to stimulate the salivary glands.
"Protein shake sachets. Oral rehydration sachets. Glucose tablets– " Taste like Halloween candy in December " –salt tablets. Iodine. Berocca. Echinacea. Assorted vitamins, iron supplements, copper, zinc, periodic table of elements, think fast."
Throws him the little bottles and he lines them up in the medicine cabinet, behind the open ones. His own private pharmacy. If he ever went bankrupt, he'd sell the painkillers and relocate to Mexico.
Mexico would be nice.
"Peanut butter," Jenny says, ignoring his grimace, laying it with loving defiance on the marble. "I can't see why you don't like it. It's got all the essential food groups. Carbs, fat, sugar and peanuts."
"I think my arteries are abused enough."
"Exactly. So a little peanut butter can't hurt."
He isn't convinced. Eyes the peanut with grave suspicion. Blair liked peanut on her Oreos.
"I got this white tea. The lady said it had, like, healing properties because it's less processed or something. I don't know. I figured we'd just try it. Whatever."
She goes to fill the kettle and he empties the bag.
Probiotic yoghurt – because all the bacteria in his intestine have been zapped, because the body is a disgusting place, because God is cruel and wants to torture him so more. Ironically, yoghurt doesn't come back up.
Oranges, for vitamin C, but the acid sometimes burns his tongue.
Limes, because deionised water – and he has to put iodine in it, even bottled water, just in case – is repulsive, and the lime neutralises the acid-base-whatever. He never listened to Mr. Pziser, if he could help it. The only kind of organic chemistry he was interested in didn't come in conjugate pairs.
Does he regret that now?
No.
Ignorance is bliss.
One of the patients at the clinic has flesh-eating bacteria at the site of his bone marrow transplant. Every day, they take him down to surgery and scrape off the dead shit. If it comes to that, he doesn't want to know. He does not want to know.
Chuck takes the last item from the bag.
Jenny senses something is wrong.
He's staring down at the carton.
She realises her mistake. Her mouth is all red.
Chuck slips the milk into the refrigerator.
"Have you ever heard of closing the stable door after the horse has bolted?"
Jenny hands him a steaming mug. "It's hall full, Chuck."
.
...
.
Carter pauses, turns around, cash still in hand.
"You know something, Bass?"
Chuck lights up, not interested. Smoke curls out his nostrils, tingling, burning, and he welcomes the sensation, the ensuing mist of calm made the more sweet.
"I'm sure you'll tell me anyway."
"You're a fucking asshole."
"Who called you? Serena?"
"Nate."
He's touched – Nate calling Carter Baizen takes something – but doesn't show it, never shows it.
"And what did Nathaniel have to say for himself?"
"He said he wanted to beat your sorry ass because you're being such a little bitch but you have leukaemia and he'd feel guilty. Me? I don't like you anyway."
"So hit me."
It's Carter's turn to sneer.
"I don't kick dogs."
"Hit me."
"Don't tempt me, man."
"Hit me."
Chuck stands up. Stubs out joint.
"Hit me."
Carter's shrewd. "Why?"
"Isn't it obvious?" It's hard to keep his voice steady.
Soft thwack of cash on the table, Carter's nicotine fingers flicking through it like a card shark. He leaves the money. "People care. I sure as Hell don't, but they do, and you owe them. Quit bitching and take it like a man. So you've got cancer. Think you're the only one?"
"Yes," Chuck says, simply, "I am."
.
...
.
"Lily said I'd find you here."
She drops back and sits down on the cold bench. Crosses and recrosses her ankles.
"Since when did you feed the ducks?"
Since the day you left.
"Someone had to."
He doesn't scatter the bread, so much as aims to kill.
"Stop playing the martyr Bass."
"Stop playing the wife."
"Stop being such a jerk."
"Stop acting like the past five years didn't happen."
"Stop acting like the past two weeks didn't happen."
He sounds so tired. Drops the last crust. Hands in his pockets, gives her a greyscale smile.
"Stop pretending, Blair. You've proved your point. You win. Game over. Go home."
"Pretending?" she repeats, proof of the Ice Queen she once was, before the red beret and black drainpipes. "You unimaginable bastard."
Slaps him.
Fuck just in case.