Author's note: I hope you enjoy this chapter, which has tended to dwell more on Chuck's thoughts and feelings (which I know I haven't dealt with until now very explicitly). Please keep reviewing; apart from providing an ego boost, haha, reviews do help me focus my writing and help me pick a direction for the story overall. For instance, one reviewer mentioned s/he would like to see more of Dan and Blair, so I have decided to let Dan play a much bigger role in the story, and the two most recent chapters have resoundingly demonstrated that. I love hearing your perspective and I take it very seriously! : )

P.S. I advise reading the poem carefully—it's incredibly lovely (and possibly my favorite poem of all time).

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YOUR LAUGHTER

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Take bread away from me, if you wish,

take air away, but

do not take from me your laughter.

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Do not take away the rose,

the lanceflower that you pluck,

the water that suddenly

bursts forth in your joy,

the sudden wave

of silver born in you.

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My struggle is harsh and I come back

with eyes tired

at times from having seen

the unchanging earth,

but when your laughter enters

it rises to the sky seeking me

and it opens for me all

the doors of life.

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My love, in the darkest

hour your laughter

opens, and if suddenly

you see my blood staining

the stones of the street,

laugh, because your laughter

will be for my hands

like a fresh sword.

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Next to the sea in the autumn,

your laughter must raise

its foamy cascade,

and in the spring, love,

I want your laughter like

the flower I was waiting for,

the blue flower, the rose

of my echoing country.

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Laugh at the night,

at the day, at the moon,

laugh at the twisted

streets of the island,

laugh at this clumsy

boy who loves you,

but when I open

my eyes and close them,

when my steps go,

when my steps return,

deny me bread, air,

light, spring,

but never your laughter

for I would die.

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by Pablo Neruda

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Sometimes Chuck would notice that Blair looked at him with reproach when he was distant with her. She seemed to perceive that there was a darkness cast over his eyes, an invisible weight—one that he would not share with her. He always fought his own battles, had always been an intensely private person. And he felt as though he couldn't change. It was too deeply engrained; it was a survival mechanism to him throughout the years, protecting him from a cold and barren childhood, and then impossible to cast off afterwards. And another part of him didn't want to change, for in his innermost heart he feared that Blair would find little to love in him if she were allowed to probe too deeply. And this was a truth he only half-knew, because it was buried inside him somewhere deep, where he ached.

And though he repressed this knowledge so well that, rationally, he never knew it, the fear washed over him when he was asleep and his subconscious took over. It had gone through and through him, like wine through water, and altered the color of his dreams.

He tried to make up for his shortcomings in different ways. Any affection he could not verbalize he expressed physically. She was almost overwhelmed—and deeply surprised—by his tenderness at times; how he seemed able only to fall asleep when she was pressed against his chest, how he held her hand as they walked down the street. To think that he had once denied the possibility of their ever holding hands! He shook his head, now, at the memory. It seemed he only felt calm and sure of himself when he was physically connected with her in some way, in any way at all. He liked to shower her with thoughtful little gifts, hoping that they might make her laugh; one day he commissioned the family painter (so to speak; he was an artist Bart Bass had hired to paint family portraits many years ago, most of which were later stuffed in closets and never saw the light of day). Chuck instructed him to paint the figure of a woman dressed like Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's—tall, thin, a black dress, an elegant pipe and elegant hair, many diamonds of course—except he further instructed that the artist replace Audrey Hepburn's face with Blair's. Blair laughed hysterically when he showed her the finished portrait, and called it silly, and Chuck had tried to quell her laughter by kissing her repeatedly until she admonished him, breathlessly, saying: "Gossip Girl is overflowing with snapshots of our very public displays of affection already, Bass, and I don't need more fodder for my nightmares." Chuck felt a certain light sensation in his chest—almost like butterflies—airy, fluttering, bright—every time he heard Blair laugh; it was the closest he ever came to feeling happy.

