Disclaimer: I don't own Gossip Girl.

Note: Eeek, the C/B caused a little stir, hm? While I love Chuck, and C/B, I must say I'm happy to see most everyone reading is getting on Team Carter. Thank you all for your wonderful reviews, I love hearing from you.

To Lily: I had never thought much about my ability to hint B/N vs. B/C. I've been attempting to make both evident as being important parts of B's life … I will say I find Chuck harder to write than anyone. And as for Carter, I can't really explain my affection for him. I agree, the show does not give us much to go with, although I do think it hints that he's not so much a villain as just a playboy, which is what I go with, adding in my own layers. And as for Sebastian Stan's influence, sure. I love his portrayal on the show, and the man is stunning. ;)

To mystripedskirt: I didn't realize you already HAD written some Carter/B … on my list of required reading for tomorrow or Monday. I'm excited.

To hiddenletter: Ha. You win the Chapter 6 Award for Review That Made Me Laugh. Charles is indeed the patron saint of Gossip Girl.

Thank you for reading. – Sarah

Breakdown II.

Chuck looks like a child when he sleeps, all fluttering eyelashes on flushed cheekbones and tousled dark hair tumbling over his forehead.

Blair supposes that when it comes right down to it, when he's not dressed up in Bart's ties, with his hair arranged all slick and off his face, in his new CEO-appropriate style, he is just a child, so maybe she shouldn't be surprised.

His arms are firmly around her in his slumber; she smiles a bit to note that he's always been a cuddler, Chuck has, despite obvious personality traits that would suggest the contrary.

Nate was the one who could never fall asleep facing the person he was in bed with. Or maybe that was just her. She realizes now she's never thought of it that way; also, that it doesn't hurt like she thinks maybe it should.

Carter always means well, she thinks, when it comes to bedtime cuddling, but he tosses and turns once he falls asleep, to the point that more often than not she ends up being the big spoon, just to keep him still.

Carter doesn't look childlike in sleep. He doesn't look innocent, and he doesn't look angelic, but he looks beautiful all the same and he smiles without opening his eyes when she wakes before him and curls herself back into his arms, and he feels like home then.

She leans in now to kiss Chuck softly at the hollow beneath one of his cheekbones, because she thinks that with all the women he's had, Chuck Bass will probably never have as many soft kisses to his cheek as he needs, and also, that maybe it will feel like home and her heart will think about regulating itself.

She realizes suddenly, with her lips still against Chuck's cheek, that she hasn't gotten around to asking Carter what it is that gets to him in his dreams, what it is that makes him so restless, and thinks maybe she should have.

Also, she realizes, despite Chuck's warm embrace, her heart still feels as if it has dropped several inches below her chest, and is hammering wildly somewhere in her guts.

XOXO

Serena is wearing a hole in the carpet, pacing outside Chuck's door when Blair slips out wearing her dress from the night before.

"Where's Chuck?" She hisses, and Blair rolls her eyes and grabs her best friend by the elbow, dragging her down the hall and into her own bedroom.

"Sleeping," she whispers her reply, tone daring. Serena takes the bait.

"And you're, what? Doing the walk of shame? Sneaking out before he gets up? What, B? What are you doing?"

Serena thinks hard and she can remember Carter's shockingly gentle touch a lifetime ago in Santorini, and his perpetual, penetrating eye contact and the way his emotions played out over his face so easily like he didn't know or didn't care that that's not allowed in their world.

She more easily remembers the way he's been looking at Blair over the past month – it's the same way Chuck looks at Blair, except without abandon and without any desire to hide it or pretend it was Scotch in his blood or dust in his eye.

"I am getting out alive!" Blair's whisper manages to be a shriek, and Serena's blood runs cold as she takes in the wild, broken look in her best friend's eyes. The chestnut gaze is frantic and shattered and entirely too reminiscent of that of her ex-stepbrother sleeping in the next room with scars that all ready run far too deep and that are about to be reopened.

Serena thinks this is entirely too much fire to be playing with, and that she loves two-thirds of the explosions about to be involved and also, she thinks, she doesn't love Carter but she doesn't think he deserves to be burned either, and so that makes all three.

