A/N: You know what I think would be a fun drinking game to play while reading this story? Every time a character lies or deceives, take a sip. Maybe play it with water, though, so you don't wind up drunk =) (Excuse the snark. I played this game while writing this chapter, but with coffee, which is why I'm posting this at the end of an all-nighter! #feelinggreat)
I want to say thank you all so much for your time and attention. I'm behind on responding to PMs and thanking each of you for your reviews, follows and favorites. But just know that I'M SO GRATEFUL! Your messages and reviews seriously make my life. XOXO.
i.
The second glass of wine is nearly finished when she looks outside and comments that it's 'starting to get dangerous out there,' with a long, slow-blinking look at just the right angle for optimal eyelash movement.
She glances back and his gaze is locked on her, eyes smoldering.
She suppresses a smirk, a victorious flutter vibrating in her chest.
Still got it.
He agrees, and asks, eyes never wavering- does she like snow?
A soft smile. "It's romantic."
The corners of his mouth twitch, pause and then curl into a warm smile.
He tells her agrees.
How far uptown are you?- he asks a moment later.
Far, she tells him, with a mournful look.
And cab drivers aren't so trustworthy in inclement weather.
He takes a sip, murmuring dryly that they're not so trustworthy in any conditions.
She giggles, throaty, raising her own glass to her lips.
Warm comfort licks through her veins at the way he looks her over, a mix of appraisal and wonder, and she points out that there's no harm in waiting a few more minutes, then.
None at all, he agrees, idly tapping his glass on hers- and then they'll sort out a trustworthy way to get her home.
ii.
Wednesday, February 6
Erik and Lily arrive back to their suite together, having barely exchanged two sentences about the show itself, and neither having acknowledged Chuck's departure. Lily's eyes look a bit pink-rimmed; she tells her darling son goodnight, slips her feet out of her white boots, and pads to her bedroom, closing the door with a click that indicates she's retreated for the night.
His knuckles tap ever so softly on Serena's door, not wanting to alert their mother, and Serena says yes? just as softly.
He doesn't have to ask if she saw the show; she doesn't have to feel out whether he fully grasps it.
He pries his shoes off and shuts the door behind him.
"Are you okay?" he asks. The empty tumbler on her bedside table has been rinsed, and the empty bottle hidden or disposed of, but he's no fool.
She smiles, the expression watery like their mother's, and says she will be as long as he stays with her.
"I need you to stay with me," he smiles back, but it's tight and filled with ill-concealed pleading.
Tugging down the corner of her duvet, she nods at the pillow next to her, and he climbs in, blazer and untied ascot and all.
"I'm in no condition to go anywhere," she says.
He waits, but she doesn't bring it up either; doesn't say she's heard from Blair. Doesn't say whether she's tried to call her. Based on her tense silence and the freeze-frame of Audrey Hepburn reaching up to caress the cheek of Richard Crenna on her flat-screen, he assumes that she has.
"Want to watch with me?" she asks, jerking her head toward the television.
"Sure." He's no stranger to Blair and Serena's Herpburn-a-thons, although knowing how the story is going to end has always been more Blair's thing than Serena's. But he doesn't recognize this one. "What movie is this?" Now he does tug off his ascot and toss his jacket toward the chair behind her bedroom door.
"Wait Until Dark. Audrey is blind, and she's all alone in her apartment and being manipulated and used by these three bad guys."
Erik blinks, realizing the caress he thought he was looking at is in fact the nervous gesture of a woman outnumbered and surrounded, trying to understand her adversary.
He fights back the urge to ask how, specifically, they want to use her.
Serena opens her arms, and he slides closer. She squeezes him tightly against her before relaxing. He doesn't comment out loud that her sweater smells like their stepbrother.
As if by magic, Serena unearths the remote from the folds of her duvet and presses Play.
Almost instantaneously, and uncharacteristically, he finds himself discomfited by the unfamiliar gestures and characters on the screen.
"What happens?" he asks quietly.
"She levels the playing field," Serena replies admiringly, smoothing his hair, kissing the top of his head: "Smashes every light bulb in the apartment so they're in the pitch black too."
iii.
Thursday, February 7
The Bass Der Woodsens plan to ride to school together the following morning, and Chuck is late getting into the limo, which, he informed the blondes by text earlier this morning, would be collecting them in the parking garage instead of on the street- "for obvious reasons"- typing with one hand, the other hovering over the pages of the thick Special Edition of Page Six spread on his bar.
