A/N: I noticed that many of my readers seemed to have dropped this story, which no doubt has to do with the events of the last chapter. I'm very grateful for those of you who still believe in me and are reading and reviewing. I lost my inspiration for awhile, but I am getting it back slowly but surely. Please review. =)
*I own nothing. No copyright infringement intended.
…
Ch.6—Jet Lag
They shouldn't have come. They shouldn't have come. At the very least she shouldn't have allowed Chuck to act so rashly. She understood what he was going through, especially after witnessing first hand Blair's lack of true affection. But they had decided to plan out how exactly they were going to go about returning to past events and "fixing" them, as bizarre as it was that they were actually taking it into consideration.
Of course that was when Chuck hadn't had his heart ripped out and thrown into his face for the hundredth time since Blair had started seeing Dan. Regardless of the lack of interaction they had, Blair and Dan's faces plastered to each other in nearly every Gossip Girl blast did not leave Chuck, or herself for that matter, with very steady legs to stand on.
It was clear to her now that she shouldn't have given into his heartbreak, even if her sisterly compassion had kicked into high gear the second she registered the angry conversation taking place between her step-brother and "best friend" behind Chuck's bedroom door.
The ride up the elevator felt strange to her somehow. As obvious as it was, she felt like she was in a different dimension. They'd set off the balance of nature by going back into time, and something told her Chuck had already managed to get his hands dirty. And not in a good way.
She had to hurry.
To her great distress, on the 10th floor the elevator came to a halt and in walked none other than five years' past, Lily Van der Woodsen. It would be impossible to avoid her in the elevator shaft, especially since she was the only other one in there.
"Serena," she said, surprised.
She forced a tight smile.
"I thought you were planning on spending the night with Blair."
"She's—" she stopped herself. "I decided to come home early. I'm a little tired." It wasn't a complete lie. She was feeling the exhaustion already from the time travel, not to mention that she was hoping future Chuck was in his too close for comfort hotel suite.
Besides, it was better than what she had been about to say. Things would definitely change in the past if her mother knew about Blair's affair with Chuck before even her past self did. Talk about drama. And chaos.
Though, things would certainly get out into the open a lot quicker… The thought was intriguing but inevitably she decided she would talk to Chuck about it first. Things would go a lot smoother for them, and be a lot more successful – if they talked out their plans of execution before doing anything rash.
A lump formed in her throat. She hoped Chuck had not let his emotions play recklessly with his actions already – past actually going into the past that is.
The elevator bell sounded and she inwardly groaned. If she had to put up with yet another person noticing her presence before she'd gotten to Chuck, she would just about lose her mind. She'd told Chuck The Palace was too close. Had he listened? No. Had she known he wasn't going to? It was possible.
"Are you coming, dear?"
Her mother's voice made her turn her head. She was confused and knew it was clear as day on her face. They should have practiced, she scolded herself and Chuck in her head. They should have practiced situations like this before they just blindly jumped into their past reality.
Thinking as quickly as was possible under the layers of stress, she glanced up at the number on the elevator. Fifteenth floor.
"I'm going to go see a friend first," she said, with another forced smile.
Lily looked puzzled.
"What friend do you have in this hotel?"
It wasn't supposed to sound insulting, but she did take some offense to it.
"Chuck," she said, as if it was obvious.
Lily laughed. "I thought you hated Charles."
Right.
Again, Serena inwardly groaned. She had hated Chuck at this point in time. It'd taken them a long time to get to the place they were now.
"I won't be long," she said, accidentally-on-purpose hitting the button to close the elevator doors.
"Alright, dear," Lily said, sounding a trifle concerned.
Serena didn't blame her. She was concerned for herself. Unfortunately, the solace she found in the empty elevator didn't last long. Three floors to be precise. Next time she would take the express elevator. That way there would be no interruptions and she wouldn't feel like a deer caught in the headlights.
She should have taken an acting class.
It didn't take long to find the suite opposite past Chuck's. It certainly wasn't as difficult as trying to get the key for the suite had been. The only key she'd been able to acquire had been past Chuck's and apparently her own. Neither were 1813. She was counting on the fact that her Chuck was behind that door. Because if she remembered correctly, it had been Blair who had cancelled their sleepover two weeks before Cotillion because she had a major 'test' to study for. It was confirmed later that that test had nothing to do with any of their classes, but with Chuck's anatomy instead.
She knocked lightly on the door of 1813.
No answer.
She knocked again, this time a little harder.
Still, nothing.
She pressed the side of her face up against the door, listening for something. Anything.
Nothing.
She knocked harder.
"Chuck."
She tried to turn the knob. It was locked. Solid. She looked up and down the hall to make sure there were no maids or other guests that would determine she was trying to break into some unfortunate soul's suite.
"Chuck!" She knocked harder and louder, and prayed to God Chuck hadn't actually gone out for the evening.
"Open the damn door, Chuck!"
And right at that instant the doors of both 1812 and 1813 opened with very pissed off Chuck's looking directly at her. If she looked closely, in the darkness of the room she could make out a half-dressed Blair into 1812's suite.
"What?" sixteen year old Chuck growled. Luckily with her height, she blocked out the face of twenty year old Chuck who then slammed his door as she spun around. Younger Chuck's face relaxed into a smirk when he realized who was standing outside his door on the wrong side of the hallway.
"Serena." He leaned his body against the doorjamb and took her in with a smarmy gaze.
She rolled her eyes. She did not miss these moments at all.
"Chuck," she managed, forcing herself not to shove him away into his room and then act all surprised to see Blair inside. What a scandal that would cause.
"I live in 1812," he emphasized, as if she was a small child.
Her eyes narrowed in annoyance. "I know that."
"And yet," he gestured to the room across the hall where she stood, "You are pounding on the door and screaming my name" – the smug grin on his face when he said that was intolerable – "for whatever bastard is staying in 1813."
"I was not screaming," was all she could manage.
He rolled his eyes. "Well, you obviously came for something, and of all the things I can come up with, I'm sure none of them are why you're actually here. So, what is it?"
She drew a blank. A total and complete blank. She stood there, her mouth agape as younger Chuck's brows rose to the top of his forehead.
What the hell could she say? She'd hated Chuck at this point in her life. He'd tried to rape her a few months prior, using that timeline, and she remembered being quite horrified by the fact that he'd taken her best friend's virginity.
"I'm just checking up on you," she said, making sure to work up her confidence in order to intimidate him. It obviously wasn't working, but it was all she could think of.
"And why would you be doing that? You hate my guts. Unless…"
She held her breath hoping whatever he would say would give her some sort of lead to get her out of here, or at least to get him to shut his door with himself inside the suite.
"You've reconsidered my offer?" he smirked. "I still know of an excellent dessert that accompanies grilled cheese with truffles."
She felt a chill shoot up her spine. Despite the fact that this was sixteen-year-old, arrogant, perverted beyond all measure, womanizer Chuck, the thought of him reminiscing over their faltered sexual encounter, if it could even be called that, made her feel sick.
"No," she said, cursing herself for allowing the emotions she was feeling seep into her voice a little. She was incredibly tense, frozen stock still.
For a moment, she thought she saw regret and vulnerability flash across his face, but in an instant it was gone.
"You can't blame me for being curious." He shrugged.
Yes, I can.
But she let it drop.
"I know what happened between you and Blair."
He started to smirk again.
"Twice."
His face paled briefly before he recovered quickly. Clearly, he had not expected her to know that he had…completed the transaction. It occurred to her that he thought she may have just witnessed them making out at Blair's seventeenth birthday party.
She was surprised Blair hadn't told him herself. But she realized then that this Blair wouldn't have done that. She was ashamed of her relationship with Chuck during their couple weeks affair during their junior year just before Cotillion. He was Chuck Bass. He didn't do commitment. He didn't do romance either. He didn't care what girls particularly thought about him post-sex. It was all about the get in-get out mentality, while maintaining the charm and sexual appeal of course.
The fact that Chuck was in fact committing, romancing and caring about what Blair thought obviously seemed too good to be true to the newly seventeen-year-old Blair. So why would she tell him that though the thought of her daddy coming to see her for their favorite holiday ever, he wasn't the only reason she was beyond giddy and completely blissful before Thanksgiving dinner. Chuck was.
She wouldn't.
Serena smiled softly despite herself. Her best friend was falling in love with Chuck for the first time before it was rudely interrupted by Nate and the manipulative scheming that came from Chuck's raging jealousy.
The first time he'd really been jealous, over a girl at least.
He was falling for Blair too.
"What's your problem?" he asked, disturbed by Serena's widening smile.
Serena shook her head, wiping the grin from her face.
