In the Heat of the Night

But black and white,

and dark as night

is all we've ever been.

Sweat pooled and condensed, leaving pin prinks of moisture on her skin like tiny magnifying glasses into her soul, into everything that was hidden in the velvet dark of the blackest night.

Blair knew one thing absolutely; a certainty that was as sure as the rising and setting of the sun.

Charles Bartholomew Bass was incapable of change.

Some men could shift identities, change the very chemical composition of their makeup as easily as throwing a coat on or shedding a sweater. Chuck, with the exacting decisiveness of his forceful, powerful personality, could never be anyone different than who he was.

He could never pretend to be a Lord—perhaps because he could only be a King.

She told Marcus later that she'd known. She confessed, in front of everyone she knew, and everyone she desired to impress, that she'd realized the moment he touched her, kissed her, that it was not the Lord, but the King instead.

"I knew it was him."

She'd lied.

The British accent, though technically competent enough, fit on Chuck so poorly that it was as if he'd changed into Dan Humphrey's plebian, bargain basement wardrobe. The vowels lay thick and heavy and wrong on his tongue, and Blair wanted him to spit them out, to defile them, to stop pretending to be someone that he wasn't because she didn't want him to be Lord Marcus. She wanted him only to be completely and utterly himself.

Still, his words, even in the accent, paralyzed her. She was rooted to the floor, her voice silent in her throat, the fight she had carried on for weeks essentially over. Once he truly came for her—and she had known the moment he'd prowled into her party that he had—nothing would stop him.

Especially not her.

She was not even sure now, the air conditioner freezing the sweat dry on her skin, the cold air clearing drowsy, heated fantasy she'd been in only moments earlier, who reached for who.

It only mattered that he was here, and he was here for her.

As he walked down the staircase later, the truth of what had occurred in that midnight dark room revealed to all, she wanted to tell him that she had known the moment he had traced is finger over her damp skin that her walls would crumble into dust tonight. That she would stand on the top of the highest tower, wave her white flag of surrender, and let them.

But his eyes, burning dark with lust or anger or perhaps a combination of both, stopped her. After all, he was Chuck Bass. He did not apologize, he did not admit defeat. He was uniquely himself. Most importantly, unlike Lord Marcus, he didn't need the camouflage of another's skin to win her.

He had only to beckon to her, the flimsiest excuse for a charade not even concealing his identity, and like Pavlov's dog, she would concede to his every wish, his every demand.

It was the sting of her wounded pride that forced her into Marcus' arms, into his dull embrace, and as she kissed him, she began to wonder if perhaps resistance was ultimately futile.

"Just because you're poorly dressed doesn't mean you're not Chuck Bass," she told him, a memory of that dark night resurfacing as she stared at the man she loved—cane and Dan Humphrey vest and all.

Blair could not understand. Couldn't he see that his visage of poverty was slippery and practically transparent? She could nearly see it slide off him right now, could see right through it. It astounded her that anyone with his ultimate command, with the power in his eyes and in the curve of his jaw and the tone of voice he uses, could ever be known as Henry Prince.

He wasn't a Lord or a Prince. Blair wanted to know when he'd stop fighting the fact that with Bart's death, he officially earned the mantle of the King of Manhattan. Avoiding the position didn't mean it wasn't who he was.

She watched as he returned, tried to be Chuck Bass, King of Philanthropy, consort to the Lady Eva, and couldn't comprehend why everyone was so eager to trumpet his extraordinary alterations.

He had not changed. He was no different. The new visage was not any more successful than his British accent had been years ago. Even more disturbing to Blair was the fact that unlike the accent, he truly believed in this particular charade.

But she knew better than anyone the chore of trying to be someone that you are not, and though he concealed it well, he could never hide from her that the ill-fitting edges of the act chafed.

Chuck Bass never walked soberly through parties, a blonde gallantly on his arm and a glass of soda water with a sliver of lime in his hand. The Chuck Bass Blair was as familiar with as the skin she herself inhabited, had had every intention of kicking out every inhabitant at a shelter during Christmas. He didn't blink as he sold her for a hotel, as he deflowered her eternal nemesis. Didn't hesitate as he rejected her and her love more times than Blair cared to remember.

But as the days slipped away, and he fell further into the mesmerizing web of transformation, Blair knew desperation. Not for him—no, never for him. Never, ever again. But for the comfortable reality of the man she knew and had loved so desperately, so completely.

She missed his smirk, his expression as he undressed her with his eyes (whether it was appropriate or not), the scent of scotch as he entered a room, the swagger that told her and everyone else that he owned whatever the fuck he deigned to touch.

The woman was stealing that from him—from her —and Blair could not bear to watch as Eva effectively neutered him, slowly eliminating everything that made Chuck Chuck.

Blair found she could not allow Chuck's dark, sometimes black, light to be stolen from him. Often Blair had hated the darkness inside him, wishing she could open a window and let the sun in, but she would never have made him into something he was not. She'd understood that when she chose to be his that he was Chuck Bass.

Between the events of last spring and the near-death experience he'd been forced to deal with, Blair could only ascertain that somehow he had given Eva the reigns to his existence, and she had no choice but to fight her for them—even if he would not fight for them himself. Blair had always saved him, even when he had never wanted to be saved.

Desperation drove her, in essence forced her to tell the lie. The words dripped from between her lips, poisonous and needy.

"Or Eva did. The night she found you. The night she made you her mark."

Blair rarely lied; the trouble she brewed was often more effective with the truth. She wondered the moment she told him if it was all a mistake. If perhaps he would have been happier with Eva. But the moment was dead, long gone, before Blair decided she was selflessly saving him, but there was still a tiny part of her that could not bear to see anyone else occupying her place at his side.

When he came for her that night, even after the cruelty he had so casually tossed her direction, Blair was sure he was Chuck Bass yet again.

Chuck Bass come to claim her the way he had on that darkest night.

They had only ever been enemies or lovers. Black or white. In the aching chill of winter or the sweltering heat of the night.

Blair felt certain that nothing could get in the way this time, that with Eva gone, with her pride already obliterated, there was only them. Chuck and Blair. Blair and Chuck.

But she had forgotten the downfall of that night, of the night that Chuck had realized he could never be Lord Marcus, could never occupy his skin, and she had forgotten his own wounded pride.

"I need to know why. Is it possible you still love me?

She had also forgotten her own. Her own that pricked when he believed he could just waltz in here, the swagger back in his step—the swagger she had lied to force him to re-discover—and everything broke down inside of her.

Every falsehood she had told to Serena, to Nate, to Dorota, to Eva.

To Chuck himself.

She was not ready to let him go, but even as the King, she still wasn't ready to claim him.

"How could I still love you after what you did?"

Blair saw his dark eyes burn, coal embers in his handsome face. His grimace was much the same now as it had been then. Pride wounded, back to the corner, desperate to prove that he didn't need her after all. And this time, as last time, she felt the same.

Except she had forgotten in the heat of the battle the man she had successfully resurrected.

He was not a Prince. Not a Lord. He was Chuck Bass.

"So you did it just to hurt me. Eva made me into someone I was proud to be, but you just brought back my worst self. This means war. Me versus you. No limits."

And Chuck Bass was a twisted son of a bitch.

AN: Dialogue taken from 2x04, "The Dark Night" and 4x04, "A Touch of Eva."