Tumbler of tap water next to him, looking longingly at the single malt next to his espresso machine, wishing he hadn't woken up with a sickened stomach and wild-eyed skittishness.
And that was before he even opened the Fashion Week Report.
iv.
Lily's jaw is wound tightly when she greets her children in the morning, dressed in yoga pants and a long-sleeved top to match, drinking green tea. Taut muscles in her neck relaxing visibly, she smiles at Serena and asks how she's feeling, to which her daughter replies with the same smile- genuine in intention, forced in sentiment, only reaching the eyes with strident effort- and soothes that she's "feeling much better, but I still have a headache."
Indicating her teacup, Lily nods in agreement. "I do, too."
The missing bottles from their liquor cabinet, one whisky and one red wine, probably have nothing to do with that.
Lily pours Serena a green tea; Erik declines a cup, kissing her on both cheeks in consolation. She listens to her children chattering as they put on their shoes and coats, and almost doesn't have the heart to hand over the feature that she's already read twice.
"There may be photographers outside," she says softly as their heads tilt together over the pages. "You may want to see if you can meet Charles- "
"In the garage," Erik finishes for her.
v.
"Morning," Erik says when Chuck joins them.
"And to you," he replies. "Sis."
"Stepbro."
Serena is back to her best Incognito Serena disguise, which is a brimmed beanie, a scarf and sunglasses, the latter of which she has folded over her collar at the moment. By her posture, she appears to be poring over the photos – live-action runway shots next to Night Out With regurgitations – but, as they emerge from the underground into the cindery stillness of a February morning, her gaze is lost.
Erik, morose beside her, had his fill of the photos on the first go-round. Chuck's copy is in his hand, though he's sure he's memorized every image by now. It's a quick read when one has put the pieces together oneself; any of the three in the limo could have written the accompanying text, with its presentations of the obvious parallels, its yellow and green and red arrows pointing out palette and design approximations, its featurettes on Who Did It Best and In The Words of Miss Waldorf, whereby the shamelessly decontextualized quotes from Blair's past interviews appear in white-on-black boxes in the margins with oversized quotation marks, appearing, misleadingly, to legitimize the plagiarism of her style, her wit, her very identity.
They ride most of the way to school in silence; Erik pipes up a few blocks away, shaking his head before he even speaks: "I'm sure this is a stupid question, but – there's nothing we can do, this time. Is there?"
"Not a stupid question," Chuck murmurs.
"Nothing," Serena confirms tightly.
Erik nods once, looking away, and the limo is quiet again until they arrive.
Chuck lingers, tucking his Page Six away into a compartment, and Erik slides out first, hollowly bidding both a good day. Serena shoves her copy into her school bag and checks the sidewalk for paparazzi.
She's straightening her hat and he falls into step beside her.
"These shoes don't really go with this outfit," Chuck says, gesturing at his feet. "I wanted to wear my alligator loafers, but they've mysteriously vanished."
Serena smirks; they're still in her bedroom, along with the pajamas she borrowed from him after Betsey Johnson (and just took off an hour ago).
"I'm sure they'll turn up," she coos, but doesn't make eye contact.
"And the handful of oxies that went missing right around the same time," he continues thoughtfully, keeping his eyes forward, "I wonder if those will reappear."
She stiffens- imperceptible under her coat- but doesn't miss a beat. "With the revolving door of degenerates coming through 1812, that's difficult to say."
He purses his lips, glancing over at her. "'Degenerates'? Harsh."
She shrugs, plucking her mirrored sunglasses from her collar and sliding them on with both hands before returning the look, eyes unreadable. She leans in, whispers, "know thyself" with a twist of the mouth, and walks away.
vi.
She's not fallen so far that she can't appreciate the irony. A whole spread about her influence on internationally-renowned New York Fashion Week. Page Six, even- it's not Vogue, but nor is it some stupid fashion blog.
No, it's real, and with wide and legitimate readership.
A month ago, she would have gone weak at the knees for these pictures, the tip of an arrow indicating her headband, her lip color, the dark frame of her brows, the way she tucked a black silk tie into a sheath dress; the opposite tip of the same tail pointing at a look conceived by a household-name designer.
