Part 7

The amber liquid swirled inside the glass.

He felt the stares, heard pieces of the soft whispers behind jeweled hands.

Chuck felt the hand that rested on his back, and he turned to see a young blonde sidling up to him. "Chuck Bass," she said throatily. "I don't know what happened these last three months I was in Germany, but you are looking better than ever."

His eyes flickered from the smooth angelic face, down to the short black sparkly number that stopped just a little past her hips, to the gold peep toe heels that held her up. "You're not looking so bad yourself," he returned, not bothering to search his brain for a name. He turned back to the bar.

Her hand moved to his arm and squeezed. Chuck turned his head and looked down at the manicured fingers that clutched at him. "I'm available."

There was no subtle hint. It was direct, matter-of-fact, and a memory flickered in his head of the positions this particular one was willing to try. He covered her hand with his and leaned close, and she pressed against his side. Her lips parted. "I'm waiting for someone," was his answer.

She rolled her eyes. "Like that ever stopped you before."

He turned back to the scotch and lifted the glass, looking at the swirls he made. His lips curved. "It's stopping me now."

When the blonde left—her name started with a K, he just remembered—he closed his eyes and lifted the glass, holding it at level of his lips, sniffing the familiar scent of his alcohol. Then, he placed the glass against his forehead and shut his eyes.

A few weeks ago this would have been gone with one bitter, delicious swallow. Slowly, he grabbed the cool surface of the glass down against his skin. Just a few inches and maybe he could run his tongue through the rim, taste a sweet explosion of memories.

For days after she had left Bangkok, he was left convulsing in his bed. Around him the room stank and he just knew his credit card would take the beating for the foul vomit in the carpet around the bed. He had twisted and screamed until the guards had come pounding on his door.

Chuck didn't remember much of that week after she left. But he did remember that moment when, in front of Nate, he folded. The decision had been the most rational, practical, logical one he had made, but he had done it for the most emotional of reasons.

"Grow up," Nate had said.

Chuck stalked out of her abandoned hotel suite and Nate had come running after him. Nate could say all kinds of shit to him, but underneath the prissy, pissed off little fights they had, Nate was still the boy who gave Chuck his first whiff of weed. That bond never broke.

And they had found themselves in Chuck's new suite. Chuck threw open the minibar door and started collecting the ridiculous little bottles and lined them up on the sink. "What are you doing?" Nate had asked, exasperation lacing his voice.

Chuck's answer had been simple. Even Nate understood. Chuck picked up one little bottle and threw it against the cement wall, sending the contents splattering and the glass shattering. It created a sluicing dark brown mark on the textured wall. "Growing the fuck up." And then one by one he destroyed the bottles in front of Nate's eyes. Chuck grabbed his own personal stock from his bag and unscrewed the cap.

Without hesitation, he poured the scotch down the drain, leaving the empty bottle clattering under the faucet.

The two of them stood silent as the last of the scotch dripped from the mouth of the bottle. And that was exactly when the sheer magnitude of his decision sank into him, and his hand started twitching. He quickly fisted both hands, but the nervous tremor climbed to his elbow, causing his entire right arm to shake uncontrollably. He had thrown Nate a look, and his best friend's gaze dropped to his hand.

In his eyes, it was a wordless plea.

Nate had sighed, then laid a firm arm around his shoulders. He had squeezed his eyes shut, because this, this nervous reaction was not even withdrawal. No, that would probably sink in about three or four hours. But it had already been hell.

"You can't do this alone, Chuck," Nate had muttered.

And that was when he knew, Nate was not going to fly back to New York—not then, not for the entire week that Chuck had shivered and sweated and twisted and cursed. No, Nate had dragged him back to the US the first day he could stand, had offered him Blair, and had listened to the repeated refusals.

Chuck drew the small bottle in his pocket and took one pill—he was down to one a day now. He almost reached for the scotch to down the pill, but swallowed it dry instead.

"What was that?"

Even until today, when he thought he was free, he still sank into the wretched scent and sound hallucinations that he had heard about in the program. He swore he smelled the perfume she had so eagerly bared her neck for a few months ago. And he could swear it was her voice that played in his head.

"Chuck Bass, what was that?"

This time, the demand was more insistent, louder, more impatient, and he recognized that no hallucination would be that real. He turned and saw Blair Waldorf, with her arms crossed in front of her chest, looking at him through narrowed eyes. He wanted to reach for her, because no matter how much she tried now, he would never, not once, doubt that she loved him.

He still remembered the pleading look in her face when she said it along the streets of Manhattan, the frantic sound of her voice as she said the words as he pushed inside her, the trembling of her lips when she said it under the shower spray in the bathroom of his Best City Inn room.

If only he could take photographs of memories, those three events would be plastered all over his walls.

And he turned around in his seat because this girl deserved more than a crane of his neck. "What was what?" he asked, offering her his hand. She placed her hand in his, but shook her head when he moved to help her to the bar stool. Instead she pulled him towards a booth.

He walked with her, and he noticed her throw a look back at the bar and the lonely glass he had left sitting there. She was too transparent, and he loved that could notice those little things now—because the small smile that quickly passed by her lips was too beautiful to have gone unnoticed.

In private, as they sat, Blair extended her hand. Chuck looked down at it, then slipped his hand into his pocket. He placed the small jar in her hand, and waited for her to inspect it. She licked her lips, then gave it back to him. "So it's true," she said quietly, watching him put the valium back inside his pocket.

He searched for something to say, but it seemed like it was the dratted alcohol that gave him the best lines. So he said instead, "Yeah."

She leaned back in her seat, silent for a long time. Then she admitted, "I'm actually waiting for you to say that you're not doing it for me, and I shouldn't get my hopes up."

Had he really been that hurtful?

"I wasn't," he said. She nodded. "I was doing it for me."

"That's good."

He moistened his lips. They always seemed too dry now, like the only thing that could make them feel better, like they were not going to crack, was if he could just taste a little, one last time. She placed the badge on the table, then pushed it towards him. "Here. You earned this. Congratulations, Chuck. You don't know—" her voice caught in her throat. "You don't know what it means to me to know you're doing this."

"I know."

Of course he knew.

"I'm doing this so I can be better," he told her. "So when it happens, you know it's me talking because I feel it, not because I'm sad, not because I'm angry, or lonely, or horny." And he knew she knew. She had to know what he was talking about. He was making no effort to hide it. It was in his eyes, in the way he fingers played with hers, in the fact that he was sacrificing the one comfort he grew up with. He was in the hotel bar, surrounding by bottles of aged whiskey and fruity champagne.

And he was stone cold sober.

So he could say them so clearly she wasn't going to have to ask him to repeat it. So he could repeat it over and over and over and over.

Like she did.

"And what if you get depressed again?" she asked softly. "Or afraid? Or when it gets so hard?"

Her eyes were liquid, with real fear. And he wondered why she was so afraid when this single act was the greatest gesture he could give her to reassure her that he was going to stay.

"What is it?" he asked in concern. He pushed his AA badge into her hand and closed her fingers over it, because it was hers.

She dropped the badge on the table, then turned her hand palm up so she could intertwine her fingers with his. Blair met his eyes, and said, "I love you."

And this time was unexpected, but so clear in his head, for the first time, because he was hearing it without the haze of alcohol clouding his senses. The words were so simple and short and common and… He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed them.

"And I won't ever stop. So I have to keep something from you."

"Tell me," he urged her.

"No." She placed her other hand on his cheek, smiled sadly, then sighed. "You're doing so well, Chuck. Whatever it is you're doing, you have to continue doing it. It's working."

"Tell me," he asked again.

"I can't." She blinked away the tears, then gave him a fat smile.

She pulled herself out of the booth, then checked her watch. And in that pretense she could not even put the action in a sequence of events that made sense. Watch first, then stand up. Chuck had been pretending so long it was natural. She was only just beginning to. "Blair, tell me."

And now he was standing so close to her, he could see each rise and fall of her chest. "I love you." But he heard more than the words when he looked into her eyes. I love you, and I'm not dragging you down with me.

He cupped her cheek, and she still pressed her face into his hand so instinctively that his heart warmed. He bent and closed his lips over hers. It was the first kiss he ever had when the very sensation of the other mouth brought tears to his eyes. So this was how she tasted, when there wasn't scotch in his system. God, her lips alone could keep him satisfied his entire life. "I want to know. I want you to trust me so much you would tell me what it is."

And she must have felt the same because her hands rose and she wrapped her arms around his waist, then laid her cheek against his chest. In the hotel bar. Where everyone knew Chuck Bass. Where many of him had probably seen him getting a handjob under the table. But no one, not one of them, had seen this. His hand rested on the small of her back.

"I'm so embarrassed."

She wasn't talking about this, about the people who could see them. He doubted she even noticed. He reached down, then tipped her face so she would meet his eyes. "There's nothing to be ashamed of. Look who you're talking to." And that brought a smile to her lips. "The worst thing you've ever done, the darkest thought you've ever had, I'll stand by you through everything."

When she recognized the words, and heard them coming from him, she swallowed, then pulled his lips down for another kiss.

He looked down at her after, and opened his mouth for the declaration that necessarily followed, but she placed a finger on his lips, hushing him. Blair shook her head. He pushed the hair back from her cheek to behind her ear. "Why not?" he rasped. This was the moment he said it. He just knew, he should say it.

"Not until you find out what it is." She bit her lip, and now her eyes flickered with the uncertainty that he had last seen last year, when the biggest problem in her life had been that Serena had returned and was threatening her status. "Will you come with me tomorrow, to the hospital?"

Fingers of cold dread spread through his chest. But still, he said, "I'll come with you." She nodded, and closed her eyes. She drew a deep, calming breath. "And I'm not waiting until then to tell you, because it wouldn't matter. It wouldn't change a thing."

"Chuck," she protested, but held her breath.

"I'm in love with you." Three words, eight letters. That wasn't nearly enough. "I love you. I'm so in love with you. I'm crazy in love." He pressed a kiss on both of her eyelids. "Open your eyes, Blair," he asked. And when she did, he looked down into the deep pools of brown. "So in love it's not even funny."

And still, his confession was marred by the fear in her eyes.

"It's not gonna change," he assured her.

She nodded, but the tears told him it wasn't enough. It had to be tomorrow. Whatever it was, whatever she was ashamed of, whatever she didn't want him to know because it might threaten his own recovery. "I'll love you, no matter what," she whispered. And that promise gutted him, because of everything it did not say, and everything it did. No matter what he did, even if he changed, even if tomorrow, he wasn't who he was tonight. She'll love him.

tbc