Author's note: I'm glad you guys liked the last chapter! Please review this one too. :)
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Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast
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Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art---
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors---
No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever---or else swoon in death.
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John Keats
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"Chuck and Blair holding hands," said Blair in a teasing whisper, when she and Chuck were seated side by side in the dark theater. "Chuck and Blair going to the movies…"
"Shut up," Chuck replied, but she saw that familiar sardonic, sideways smile tugging up the corners of his lips.
The titles began to roll, and the title of the film, Sabrina, appeared on the screen.
"I think you're hotter than Audrey Hepburn," Chuck said after a while.
"I am not!" said Blair indignantly. "And anyway, that's the wrong word to for Audrey Hepburn—she's exquisitely beautiful and elegant and graceful—"
Chuck looked amazed. "Is it just me, or were you insulted when I compared you favorably to Audrey Hepburn?"
"I was insulted on her behalf," Blair said haughtily. "She's the most beautiful woman in the world, and she's my idol, so of course she's prettier than I am. She's Audrey Hepburn, for god's sake."
Chuck shook his head in bewilderment. "I don't understand why you get so defensive…for her sake rather than yours!"
"You know," Blair said, "not just anyone deserves to be compared to Audrey Hepburn. Remember when that ugly, common little actress played the role of Audrey in a movie about Audrey Hepburn's life—"
"Oh right," said Chuck, "that Jennifer Love Something girl?"
"Jennifer Love Hewitt," Blair spat, as if the name were distasteful to her. "That movie was a huge insult to Audrey Hepburn and her entire legacy."
Chuck chuckled a bit despite himself.
"Audrey Hepburn is a paragon of beauty," concluded Blair. "She's lovely and original and sophisticated and she has class."
"Well, fine," said Chuck. "But you aren't Jennifer Love Hewitt. You're Blair Waldorf. And you and Audrey Hepburn are clearly in the same league," he finished in a low voice, smiling sideways at her.
Blair smiled back, obviously flattered. "Watch the movie," she ordered. "This is one of my favorites."
"What's it about?" Chuck asked.
"Watch it and find out," replied Blair.
"I'd rather if you told me first."
"Why?"
Chuck shrugged. "If you give me a synopsis, that'll take up some time, and, frankly, that's just less time I'll have to spend being bored by the movie."
"Well," began Blair, shooting him an annoyed glance, "Audrey Hepburn is a sort of awkward and introverted young girl, and she's in love with this popular, blond, rich guy, played by William Holden, but he's too busy being a superficial playboy to notice her."
"Go on," said Chuck.
"And then she moves to France for two years and gets a make-over and becomes more confident and grows up a bit, and she goes back home to try and win over William Holden. And when she comes back she causes quite the stir; everyone is quite taken with her, and William Holden is instantly smitten."
"Sounds like a short movie," Chuck muttered.
"Except then she starts to spend time with William Holden's anti-social and rude older brother, Humphrey Bogart; and to her surprise she is attracted to him. And, well, she has to choose between the two."
Chuck snorted.
"I know what you're thinking," said Blair, annoyed, "and no, I did not just make that up. It's not my fault that the plot of Sabrina eerily resembles my own love life."
"Am I Humphrey Bogart in this scenario?" Chuck asked, smirking.
"I guess so," she replied huffily.
"Alright," he said, "I'm sold. I want to see how this movie ends."
Blair crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, smiling slightly.
Chuck amused himself by surreptitiously watching Blair's ecstatic face as she watched her beloved Audrey Hepburn film, half-lit by the black-and-white light of the big screen.
She possessed, he mused, her own peculiar brand of idealism; she fervently admired a type of beauty that was based upon unostentatious and tasteful elegance, grace, sophistication. For her, these were values to live by. This was why she was decidedly old-fashioned in many of her tastes.
People thought she had disdained the Humphreys, and by extension Vanessa, because they were poor; but really it was because she considered their "bohemian, starving artist" posturing to be kitsch.
Blair adored Audrey Hepburn because she considered her to be the embodiment of these values. Blair loved Audrey so much that she actually took offense when someone denigrated her idol by comparing her physically to Blair herself. Audrey Hepburn was to her more than human; and to say that Blair, a mere mortal, was more beautiful than she! That was almost blasphemous.