She tries, now. Tries to feel the fluttering, to conjure up the excitement, to think of some way she can salvage this. No press is bad press, and these designers mean to flatter her.
The Blair Waldorf she knows, the satin-haired brunette smiling back at her, arrows pointing out her finest details, would find a way to harness this and rise above everything. That Blair Waldorf was the Comeback Queen. Blair the Infallible. Blair the Unflinching. Starching her spine was what she did best, and there was perverse pleasure in making the less resilient cringe and pull back in the face of her unwavering resolve to have the existence she envisioned.
Nate wasn't fascinated by her? He would be.
Serena was the one everyone preferred? She'd prove she was just as worthy.
Her mother thought she'd never be the daughter she wanted? Unthinkable measures would be taken to exceed her expectations.
That Blair would hire a chauffeured town car back to Constance for tomorrow morning, dress in her most effortlessly fabulous outfit yet (something new, obviously) and probably even tip off the papers about what time she'd arrive- anonymously, of course, and give an ETA ten minutes earlier than realistic, for dramatic effect.
The driver would come around to open her door with its opaque-tinted window, and out she'd come, one foot and then the other on the sidewalk, leaning on his hand for support and stepping onto the curb in one fluid movement, slinging her bag over her shoulder, impervious to the blizzard of flash bulbs, the sea of microphones.
Straightening her spine, she'd walk through the crowd, no comments or backward glances.
The Comeback of Blair Waldorf could be- would be- the stuff of legend. She knows that. It's not like she hasn't fantasized about it; not like she hasn't mentally evaluated outfit choices.
But that Blair, the one in the town car, the one in the photos, feels more like an old friend, a treasured and admired old friend that this girl- the washed-out blonde who watches quietly through the town car's window while Blair the Infallible glides through the crowd- misses dearly. For that girl, no challenge was too big, no expectation too high. She throve on that sort of pressure.
For this girl, the thought of slipping a stocking into a garter hook, tugging it up over the pink lines of the word WHORE that are still visible on her leg, is where things come grinding to a halt.
Yesterday felt so easy, so natural: a long bath in the midafternoon, the steam twisting her hair into loose spirals; then, the unexpected urge to try on silk, the whisper of the skirt sliding up her freshly shaven legs. The divinely-timed surprise of Chuck's back hitting the doorframe, that glitter in his eye when he looked at her and she didn't feel afraid, didn't even think to feel afraid, and even more than that, she agreed with him that she did look beautiful.
But that was all she was allowed before reality came splitting back over her head: the world is not the safety of her bedroom, the controlled environment of Chuck who has seen her bleeding and shaking and crying and still finds it in him to look at her, at this girl, like that.
The rest of the world expects her to be something else. And she can't go with the girl that gets out of the town car, dark waves bouncing with every step. So she leans close to the tinted glass, almost letting her nose touch, and watches Blair the Unflinching walk away.
vii.
"You okay, man?"
Nate gestures at Chuck's plate: steamed brown rice, avocado, hot water with lemon. Chuck has barely had three bites.
"Woke up with an upset stomach," he replies, halfheartedly spearing a slice of avocado and a few grains.
Nate pauses and looks him over; Chuck glances up, then away, as a flash of a different Nate slices through his mind's eye.
"You sick?"
"No. Just didn't sleep well. Espresso martini with an old friend" (emphasis on old friend to redirect Nate's focus) "before bed."
Nate smiles, just one corner of his mouth, and Chuck picks up his lemon wedge and squeezes it furiously into his hot water, willing away the image of Nate bleeding from the mouth, bracing himself on pavement, trying with shaky arms to push himself upright.
"I saw Serena this morning. She must be doing better," Nate says, reaching for his second seared ahi wrap. "Have you talked to her?"
"We all rode to school together this morning."
The blond takes a bite. "Did she seem sick or anything?"
Just hungover. "She didn't come to Carolina Herrera with us last night, but she seems fine now. Maybe a headache."
And possibly coming down from oxies.
He sips his hot water, too sour now, but he doesn't care.
Nate nods, and the up-and-down motion twists into another Nate, crouching, trying to steady himself, breath uneven as he clasps the hand that's being offered to him. He grips it hard, so hard that Chuck can feel his knuckles being pressed inward, and he shakes his hand out under the table.