"B, what are you talking about?" she asks shakily. "Talk to me."

Blair closes her eyes and counts to ten before responding, her voice calm and even. "Everything is a mess. Everything. And I made the mess, and I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to fix me."

Serena opens her mouth, reaching toward her best friend, But Blair steps away from her touch and continues. "But I think I'm the only one who can." She nods. "I ruined everything. I ruined … Blair. And I'm the only one who can fix it. No distractions. No heroes."

XOXO

"You were a distraction," Blair informs Carter calmly over brunch at Pastis three hours later. "That night, last month. The … first night. I needed an escape, a release. You were perfect," she recalls her own thoughts.

Carter takes a sip of his mimosa and leans back a little in his chair, regarding her evenly while the champagne feels too fizzy inside of him. He has an uncomfortable feeling about where this is going, and the bright red patent headband perched atop her impeccable curls, and the way she's smiling politely without showing her teeth. "And?"

Blair falters slightly at his almost-brusque demand. "And … thank you. Yes. I wanted to thank you for that."

"Glad I could help," he smiles at her slightly, and she can see the conflict all over his face though he tries to bury the confusion and fear beneath lighthearted reactions and vague arrogance. "Blair, what is this ab-"

"And thank you," she interrupts, suddenly finding it difficult to find enough breath to get her words out. "For the past few weeks. I've had fun. And … for the other night. I apologize again for letting myself get so emotional like that."

He looks alarmed now, and places his hand over hers, opening his mouth to speak.

She jerks hers away and rushes on. "But I think it was a mistake to rush into … anything. As we were discussing the other night, I mean. I've decided I think it would be a bad idea for us to be not not a thing. And to go sailing. And for me to meet your parents in any capacity other than as someone in your same social circle. So I'm going to go. Now."

She gets to her feet rapidly, nearly knocking her chair over behind her and dropping her cloth napkin on the floor by her feet. She bends down to collect it and takes a deep breath, straightening up and noticing he's standing as well.

He holds her gaze and his expression is indescribable, his eyes burning into hers with a million questions that he doesn't ask because he's pretty sure his tongue has swollen and is trying to gag him. "Okay," he tells her, and she thinks she might throw up.

"Okay?" She doesn't know what she wanted. A fight, perhaps. For her. Anger. Perhaps even hurt, she thinks … until she sees the cracks in the armor, a devastation in his eyes threatening to burst through his carefully crafted veneer of steel, and thinks that acknowledgement of how she's hurting him right now might kill her and that would really interfere with the agenda she's yet to organize concerning how to fix her entire life.

He nods, finally. "Of course." His voice is not as carefree as he would like, and she notices. "I'd never ask you to do anything you didn't want to. I…wouldn't want you to be with me if it wasn't what you wanted."

She thinks it's gallant and terrible at once, and there's something too powerful wreaking havoc on her from the inside out and she can't stand the way he's looking at her with soft eyes and tightened facial features and she thinks fire and rage would be better and so she tells him:

"I slept with Chuck. Last night."

She remembers, as she watches him carefully control the slight widening of his clear eyes, so blue with the early afternoon sunlight behind them, where they sometimes look green in shadows, and avert them immediately to the ground, like Nate would, until he feels he's sufficiently cleared them of any tell-tale emotion, and set his jaw in a way that looks painful because maybe physical pain can drown out other types, like Chuck would, that he's more proficient at living their lifestyle than any of them, and there won't be a scene now.

He nods slightly. "I guess it's good we're not a thing, then." He's polite enough not to mention she could have waited eight hours or so and then he really wouldn't have a case, not that he's about to plead one anyway, because he can barely stand upright at the moment.

She nods as well, and turns on her heel, but he catches her arm and she looks back.

"Call any time," he offers, or begs, she's not really sure, and she thinks it might be both and something in her chest constricts as she forces herself to walk out of the restaurant without a backward glance.

The diners around their now half-empty table politely avert their eyes and pretend he doesn't exist when Carter Baizen nearly doubles over and slides back down into his seat, breathing irregular and the color drained from his face.