Author's note: I don't know what's going on with me, but I'm definitely enjoying being on a roll. Ya'll have my being out of school since last week to thank :) But without further ado, enjoy!
THESE LITTLE HORRORS, THESE LITTLE HOURS, part two
He met her just outside the aircraft, relaxed stance betraying trepidation in the way his knee jerked nervously beneath his long plaid trench coat. Yet when she looked up after climbing down the stairs and her eyes lit up, he pushed away from his limousine and marched over to gather her in his arms.
"Hi," she greeted, pulling away to gently swat at some snowflakes caught in his hair. He'd obviously been waiting a while.
"Long time no see." He smirked, tucking her arm in his to guide her toward the waiting limousine a few feet away.
"Mm," she said agreeably as they slid in. "Sorry I didn't reply, by the way. Dorota kept me awake all night getting my things ready."
Chuck snorted even as he tapped the partition to signal their presence to his chauffeur. The limo immediately began moving. Chuck turned back to her. "More like you kept her awake. Poor thing."
"Speaking of!" Blair began hotly in mock-outrage, now that she was given the chance to rant about the pesky maid. "I know you're using Dorota to make my life a living hell."
"Oh?" Chuck replied faux-innocently, the grin giving him away far too easily. "And how might I do that? From my offi-"
Blair cocked an unamused brow. Oh, that one wouldn't slide this time. "You forget who you're talking to, Bass."
Chuck leaned in teasingly. "So do you," he said, a hairsbreadth away from her lips, before pressing his mouth to hers.
"You pay her to be infuriating, admit it," Blair muttered stubbornly between welcoming kisses.
"I do no such thing. I can be infuriating on my own," he replied, licking her bottom lip ever so enticingly to prove his point. It tingled even afterward. "Ever consider she could be infuriating on her own?"
Blair rolled her eyes, drawing away and doing her level best to pout while Chuck merely leered at her. "I know she is," she said, "but she doesn't normally plot against me. That your expertise, if memory serves. So what's your goal?"
Chuck's grin widened infinitesimally, but he remained silent for a long, agonising beat. "Maybe she doesn't want you forgetting New York. Maybe she just misses New York and Vanya," he reasoned smoothly. "Did you consider that, Blair?"
She stuck out her tongue. "You're so insufferable!"
His eyes crinkled in playful amusement as he sat back comfortably against the leather, eyeing her out of the corner of his eye. "See? Told you so."
"Ugh!" Blair threw out her hands helplessly. There was no hope whatsoever for this one. Why did she find it so disarming?
She snorted to herself at that. The unanswerable, million-dollar question. Or, in this case, billion-dollar…
"And you should have thought about Vanya before you bought her out!"
#
"I must say, I'm amazed at what you were able to get on him," Chuck said a short while later after he'd thoroughly reviewed what Blair had sent him. Steepling his fingers over the keys, he watched her over the top of his screen as she leaned back against the serving table in the lavishly decorated dining room.
It was just as she'd imagined, actually. Large bay windows offered a breathless view of the city. The postmodernist, bold splashes of colour blended effortlessly with the baroque opulence of curlicued wallpaper and earthy tones. And then the man who personified that blend himself.
Blair pushed away, coming to stand behind him. "I learned a thing or two last time." Chuck's shoulders relaxed under her hands as she began kneading tight knots out of his muscles. "I must say, though, I thought you'd need a more… attractive bait to go with this," she added, leaning closer to his ear.
Chuck's shoulders rolled smoothly under her fingertips, and for a moment she saw his eyes flutter closed. "I spent a month in Greece making sure my money went with the right construction workers… I need a break."
Blair smiled privately as she resumed her fairy work. "Is that all there is to it?" she demanded coyly.
Chuck's head fell back just as his hand grasped her head and drew her in for a searing kiss. "Maybe not." He grinned devilishly against her lips. "Maybe I like fighting crime."
Swatting his head playfully, Blair mock-pouted even as she rounded on him, slithering onto his lap. Chuck's hands easily found their mark to her hips. She most possibly had him right where she wanted him. "And maybe you missed me so much you sent your jet to come and get me at first light a couple days early," she whispered into the shell of his ear, then drawing back to see him mouth twist in an almost guilty way. Almost.
He poked her button nose. "You didn't seem to mind at the time," he pointed out.
Notching her chin higher, Blair almost couldn't contain the laughter that threatened to bubble up and give away her (admittedly poor) haughty act. "Maybe I just like the royal treatment," she managed with her best arrogant air.
He called her on it immediately, fingers stroking her back deliciously so that she arched into him infinitesimally. "Liar," he whispered hotly into the warm crook of her neck.
Blair released a betraying sigh. "Am not."
Her phone rang before he could say anything more, and the haze lifted from her eyes as he reached down into her purse. "It's Emma," he announced starkly, watching as she shifted slightly – primly – on him to answer the call.
"Hello Emma… I'm actually in New York now… Yes, we should meet." Then, focusing on Chuck's narrowed, intense gaze on her and the soft brush of his fingertips at the small of her back, Blair cocked a brow and added, "By the way, you remember Chuck Bass? He'll be helping us get to the bottom of this." She laughed at something Emma said, then brushed Chuck's hair to the side fondly. "Yes, like, the devil. That's Chuck."
Chuckling, Chuck's palms dipped lower over her backside, and he laughed outright when she squeaked and swatted them, glaring daggers at him even as she answered the other girl.
"Oh, trust me, what you read was nothing. He and I do some fine work together… when he's not being insufferable. Good, we'll see you there!" Snapping her phone shut, Blair then pursed her lips at him in exasperation before extricating herself from him. "We're meeting her and Muffy at the Russian Tea Room in an hour. Can you behave yourself?"
"Do you have a leash? That'd be hot."
#
"So I went to wake Sasha for his tennis practise and he… he was walking all funny," Muffy finished on an embarrassed whisper, checking the surrounding tables suspiciously. They were seated in a corner away from other patrons.
Blair pursed her lips in irritation at the secrecy act. If anything, they were probably attracting more attention to themselves being so hush-hush.
"Groggy?" Chuck suggested skeptically.
Muffy shook her head, tight curls flying in all directions and a flustered blush splotching her cheeks. "More like… in pain," she replied awkwardly, raising her eyebrows in a way that was supposed to be meaningful yet didn't exactly specify the exact circumstances. "He wouldn't talk when I approached him about… that."
Blair bit her lip and squinted thoughtfully. The correct angle to start with wasn't by pestering the kid. He'd most likely clamp up rather than happily give away the full details of who-what-when-how if Muffy was even right. And if she wasn't, well. There was such a thing called privacy and he could have fallen on his tailbone for all they knew. And really, it wasn't about the boy's ass to begin with, but about the possible bastard behind the possible situation.
"Your mother married Martin Woodard two months ago, correct?" Muffy nodded, frowning in confusion – hadn't they just been talking about her brother? "How does Sasha act around him and did his behaviour change at any time in the past?"
Ah, now it made more sense. Muffy's eyes lowered as she thought back to when her mother had first introduced the man to her and her brother. "We've both been pretty guarded with him since the beginning. This is mom's third marriage since dad…" She pursed her lips, evidently unwilling to go into detail. Blair and Chuck wouldn't mention they knew he'd divorced their mother for his younger, bustier secretary – the neverending cycle of dog-eat-bitch on the Upper East Side. Obviously the ties weren't cut smoothly for there to still be hard feelings after eight years.
"Has your stepfather acted untoward with Sasha? Made lewd comments?" Blair pushed gently after a small lull.
"Touched him?" Chuck added, focused intently on Muffy's facial expressions to detect any unguarded hints at semi-answers.
Squirming under their dual intense stares, Muffy turned to Emma, who hadn't said a word since they'd walked in. The latter smiled encouragingly at her friend. "I – I mean they talk and Martin's trying to do father-son things with my brother. Sasha kind of… tags along because mom asks him to. For the family," she added sardonically, making airy quotation marks with her fingers.
"Touch? Lewd comments?" Chuck reminded her, eyes studying her even more closely.
Muffy sighed, rubbing her face wearily. "I don't know. He doesn't talk to me much anymore."
Chuck's lips twisted thoughtfully. At Sasha's age, thirteen, a boy started to want to break away, thought puberty was both the shit and the bane of his life, and tended to reject too much mommying. Not that Chuck had any experience with that. But he'd seen other kids start to need space to breathe away from the harassing dulcet tones of the females in their lives. To look at other men as role models.
Martin Woodard was a man; he obviously recognised the stage in Sasha's life and, in his quest to win his new wife's kids over, was probably at least using the boy's search for a male mould as the perfect dangling carrot. That may be all there was to Sasha's behaviour – and the funny walk was due to a bad fall at tennis practise. Nothing to worry about.
To be honest, Blair hadn't been able to dig up gold dirt. The usual: bad investment made better through the right last-minute contacts, caught smoking pot in college, spent a couple hundred with exotic dancers in his early thirties… Nothing to write mother about.
"But Sasha's always been close to me," Muffy resumed in a determined voice. "Mom went through a bad patch when dad left and left us to our au pair a lot." She hugged herself, even though the restaurant and even their spot by the windows were kept quite warm. "I've always been there for him. He knows he can talk to me. Anything that bothers him."
Chuck made a doubting grimace. "The situation in this case is a bit… delicate." He sought Blair's eyes, seeking her opinion. Seeming to find what he'd been looking for, he nodded at Muffy. "We'll do our best."
"Keep it–" the girl began desperately, flushing quite literally of colour.
"Discreet," Blair finished, laying her hand on the girl's trembling one. My God, she thought, this terrifies her.
"It'd be so embarrassing if–" she trailed off. "I don't want to think badly of–"
Chuck's eyes narrowed as he stood, holding Blair's coat up for her to easily slip into. "No one's a saint. We'll just have to see how much of one he's not. So far… he's fairly tainted but not enough."
Swallowing, Muffy sought Emma's hand for comfort. Then she found her voice, however husky for emotion it was. "How – what do you mean?"
Blair slid into her coat, accepting Chuck's arm around her waist, then quietly informed the trembling girl of all they'd found in few words. When she was done filling her in, she tapped Muffy's hand, adding, "We'll let you know when we learn something new." With that she then followed Chuck outside into the gusting winds and fluttering snow of mid-December to slip into his waiting limousine.
#
"Two bedrooms," Blair drawled as she weaved amongst her luggage to inspect the room Chuck had designated as hers. Creams and dreamy blues, and she almost sighed at the calm she found in the overall airiness. Chuck knew her too well, she decided right then and there. Whirling back to face him, she found him leaning lightly on the jamb, a smile hovering at the edge of his lips. "Surprising, Bass. I might have expected a more… intimate arrangement."
He shrugged in an almost disaffected manner. "Someone insisted I sleep at a hotel last month when I visited. If anything, my hospitality out-trumps yours."
Blair came to stand before him again. As her hands slithered around his waist, she felt his body react in subtle ways: lean muscles uncoiling underneath her fingertips, hips seeking hers as his palms quite naturally found their place on her waist, guiding her body to his. "I wasn't aware this was another one of your games," she whispered, a breath away from his lips, carefully searching his eyes for an old part she wasn't sure she could play against anymore. Or maybe she could. With Chuck, everything was sinuous, muddy spirals instead of clear, straight lines. Or… she didn't know anymore.
A flicker of a shadow – guilt, shame, pity all rolled into one – passed over Chuck's features at her words, soon replaced with his lips pressing insistently against hers, silently seeking forgiveness without words he couldn't voice anyway. "No game, Waldorf. Just a room," he said quietly at length, finally opening his eyes. Dark depths stared back at her even as he smirked wanly. "Though you're more than welcome in mine."
With a cry, Blair swatted his arm indignantly and pushed him out forcefully, slamming the door in his face.
His smarmy voice still came at her through it. "I love it when you play rough, Blair."
Argh! Blair looked for a sharp object lest he walk back in, but the ass had planned the room to a tee. Falling to a seething sitting position on the down coverlet of the queen bed, she glared sharp pointy objects when the door opened a crack to let in Chuck's head.
"I have to drop by Victrola for a minute. Paperwork and the like. Want to tag along?" Strip to your slip, maybe?
"No."
He nodded sagely. "Make yourself at home, Blair. I called my P.I. earlier. I might have an email from him, and you're welcome to look through what I could find." The door clicked shut after him, and then the suite's as well.
How could Blair resist?
#
He found her sprawled next to his open laptop, the monitor long gone to the revolving Bass Industries logo screensaver.
What had been supposed to be a quick minute trip to jot down his name on several dotted lines had quickly transformed into an hour-long tour during which the building manager pointed out what needed repairs and maintenance necessities, as well as the adamant need to enlarge the backstage area for the performers who, thanks to thriving business, were growing in number. Wire transfers were arranged, meetings with designers planned – "and why not do a complete rehaul while we're at it?" – and lists of potential investors quickly pored over before being slipped into his briefcase to investigate later.
By the time Chuck had been done talking to everyone who needed to talk to him, an hour and a half had gone by. Slipping backstage for a brief moment, he said a quick hello to the performers familiar and new, clapped the backs of the musicians who'd been there pretty much from the start, and then finally slipped out a half hour later. Hence Blair falling asleep on… he logged in… a PDF his P.I. had sent.
"Blair? Wake up, princess."
She stirred, stretching groggily. Eyes fluttering open before settling on him, she then glanced at the clock behind him and smirked a derisive one. "A minute?"
He slipped into the seat beside her, sighing long-sufferingly. "All work and no play, I'm afraid."
She rolled her eyes, shaking her head, then grinned, bringing up a document on the screen. "Well I had some play. Did you know Muffy's birth name is Mellifanny?"
Chuck focused on the birth certificate before him, making an indeterminate sound in his throat. "No wonder she goes by Muffy," he commented dryly. "Not that it's any better. What did my excellent private investigator get on the stepfather?"
Her smile turned sour, then she clicked into a folder, choosing a file to expand on the screen. "Seems he's involved in some sketchy online activities. Look at page two, line thirteen."
Interest piqued, Chuck followed her directives, scrolling down to the transaction she pointed out. "Huh," was his only response.
"I mean, not that it's that uncommon for healthy men to…" Blair trailed off awkwardly, and he noticed she wouldn't meet his eyes straight on. "It's normal to belong to a group like that, right? Even I–" She clamped her mouth shut belatedly. Quite comically, in fact. "I mean I don't – I'm not a member of any–"
Chuck nearly laughed aloud at her quirky discomfort. As it was, he just tapped her hand indulgently and… maybe he couldn't help the drawl from slipping into his voice. "Relax, Waldorf. I won't tell a soul you like looking at naked men. Long as you can't see their faces. And they're not blond."
Properly red-faced, Blair sulked and glared forward, refusing to look at him at all. "Shut up."
She felt him come closer more than saw or eve heard him. "Struck a chord?" he whispered silkily in her ear, nuzzling the tender flesh behind it deliciously.
Blair suppressed a shiver and a sigh with difficulty. "They're all blond," she grated out between her teeth.
"Sure," he drawled smugly before drawing away cheerfully, calling out her lie with his mere tone. As though nothing was the matter, he palmed his cell, speed-dialing to a number she couldn't see. "Eric, hi. Are you busy? Good. Crack your knuckles, I got you a fun job. Track down any suspect activities by the following ISP address." He rattled off a series of numbers and dots, then added, "Guy's interested in college hunks, apparently, but boys as well it seems." A pause, then," I'm asking you because you're my little brother and I know hacking is your secret guilty pleasure. Now chop-chop happily away." Snapping his phone shut, Chuck cut off any protests Eric van der Woodsen might have been in the middle of sputtering.
Chuck looked up into reproachful brown eyes. "Now what?"
"It's illegal."
Chuck smiled coyly. "We never did play by the rules."
"Chuck…" Danger approached.
Far from being deterred, he glanced at his wristwatch. Aha, excellent getaway. "Look at the time. My table at Gilt is ready."
Mouth twisting in barely-checked animosity, Blair stood up nonetheless but stabbed his chest with a blood-red painted finger even as he prodded her backward. "I'm not done with you."
"Thank God." Ah, his little hellcat… Chuckling, Chuck urged her to the door with a hand at the small of her back. "Looking forward to your sniping, Waldorf."
"I'm sure you are… masochist."
Touché, Chuck thought only half seriously to himself.
Author's note: As you might have noticed from my previous fics, I thoroughly enjoy banter and innuendo. That is all. And more next chapter, of course ;)