Suddenly the real Nate is staring at him. "You sure you're okay? You're sweating."
"Too many layers," he shrugs, even though it's raw out and the tip of his nose is freezing. He changes the subject to the first thing he thinks of. "You still going to the gala?"
"Probably. I don't see a way out of it. My mom wants me to ask Blair." Nate pauses, something occurring to him, and as usual he doesn't hide it well. "Have you talked to her at all?"
"Some," Chuck says around the rim of his hot water. "I'm not sure she wants to go, especially now."
Nate has seen Page Six, and though he gets the concept that people are copying Blair, the magnitude of it is lost on him. Fashion and detail are not his strongest suits. But after what his family's been through the last few months, the concept of not wanting to be stared at and whispered about is something he understands completely.
He glances sideways at Chuck. "Are Blair and Serena talking?"
Chuck shrugs again. "Probably. I'm not sure."
"But Serena's going to the gala, right? Probably with Humphrey?" Nate persists. "Things are good with them?"
"As good as things can be when you're from Brooklyn," Chuck drawls, pushing down his irritation at Nate's questioning and looking for another redirect. "I'll make us an appointment for a fitting on Saturday afternoon. If you do wind up taking Blair, you can't show up in last year's tux."
It works. "She's not even talking to me," Nate mumbles, defeated, and drops it.
As they clean up their lunch settings, he says something about how things used to be so much easier- so much simpler- before- you know?- and looks at Chuck, who can't help but hear his friend's longing for a time when he had a doting girlfriend who forgave him anything and dutifully kept her mouth shut while he panted over her best friend.
But when he looks back at Nate, who's in the process of standing, he sees him again, in a flash, doubled over, struggling to breathe, and he does his best to nod comfortingly while uncomfortable goosebumps bloom on his back.
viii.
Once she opens the door and descends five stairs, which is the maximum she's meant to be doing at this stage, and calls for Dorota, it's all arranged relatively quickly. They're there within two hours.
She sits cross-legged on her bed, posture neat and careful, and directs. Boxes come in. She makes decisions.
Dorota brings her a tea tray, and she cups the china in both palms, no saucer, letting it burn her hands.
Her large full-length mirror, tilting on its heavy base, is dragged back into her closet, a sheet thrown over it.
Dorota nearly steps on the red Carolina Herrera, which lies defeated where Chuck flung it last night as he made his hasty departure, and holds it up silently to Blair.
She nods, averting her eyes, and picks up the swatch book someone laid on her duvet.
ix.
This season's Cynthia Rowley show is at matinee hour, three o'clock, and Serena catches a cab home early to go with Lily. When Serena arrives, Lily is dressed in a sage green lapel-less pantsuit, and Serena pauses when she sees her, then wordlessly wraps her arms around her mother.
Lily holds her while Serena chokes out a few sobs, shushing her apologies for getting tears on the blazer, and offers for them to skip the show altogether.
"No, it's okay," Serena says. "Just let me change."
Lily says nothing about Serena missing the end of her school day, and compliments her daughter's sky blue jersey sheath and messy bun.
They arrive early enough to nibble a cucumber sandwich hors d'oeuvre in the outer part of the tent, and by the time the lights go down, Lily is relieved to see Serena's features have relaxed into a soft smile. She pats her daughter's knee, and Serena leans against her briefly, more of a sway, and kisses her cheek and whispers I love you.
"I love you, too, my darling," Lily whispers back, but it's drowned out as the runway music strikes up.
The collection, as it's described later, is slightly more monothematic than in seasons past, though not much of a departure. It's apparently not worth real estate in any mainstream reporting outlet, although one could argue that that's because the ship sailed with this morning's issue of Page Six.
It's a lot of knitwear, this season's Cynthia Rowley collection. Soft sweater suits with open jackets in an array of neutrals; floaty chiffon skirts in muted floral palettes paired with crepe blouses with ruffled necklines; a French-cut one-piece with rosettes lining the deep halter neckline; draped evening gowns in seafoam, blush, dove grey and lilac, with a flounce or a ruffle or a bare back or a neck cut wide enough to slip off one shoulder.
Serena, hands folded comfortably in her lap, watches pedestrianly as the looks parade one after another past her, losing track after the first two.