But all along Chuck knew that it was not enough for her.

"You were upset about something last night," said Blair, keeping her voice carefully neutral.

Chuck had just picked out a tie and paused before drawing it around his neck. "I was not," he contradicted her.

"Let me fix that for you," she said softly, walking to him and deftly tying it and straightening out his collar. Her fingers brushed against his neck.

"Please tell me," she said, lifting her wide brown eyes entreatingly to his, and he ran his fingers through her perfume-scented hair.

"I had a bit of a spat with Serena," he said finally, tucking a curl behind her ear. The extremely bright morning sunlight streaming in through the window, combined with her perfume—or else the underlying scent of her skin, which he had many times tried to find an equivalent to in the natural world but which eluded definition—was making him slightly dizzy.

"Why? What happened?" She bit her lower lip in worry, and Chuck was somewhat distracted by the action.

"Focus," she said severely. But he leaned forward to kiss her instead.

He paused, his lips a fraction of an inch from her own; she could inhale his hot breath, and the sensation made her hiss sharply.

"I am focusing," he whispered, smirking slightly.

"Tell me about Serena," she insisted faintly.

He traced her jaw line with his thumb, and the smirk widened into his trademark crooked grin when he felt her shiver.

"She acts as though she hates me," he murmured, twining strands of her tumbled chestnut hair in his fingers, "but Freud teaches that violent hostility is often really just sublimated sexual attraction."

Blair snorted. "Serena? Attracted to you? I think she'd rather have sex with Georgina Sparks than with you."

"It's a tough call," Chuck drawled. "Maybe she does indulge in a lesbian fantasy from time to time. In fact, " his eyes lit up, "you may have hit on the reason she hates me—jealousy that I've been keeping you all to myself. Selfish of me, really. Maybe I should share. That is, " he added, "as long she lets me watch."

"You're disgusting," Blair said, even as she choked back a giggle.

"I knew there was some homoerotic tension underlying all her intense ya-ya sisterhood bullshit—"

Blair silenced him by leaning forward a fraction of an inch and kissing him, and he entirely lost his train of thought in a haze of ardent desire, in her pulse racing under her delicate skin, in her flower-scented hair. And, in a daze, he tasted on her warm, crimson lips the sunshine of a hundred summer mornings.

**

"You have to love her," said Dan, slurring his words a bit.

"Excuse me?" said Chuck sharply. He had run into Dan in the library after school (where he had gone to scout out some old French Catherine de Neuve films which he felt sure Blair would love) and had invited him out, on impulse, for a drink. He was not sure why he had done so, in retrospect; partly out of boredom because Blair was with her mother for the day, or perhaps he was simply craving male company. Dan had looked rather taken aback—he was probably not used to drinking in the afternoon, Chuck mused—but he had consented. So both had proceeded to a bar, each feeling slightly shocked to be in the company of the other. Chuck was beginning to regret asking Dan very much, because Dan had proven quickly that he couldn't hold his liquor, and was furthermore intent on talking about Blair.

"And that's not enough," Dan went on, waving an arm drunkenly, "—you have to really love her, in the all-consuming-forever way she loves you. If you don't she'll be crushed."

Chuck snorted. "I think you should give up your literary aspirations, Humphrey, and stick to something you're mentally equipped for." He paused thoughtfully. "Perhaps you should be a mechanic," he suggested.

Dan finished his thought as though he had not heard Chuck. "You bear that weight on your shoulders," he pronounced, rather grandiosely. He was maudlin drunk.

"Humphrey," Chuck drawled, "what exactly does your big head compensate for?"

Dan ignored the jibe. "I'm serious."

Chuck's eyes darkened. "What makes you so sure she loves me that way?"

Dan stared pensively out into space, his eyes unfocused. He chose his words carefully. "For Blair," he said, "love is like a religion. It's how she makes sense of life."

Chuck started.