Blair had forced Nate, and sometimes also his side-kick, Chuck, to watch Breakfast At Tiffany's with her many times over the years; and Chuck had been struck by how much Blair herself resembled the heroine, a beautiful lost soul who spent her days scheming to marry a rich man and get her hands on a great deal of money, but was even so truly naïve and innocent. A dreamer, who just wanted her life to be beautiful and easy; she wanted to glide through and never get her hands dirty.
This was the extremely rare quality in Blair that Chuck had always perceived; that beneath the bitchy, materialistic, manipulative socialite exterior was a vulnerable sort of idealism and innocence that was deeply engrained and enduring, though perhaps slightly delusional. It was this quality that made her so beautiful in his eyes—a quality that perhaps no one else in the world was aware that Blair possessed.
He watched her with a tender look in his eyes as she stared, enraptured, at Audrey Hepburn on the screen. He leaned forward to brush aside a tendril of hair that rested on the nape of her neck; and that was when he saw a glimmer of silver along her throat. His eyes widened as he lifted her hair to look at it; it was the necklace he had given her at her birthday party, so long ago—a lovely and delicate necklace she herself had picked out, hoping that Nate would give it to her.
He remembered what he had said to her then: "something this beautiful deserves to be seen on someone worthy of its beauty."
She was watching him out of the corner of her eye.
"It's the necklace," he whispered.
"Yes it is," she replied.
"It really suits you," he said.
She smiled and said nothing, and they both turned back to watch the screen.
The movie theater was dark and musty and mostly empty, and they were sitting in a balcony that had old-fashioned wooden railings. Perched up above everyone in the balcony, Blair felt like she was floating in her own little paradise, elevated above and separated from the rest of the world. She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the railing and cupping her face in her hands like a small child, her feet swinging freely in the air. She smiled self-consciously during the last scene, which depicted Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn leaving together on a boat for Paris.
"Where to now?" asked Chuck as they left the theater.
Blair sighed. "I'm supposed to be having dinner with Serena."
"Okay," said Chuck, patting her reassuringly on the shoulder, "I'll drive you to her place."
When they arrived, Blair kissed Chuck goodbye before skipping happily up to Serena's door. Her best friend looked faintly angry when she opened the door to let her in.
"How come you weren't in English class today?" she asked.
"I didn't go to any of my classes," said Blair happily as she took off her coat. "And I don't care," she added.
Serena raised her eyebrows. "That's unlike you. What happened?"
"I ran into Chuck. We decided to ditch class and go see a movie."
Serena looked dumbfounded. "Are you serious?"
"Quite," replied Blair, adjusting her necklace. "You know," she said, veering off-topic, "I'm still wearing this horrible hippie outfit you gave me this morning. Do you have anything more appropriate I could put on for dinner?"
Serena rolled her eyes. "Let's go upstairs," she said.
"Did I miss anything important at school?" Blair asked.
"Oh—yes," replied Serena, "we're doing presentations for AP English; we each got assigned an American poet. You got Edna St. Vincent Millay."
"Who's that?"
"Apparently she was the first woman to win a Pulitzer for poetry. But stop distracting me; I want to talk about Chuck. Why did you go see a movie with him anyway?"
"Why not?" Blair shrugged her shoulders. "It was fun."
"And what did you do afterwards?" asked Serena in a voice that was heavy with implication.
"Nothing," said Blair firmly. "It was just a movie."
"Okay, okay," said Serena, "it's just hard to believe that your relationship with Chuck has suddenly gotten so…platonic. Usually you're either not speaking to him at all, or you're swept up in a torrid love affair."
"Well, we're taking things slowly I guess," said Blair defensively. "Sex would just… confuse things right now."
"Does he see it that way?" asked Serena skeptically.
"Of course!"
"You mean to say," said Serena, "he knows that you're completely in love with him and will do anything he wants," she paused; "and he really hasn't taken advantage of that?"
"Oh, god no," said Blair in surprise. "He wouldn't—we're not on the same page; I've openly committed myself to him, but he hasn't to me. He knows that would be completely unfair, and he wouldn't use me that way."
"He would if it were anyone else," said Serena decisively, and Blair hoped she was right, and hoped that it meant something.