Instead, she remembers lounging next to Blair in her bed, sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice and trying to conceal her giggles as Blair complained for the fourth time that she had told that moronic reporter over and over that her room was not cornflower blue, it was French blue -
But you look beautiful, B. Look at that gorgeous smile!
A scoff- That's not the point! A dramatic sigh, like Serena would just never understand.
Serena sighs now, happy, the twinge of that second look, a fine-knit creamy sweaterdress with a cowl neckline and tiny cap sleeves, only minutely bothering her.
Blair did look beautiful in that photo, she remembers: in her French blue room, perched cross-legged and comfortable, in virginal ivory cashmere that draped perfectly just below her collarbones.
x.
When he answers, Blair's first question is whether he's okay.
"Sure," he says, clearing his throat on the syllable. "Why?"
"You sound tired."
He smirks. "Cried myself to sleep last night. My favorite shirt got ruined."
She tuts sympathetically. "I'm surprised you were able to sleep at all."
"Oh, I was up half the night," he assures her. She waits, and he says, "just a little sore throat."
"Do you need to go?"
"I have more stamina than that, Waldorf," he chides. It's barely nine. "And… how are you?"
Now it's her turn to pause. "Well," she says primly, "I suppose I can't have reasonably expected that no one else was going to notice, given the timing."
"…And how are you?" he repeats, when it's clear that's all she's going to say.
She looks around her room, a long sigh passing her lips, and says, "I've been better." Then a little ahem. "Did you go to any shows tonight?"
"No," he says firmly. "I'm done."
"Reception tomorrow night?"
"You couldn't pay me."
"Fashion Week totally sucked," she says quietly.
He exhales, mirthless. "When I'm right, I'm right."
"Since we're both boycotting…" Her voice drops low, like it does when she's about to scheme. "Want to come over for dinner?"
As he confirms, she looks around at her new walls, her new room, completely transformed from twelve hours ago.
Marie Antoinette was the hardest to see go, but when she did, Blair felt relief.
xi.
After he and Blair hang up, despite his undeniable fatigue, he finds himself inventing reasons to avoid going to bed. He picks out his clothes for tomorrow and groups the hangers close together. Flips his pillows on his bed. Hangs up his coat, plucking it from the chairback where he draped it when he came home. Drops the copy of Page Six on top of the swamp of surveillance photos and newspaper clippings in the banker's box tucked in one corner of his closet. Picks up his single malt and slides it carefully into a cabinet, with one last look before he closes the door.
He has a sudden urge to see Lily, and wishes it weren't Fashion Week and there might be a chance she's downstairs at Divine, the bar quiet, a small smile on her lips and some free-flowing conversation about decorating or wedding planning or what color to wear to the gala at the ready.
And then her offer to stay in the Van Der Woodsen suite, as impossible and unrealistic as it is, trickles through his ears.
And the kiss on his brow.
And he picks up the phone beside his bed.
And his vision swims, just for a moment, as he reaches out and dials the front desk.
"Chuck," Kathryn says, smile in her voice. "What's up? How are you tonight?"
He swallows. "I'm a little under the weather, actually," he replies.
"Oh, no. What's wrong?"
He can practically feel her eyes shifting off of her computer screen to focus on him.
"I, uh, think I might have… a fever." He sniffs for effect.
"Do you think you're coming down with something? Maybe I should get Dr. Holt…"
"I don't think so." He leans back on his pillows and narrows his eyes at the ceiling. "Just- what sorts of things does one do to bring down a temperature?"
She begins to rattle off measures he can take, phrasing every one as a recommendation: you should take some ibuprofen, and make sure you drink enough water and don't let yourself overheat. She insists he call her in the morning and let her know how he's feeling.
No more than a minute after he's thanked her and hung up, room service appears with a tray: orange juice, chicken soup, ibuprofen and chamomile tea, plus an electronic thermometer in its plastic sheath.
He smiles sadly at it.
He consumes it all, even the ibuprofen, figuring it can't hurt, and sends her an email that says: Thank you. You're the best.
xii.
In a darkly funny twist, his dreams tonight are more fevered than last night's. Nate, spitting blood and something thicker, trying to steady himself on the pavement, his breath coming in quick spurts, doesn't immediately take the hand he offers.
He glances up through a fringe of hair tinged dark from sweat, blue eyes wide with fear, and he doesn't look comforted.