"Nothing. I just came to yell at you. Blair's fragile. If you must be involved with her, treat her right. After what Nate and I did to her, she deserves that."
His jaw dropped.
"Now," she cleared her throat, "I actually did come to see who's in 1813, so if you'll excuse me?" She turned and knocked on the closed door behind her.
Chuck didn't wait for the other door to open. He just looked at the leggy blonde strangely for a few more moments before stepping back inside his suite and shutting the door behind him.
1813's door opened, and Serena slipped inside.
…
"Chuck, what the hell? Do you have any idea what I was going through out there? You see, this is exactly why I didn't want to leave until we had a formulated plan. For situations like this!"
"Have a drink." He set a cocktail on the bar top he now stood behind. She wondered if it was for safety reasons.
"Oh no, you're not going to get out of this lecture by making me drunk."
"Maybe not," he conceded, but I'd like to have you somewhat tipsy when I give you another reason to be pissed at me."
Her eyes widened.
"Chuck," she warned.
His eyes lifted to hers. "Sit. Drink." He gestured to the glass in front of him.
With a huge sigh, no doubt brought on from the pressure she'd been under in the hallway, she gave in and made her way to the bar, sliding onto the stool and swallowing her entire drink in one giant swallow. Daintily, she drew the cherry off its little stick by her teeth and chewed and swallowed.
"Spill."
He blinked, surprised by how fast she'd consumed the drink.
"Another?" he managed, hopeful but doubting that she'd give in to his extension of time.
"Maybe later," she said sweetly, propping her head in her hands as she leaned on the bar top with arms bent at the elbows.
He swallowed, carefully avoided her eyes.
"I…may or may not have gone spying on my and Blair's younger self this morning."
Her jaw dropped but she shut it quickly and shook herself of her outrage welling up again inside her. So, he went spying. So what? It was good to know where exactly in the past the younger Chuck and Blair were at in their relationship.
"Well, I hope you weren't obvious about it," she said flippantly. She needed to laugh. She really did.
"The windows were tinted."
She closed her eyes, placing her hand lightly over them.
"There's more isn't there?"
"I got closer," he said carefully.
She dropped her hand from her face.
"How close?" She didn't want to sound mad, but it was impossible to keep traces of it from her voice.
"Chuck. How close?" she demanded when he didn't say anything for far too long.
He lifted his eyes to her furious glare and then found his fingers suddenly the most interesting things to look at.
"Well, I followed them back to Blair's place, and…" he smiled a little, pleased with at least part of the reaction he was about to get, "watched them make out on her bed."
Serena was torn between total disgust and appalled at the dangerous waters he had dared to tread.
"Ugh. You're disgusting."
He smirked.
"Seriously." She shuddered, but then waved it off, remembering the more important issue. "But besides that, you shouldn't have been that close. Did anything happen while you were there?"
His smirk widened into a Cheshire cat smile.
She rolled her eyes.
"Besides that."
He pursed his lips and nodded. "I tripped in the hall and they heard it."
"What?" She jumped to her feet, her eyes wide with panic. "Did they see anything?"
He rubbed the back of his neck, starting to feel the heat of the panic he had earlier that afternoon.
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" she growled.
"I left right away. Through the servant's entrance. I don't think they got into the hallway to check what had made the noise before I'd left. But…like I said, it's not like I had a camera attached to the back of my head."
She buried her face in her hands, starting to whimper, her closed eyes filling with angry, furious tears.
"Hey, hey," he soothed, genuinely worried. He pulled out a bottle of water from the mini-fridge and poured some into a glass with ice. "It'll be alright."
She pulled her hands away, wiped at the corners of her eyes and fixated her gaze on the glass of water now set before her.
"You're right. It will be."
He relaxed.
"Because we're going home. Right now."
She spun around on the stool and started for the door.
His eyes widened panic and he rounded the bar, walking in long strides towards her until he was in front of her, his back plastered to the front door, preventing her from exiting.
She propped her hand on her hip.
"Get out of the way, Chuck."
"No."
"Chuck, move." She gestured to the space beside the door.
"No."
"Chuck!" she nearly screamed, exasperated. "We have absolutely no plan, and we've been caught twice by our younger selves—"
"Blair's and mine," he corrected.
"Whatever!" She huffed and ran a hand through her hair. "You know I ran into my mother in the elevator on my way up?"
"Lily?" he asked, happiness flooding inside him. He missed his stepmother a lot already. She'd been so caught up in the Ivy ordeal lately that she'd hardly had time for anything else.