"She doesn't love the way an ordinary teenage girl loves," Dan continued hastily. It's…it's something else. I don't really understand it. But I think you are the same way."

"How do you know this?" asked Chuck.

"Because," said Dan, "I am the only person in the world who has ever really taken care of her. I've seen her at her most vulnerable; even Serena hasn't, not really. And Blair was always too busy worrying about Serena to let Serena worry about her."

"And who else was there?" mused Chuck, almost under his breath. "Not Eleanor…not Harold." His eyes darkened further. "And certainly not Nate."

He turned to Dan, and said very seriously and sadly, "the reason she's like that is…." he trailed off, and then finished simply,"because no one has ever loved her enough."

Dan gazed, almost mesmerized, at the singular, remarkable boy sitting beside him, calmly tossing back his scotch as if he had said nothing of importance, had not unveiled a great, intimate secret—to Dan Humphrey, whom he had surely always considered beneath his contempt. It was incomprehensible.

To Dan, Charles Bass was a fascinating enigma, forever shrouded in mystery and darkness. He could never imagine he would ever penetrate that mystery, that he would ever get another chance to see what was behind the veil. But he could hardly be more interested and eager to know more. He had always loved characters; his love of literature was not for nothing. His hands shook slightly with excitement as he dared to ask a question, and, rather predictably, overreached.

"Has anyone ever loved you enough?"

He wished he could withdraw the words as soon as he spoke them. He expected Chuck's disgust; his horror that Dan had let a note of pity creep into his voice, anger that he had presumed a level of confidence that as a mere acquaintance he did not at all deserve. But Chuck merely laughed, sounding rather bleak.

"You sound incredibly gay sometimes, Humphrey," he said dryly.

"Sorry," Dan mumbled. "Anyway, it's a dumb question, since Blair loves you more than enough—"

"I don't think so," Chuck protested quietly. He had had two more shots of tequila and his eyes had unfocused, slightly, as if he were concentrating hard on something in the distance. He was a quiet, brooding, contemplative drunk—alcohol seemed to help him narrow his focus, help him face the thoughts he usually avoided, the ones that were painful to him.

Dan felt a ray of hope; he had not ruined his chances, then. Very carefully, he asked, "Why not?"

"She loves with all the intensity that she was starved of most of her life," said Chuck, almost as if he were surprised to hear himself speak, "—but I think that she doesn't really love me. She just loves that I am alone and damaged like she is, and she thinks she can fix me. And one day she's going to wake up and realize that—" he broke off, the edge of his voice ragged, and his breath was slightly labored.

He stared at Dan, white.

"I don't know how you do it," he said, "how you get me to talk so much. Your inquisitive silence is too much to resist." He shook his head in amazement, and then recovered somewhat. "I swear," he said with a wry smile, "you would pry secrets from the dead."

"I'm a good listener," said Dan, and, oddly, he had to quash the urge to smile back. He had not realized Chuck had such a dramatic flair about him. It was rather endearing.

But Chuck had stopped paying attention to him. He was in another world now, his eyes again unfocused, gleaming through the haze of the afternoon sunlight, which set millions of dust motes on fire so that they drifted through the air above him until they landed and turned to ash. He leaned forward so that he was thrown into illumination, resting his elbows on the wooden bar. He looked like a dark angel dressed as a schoolboy in his white shirtsleeves with his mussed hair and his darkly shadowed eyes. He lifted up his glass to the light so that the amber liquid turned an even more brilliant golden shade and stared at it abstractedly.

"As long as I can make her laugh," he said hazily to himself, forgetting Dan, "as long as I can make her happy—for now—isn't that enough? Or am I doing the wrong thing—?"

Such a look of helpless dread descended on Chuck's features that Dan felt as if an icy fist had closed over his own heart. He did not know what to say, and he knew it would make no difference. Chuck was beyond his reach.

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*I borrowed this line from Wuthering Heights: I have dreamed in my life, dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind.