Blair comes to consciousness slowly, rolling over and combating the urge to come to by refusing to open her eyes. Everything was a disaster now anyways, what's the point in being awake to watch it get worse? She couldn't even manage to lose herself in a night of dancing at some second-rate club for wannabes and celebutantes without Chuck Bass—

--Chuck Bass.

Blair's eyes shoot open as she sits bolt upright in a bed that, while definitely not hers, is not entirely unfamiliar. She cannot remember last night in its entirety, but the pieces she can recall aren't exactly comforting. Neon-colored drinks…there was a boy she'd danced with, she'd liked the set of his mouth…Serena left…and Chuck—he'd pushed her up against a wall and it had hurt.

After that, blackness, an unfinished puzzle Blair wasn't sure she wanted to put together.

First, there is the matter of her location. Chuck's bed in the penthouse of the Palace was hardly where she'd ever wanted to find herself. She hadn't even been it while they were sneaking around, it was too inconvenient and she'd insisted it reeked of various slutty perfumes. There was no way Blair was sharing a space with any of Chuck's conquests.

Second, she isn't wearing any of her clothes. If she wasn't sadly mistaken, she was wearing his clothes. Not many people owned oxford button-down shirts in striped mint green.

Third, she has a raging headache that was making all of this thinking very difficult. If she could just find her clothes and get out of here, she could complete her escape with minimal damage done to her dignity. Minimal enough, anyway.

Blair slips out from between the silk sheets, wincing as her feet hit the cold floor. She shivers, goosebumps rising on her bare legs as she surveys the room for her belongings. She moves into the bathroom, sighing in relief as she spots her folded jeans and sparkling heels on the counter.

"Shit," she curses softly, realizing the strap on her tank top had torn through. She couldn't wear the top, she'd wind up flashing half the city. She has to wear Chuck's shirt home, she reasons, pulling on her jeans and cringing.

"Guess there's a reason that they call it the walk of shame," she mutters, running a hand through her tangled hair and evaluating her reflection. Her makeup had rubbed off at some point, though she was surprised the mascara hadn't smudged into raccoon eyes. She was hardly formidable, but she was passable and that would do.

Blair crept into the suite once more, carrying her heels. She still hadn't encountered Chuck, and she was determined to keep it that way, which meant no clicking steps and no jangling jewelry.

He wasn't on the couch or nursing a scotch at the bar. She was pleased, to be sure, but a little baffled by his absence. Blair slid into her shoes, pulling open the front door to make a clean getaway—

--where she found Chuck, holding a breakfast tray and reaching for the doorknob.

Every bone in Blair's body screamed for her to bolt, but she just couldn't, she was strangely glued to the doorframe, stuck staring at him.

"Bass," she says, finally, "there you are."

"Good morning to you too, Waldorf. Running out without saying goodbye or thank you?"

He stepped forward, and she instinctively stepped back, moving back into the penthouse and giving Chuck enough time to shut the door behind him, trapping her. He set the tray down on the coffee table, moving around to the bar to pull out glasses, plates, and flatware. Blair watched him through cool eyes, entranced by his practical, methodical actions.

He sat down on the couch, tossing the blanket and pillow she hadn't noticed before into a corner.

"Are you going to sit or keep staring?"

Blair wants to snap that she wasn't amused by the tone or the invitation, that all she wanted to do was leave. Instead, she crossed the room and sat next to him, crossing her ankles neatly and arranging a napkin in her lap.

Chuck laughs softly, and she looks sharply at him.

"What?"

"You're the only person I know who would obey every polite convention the night after passing out drunk in the car on the way home."

"I passed out in the car?"

"Yeah," he says, sitting back against the pillows, "about five seconds after we pulled away from that ridiculous discotheque. You really could find better places to go slumming, Blair."

"I wasn't going slumming," she protests, halting as she considers the implications of his words, before continuing, "So, nothing…happened?"

"I may give a girl a glass or two of champagne, but that doesn't mean I want my women unconscious in bed," Chuck rolled his eyes, grumbling, "I've discovered it's more enjoyable when they can actually participate."

"I didn't know I passed out, Chuck. And what exactly did you expect me to think when I woke up in your old bed, wearing your clothes?"

Blair glared at him while he stared back for a long moment. Finally, he handed her a glass of orange juice.

"You should really eat something. There's Advil on the tray," Chuck stood, patting his pants pockets until he located his phone, "I'm going to tell Serena that you're awake and fine."

He left the room, leaving her to swallow the pain pills and take a few bites of her pancakes. He was taking an awfully long time, she thought idly, smoothing the crease he'd left on the couch cushion.

Blair stood, wiping her mouth as she collected her thoughts. She touched her hair, wishing that she had a comb in her purse. She shook her head, chastising herself for wanting to look good for Chuck Bass. Hadn't she been through this phase before? She'd thought for sure she'd gotten him out of her system, out of her head.

The door clicked open and she straightened, pulling her hands behind her back as he strode across the room, handing her the phone.

"Call your mother," he instructed.

"Excuse me?"

"Your phone died last night, I had Serena call Eleanor and tell her that you were staying over, but you fell asleep on the way home. I brought you here to avoid Lily, so there's no parental knowledge. Just call her."

Blair dials home without questioning him further, without protesting that no one needed to call, Eleanor wouldn't have noticed she hadn't returned. Probably. With Cyrus there, her mother suddenly seemed a lot keener on acting more like a parent, like they were a family.

She gets her mother's voicemail, leaving a brief, "Hello, mother, it's Blair. Letting you know that I'm still at Serena's. See you for dinner," before handing Chuck back his phone.

Their fingers brush and she freezes before pulling her hand back, because if it's a phase she's still in it, she's still been in it, and this is going to keep hurting her over and over again. She bites her lip, ever the masochist.

"Thank you," Blair says, barely above a whisper. She can't look at him right now, so she looks at the floor instead, studying the nice pattern on the woodgrain.

"Blair," he says, equally softly, "what's going on?"

Blair shakes her head, shrugging her shoulders. She doesn't know what to say, really, but she lets him take her hand and sit her back down. Chuck plays with her fingers, tracing circles and swirls on her wrist and she has a flash of last night, of him leaning in and pressing his lips to her forehead as she cried.

"Everything hurt," she says, "Being me hurt. I didn't want to hurt, just for a little while."

It sounds stupid when she says it out loud, overly theatrical and so very narcissistic. Her problems are many and so very big, but only to her, and she knows it.

"Blair," he says her name again, and she wants to scream because he has no right to say her name like that, so concerned and caring—not when he threw her away like a piece of trash.

"Stop, just—stop, okay?" she takes her hand back, realizing that she's always pulling away from him, always walking away from him. "I need to go…I'll get your shirt back to you later. I'm sorry that you had to come get me or whatever."

Her voice breaks a little on the last words, thrown in to make this exchange seem more casual, less grave.

Chuck stands with her, catching her by the tails of his shirt.

"I was happy to come find you, Blair," he tilts his head, smiling, "It was nice to play white knight for a change. And the shirt…well, it looks better on you."

He sucks in a breath, his dark eyes skittering away from hers.

"Look," he begins, letting go of her and scrubbing his hands over his face, "You drive me crazy. And you know it. But there is nothing that I wouldn't do for you. You deserve to be happy, you know."

Blair leans toward him, closing the space between him and resting her hands on his chest. His automatically come to her waist.

"Chuck, a lot of things have gone horribly wrong for me recently, and I want a lot of things to be different," he nods at her words, his eyes closing as he starts to let go of her.

Blair tugs on his shirt, stilling him, "But the thing that would make me the happiest would be you just letting me in. You don't have to say that you love me, or that it will stay this way forever. I just…I just want the possibility that those things might happen. And it will never happen if we just keep playing games and avoiding each other."

Experimentally rising to her tiptoes to reach his lips, Blair kisses him. Her kiss is tentative, and his hands slide under the too-large shirt to find where the denim meets her skin. He deepens the kiss, pulling her against him so that her skin hums, hyper-aware of the places they touch.

"This seems like it's going a little faster than your style, Waldorf," he says, catching his breath.

"We'll do the talking stuff later, Bass," she retorts, pulling him toward the bed.

And she's sure that they will, or that they'll agree to figure it out as they go. This isn't something she can plan or arrange, and Blair is pretty sick of trying to do so. She wants to stop obsessing over everything, and she thinks Chuck might have a few ways to keep her distracted.

Like how he's somehow already got his shirt off and is leaning her back on the bed, undoing the buttons of hers (well, his).

"Chuck, exactly how did I get my clothes off and this shirt on last night?" she asks, fumbling with his belt buckle.

"I dressed you, of course. Would you have preferred the one with pink stripes?"

"You took my clothes off, you perv," she laughs.

"It's nothing I haven't seen before," he says, working on the button of her jeans. Chuck pulls them over her hips, and Blair kicks herself free.

"The jeans, by the way, are totally hot," he informs her, in between kisses.

"I knew you'd never be able to resist me in denim," she smirks, pulling him onto the pillows with her.

----------------------------------------------

Whew! Finished at last. Drop me a line here or at lj and tell me your fave part, or your thoughts on Leighton's sex tape, or how hot Chuck Bass is (rewatching Season One with some friends, we just finished Seventeen Candles, so we are basking in the C/B glow)…