Serena was oblivious to those emotions at the moment though.
"Yes. You see now why we have to leave?"
"No, I don't." He dropped his hand from where it had been clenched around the doorknob. "Serena, we may not get another chance like this."
"We've got like five other needle-pill things, Chuck. We have plenty of other opportunities."
"I know, but…" he sighed.
"Chuck, we have no plan, and we're not going to get one by being so close to yours and Blair's younger selves. We've been caught by too many people that know us. If we're not careful, we may be taken into a mental institution or to some research facility for our look-alike, act-alike tendencies."
"Serena."
"I'm serious!"
"You're exaggerating."
She huffed.
"I hope you at least registered your room under a fake name. The concierge recognized me, so he would only give me a key to my suite here. Oh, and your younger self's if he would call room 1812 and if your younger self would confirm he was expecting me and approve giving me a key. Since, you know, we didn't discuss what name you might go under before you flew off into the future." She gestured her arms about wildly.
He sighed. "I had my limo driver come in and register me; then I went in the side door."
"Clever," she muttered under her breath.
"I thought so."
She rolled her eyes and crossed her arms across her chest.
"So what name did you go under?"
He hesitated. "Charlie Trout."
She widened her eyes. "What?"
"What?" he asked defensively. "Dan hasn't written his book yet."
"He wrote the book on and off throughout the years, not just after he had the revelation that kissing Blair Waldorf inspired a novel." She scoffed.
He frowned and she sighed.
"Fine," she said, tired from arguing. She slipped out of her shoes. "We'll stay. But we're not leaving this room until we come up with a plan."
For a moment, he considered suggesting they move to a different hotel to get some distance, but if she wasn't going to press for it or even bring it up, then he wouldn't either. Come heaven, hell or high waters, he felt in his gut that being this close to their younger selves would be to their advantage.
….
"Was that Serena?" Blair asked, wary.
Chuck, still feeling uneasy from the whole transaction, finally began to walk away from the door.
"Yeah…" He returned to her on the bed. "It was."
"What'd she want?" she asked, worried.
And even though he knew she'd probably heard every word of the conversation, he told her anyways.
"That's weird," she said, pulling her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.
"I'm sure it's nothing," he said, taking a moment to appreciate the way his t-shirt fell around her lush figure.
"She basically just threatened you and gave you permission in the same breath."
He shrugged. "It was more of a warning if you ask me," he murmured as he lowered his lips to press kisses to the crook of her neck.
"Chuck, this is serious." She pushed at him, but he was relentless, licking at her skin now and blowing air across the moist spots. She shivered under the sweet torture. Her flattened hands pushing him away curled into curved fingers and nails digging into his shoulders, willing herself not to moan.
He smiled against her when the first moan left her lips. He kissed his way up her neck until he found her lips and kissed her hot and heavy. She pulled him to her and he climbed on top of her, groaning as her smooth calf started climbing up his leg and then wrapped around his waist, followed by her other one. She gripped him tightly with her thighs and moved up against him until he shuddered.
"We can talk later," she said after he'd stripped her of his shirt and started kissing his way between her breasts.
He smirked and tasted her again.
"No talking," he murmured, his voice gravelly low and filled with desire.
…
"This was smart," she commented.
"Room service?" he raised his eyebrows. "It usually is. Blair and I always got it when…" he stopped mid-sentence and Serena set down her fork.
He cleared his throat. "Sorry. It seems almost everything I can apply Blair and I to from when we were together."
"Don't be sorry," Serena insisted. "You two were together for almost a year, and then some since and before then."
He shook his head. "It's not just that, Serena."
She looked up at him, waiting.
"I've been in love with Blair since I was sixteen. I'm always going to be in love with Blair. It won't matter if I end up with another girl because no one will compare. I will never love anyone else the way I love her, and if I marry someone else, that woman will always have to share my heart with Blair, because she's who I'm meant to be with."
She looked at him sadly.
"They say your high school sweetheart isn't usually the one you're meant to be with," she offered hesitantly.
"Blair's not with Nate," he said, and went back to his breakfast. Serena didn't comment further on the subject.
"So, what's step one of the plan?" she prompted, eager to get back to a plausible topic.
"I thought we figured that out last night," he said.
"Last night's a little fuzzy to me," she admitted.
Chuck looked across the room until he found the paper he was sure they had scribbled their plan onto. Unfortunately, all that was on the piece of paper was 'PLAN:' in big bold letters and the number 1 beneath it on the first line. He sighed.
"I don't think we got very far," he said.
"Must've been the alcohol," she said.
"I don't remember drinking much, and didn't you just have the one cocktail?"
"I must've had more. Maybe you passed out."
"Maybe you did."
She shook her head. "Whatever happened, I know we at least started to talk about what we were going to do. Didn't you have some idea after you got here, or before…for like the two weeks we were staying in the Hampton's?"
He hesitated.
"Please don't tell me your only plan consisted of getting Blair back, but not knowing how to do that."
"Of course not. I…well, I thought somehow I could get into contact with my younger self and stop him from doing…what I did that screwed everything up."
"And how do you propose to do that, Chuck? You can't just walk up to him and announce that you're his future self come to stop him from making an idiot out of himself and losing Blair more times than he could count."
He glared at her.
"Well?"
"I plan to use an out-of-area cell phone to contact him, along with a conspicuous-sounding e-mail."
She raised her eyebrows.
"So, what, as a sort of spirit-ghost?"
He shrugged. "More or less."
"Except that other people can see you too."
"Which is why I'll be doing this in secluded locations."
"This hotel room, for instance?" A smile slowly spread across her face.
"Don't mock me. I know it sounds rusty, but what have you got? Your appearance may not have changed much over the last four years, but you can't intervene in the life of younger Serena or soon everybody will be asking questions."
"Maybe I can," she mused.
"How's that?"
"The first thing that caused Dan and I to break up was that huge ordeal with Georgina, right?"
He nodded along. "Yeah. Your point?"
"If Dan finds out about it before Georgina comes back at the end of the year, she'll have no leverage against my younger self and the whole situation can be talked out before I become a lying addict."
"While your plan intrigues me, you've left out one very important point."
"What?"
"When Humphrey goes to your younger self for clarification on what happened, she won't be able to resist lying, because you, dear sister, were scared out of your wits to tell anyone. You even told Dumpty you'd been cheating on him because you thought this was worse."
She frowned. "It was. It is."
"But it wasn't your fault."
She looked away. "I was there when it happened. I pushed him over the edge."
"Serena."
She turned to look at him.
"It wasn't your fault," he said again.
She offered a small smile in return and sighed.
"Okay, now that we've proved both our plans are hardly satisfactory, what do we do today? We at least need to figure that out."
"As far as I'm concerned, everything was running very smoothly between Blair and I until Nate decided he was interested again a few days before Cotillion. Since it's a little less than two weeks away, I think it's safe to say that all I've got to do to get my younger self established as a controlled jealous boyfriend is get inside his head by getting inside Nate's."
"You're not thinking of getting Nate to find out about you and Blair before Cotillion, are you?" she asked, somewhat startled.
"It's not my first choice, but at least I won't lose Blair at Cotillion and there will be time to mend relationships – hopefully – before the break."
"Chuck, I don't like this…"
"It won't be through a Gossip Girl blast," he assured her. "All that needs to happen is for Nate to realize how perfect Blair and I are for each other, and when that happens maybe he'll share those thoughts with someone who might eventually share them with young Chuck who will feel it's safe to acknowledge himself as a boyfriend, and one to his best friend's ex."
"Those are huge maybes you're going on, Chuck," she said, liking the plan less and less with each additional explanation.
"We traveled through time to the past in order to get the loves of our lives back. I think that already means we're taking risks."
Serena bit her lip, considering that fact.
"There's really only one real danger in this," he said.
She looked up at him. "Getting caught?"
"No," he said, "living in the past." He grabbed her forearms and held on tight. "We can't, under any circumstances, start living the lives of our younger selves because it was better and easier then and we know how to fix our mistakes before they happen."
She wanted to say 'Of course not! That's ridiculous! Obviously a danger, which is why we wouldn't do it!' and then scoff. But she knew as well as he did that it was the biggest temptation of all.
"Okay," she said.
…
A/N: Kind of a filler chap, but it's set up now. CS have a vague idea of what they're going to do and what they'll try their best not to do. Because most of what they're going to do – so they don't get caught – is pretty under the radar, the next several chapters will be mostly in S1 CB's pov (and the rest of the characters from that season). S5 CS will still show up, but since nothing major happened until Cotillion, it'll be small bits of their scenes together instead of almost whole chapters. Hope you still enjoy and keep reading. Please review. =)