He doesn't look like he's safe now.
He looks around their world- a world that's gray and indistinct, dense with the promise of peril- and in two short gasps, long enough for him, Chuck, to crouch down in front of him, he seems to decide that this is the better option.
He slips his hand into Chuck's and allows himself to be hauled to standing, stumbling a little, leaning in as he coughs from the exertion, and follows Chuck's lead. And he doesn't second-guess it after that point, but no matter how many times Chuck crouches down and offers him his hand, or touches his shoulder, or says his name while strings of blood drip from Nate's mouth, that momentary hesitation, that lack of relief, doesn't disappear.
xiii.
Saturday, February 9
Nate makes a halfhearted reference to his classic set of tails as they browse through the new samples, but Chuck tells him quietly that he's already let the tailor know that his father will be covering both tuxedos, so to please book them to the same Bass account.
Blue eyes widen in alarm. "Dude," Nate hisses, embarrassed, looking around as if expecting an audience of pitying faces.
"Please," Chuck says, averting his eyes on the pretense of fingering a rack of bow ties in different shades of red. "It's nothing. Happy to."
Nate's shoulders slump, a gesture Chuck feels in his own posture, familiar from the numerous Mother's Day luncheons and Easter egg hunts that Anne has insisted he stay on at the Archibald townhouse for.
He moves past Chuck, nudging him gently with his shoulder, and says quietly, "Thank you."
Chuck smiles to himself. "What color vest are you thinking?"
"Is red too cliché?"
"That depends." Chuck rolls his eyes. "Will you also be bringing a heart-shaped box of chocolates?"
The blond smirks, then turns serious. Fingers resting on a stack of red damask vests, he sighs: "I finally heard from Serena last night."
"Oh?" He forces his jaws to unclench. "Late?"
What he means is, after she called Blair and woke us- her- up?
"Uh…" Nate squints at the ceiling. "Late-ish."
Chuck waits. Serena's voice, pitching up so he could hear it from where Blair swayed, half-conscious, next to him, echoes in his mind.
"What did she want? Everything good?"
Serena, Blair said after a minute, her voice creaky with sleep and hoarse from the crying she obviously did just before he arrived, based on her puffy eyes and raw nose that he ignored when she deflected his question about how her therapy sessions were going, I can't talk right now.
And sinking with a stifled sigh into her back, phone cradled carefully in her no-longer-wrapped hand, cord stretching across her chest, as he raised himself on one elbow, delirious at being shaken from the first deep sleep he's had in three days.
Her eyes rolled to meet his apologetically in the dark.
"I don't know," Nate says, and he genuinely doesn't seem to.
He maneuvered closer to Blair, listening to Serena's voice but unable to make out the words, suppressing the urge to tell her to stop drinking and go to bed.
"Was she upset?"
Blair sighed in frustration. It's the middle of the night- I'm sleeping-
Serena's tone sharpened, volume swelling to a shout: Is Chuck there?
"She just seemed sad. She was saying how much she missed old times, the four of us, before we… Serena and I. You know." Nate scratches behind one ear in classic Bashful Archibald fashion.
Two pairs of brown eyes found each other in the dark. Chuck inhaled sharply, angrily, through his nose, then let it out slow.
Serena didn't take the pause well. Is he? Because he's not here, and he's not home.
He's not here, Blair said without another hesitation. There's a million other places he could be.
He's not? A little louder: Chuck?
(Chuck put his face in his pillow and muttered "for fuck's sake" then.)
"I'd say that ship has sailed," Chuck says with affected nonchalance.
Nate flinches. "She said things are so screwed up now and it's all her fault for starting it…" He waits for the jab from Chuck, and says it himself when it doesn't come: "Which we both know isn't true."
"Not entirely, no," Chuck smirks, fingering a black satin lapel.
"And I was like, 'I mean, look, things obviously aren't great right now, but that's not your fault, and look on the bright side- you have Dan, he loves you.'"
Chuck heaves a bored sigh. "And what did she say to that?"
Serena, Blair said sharply, stop yelling in my ear. I'm going back to sleep. Don't call me again tonight, okay? Go to bed.
Serena quieted back to a murmur, so he had to lean over as Blair put the receiver between them.
I'm sorry, Blair, I just miss you and I want to see you and I'm just… I'm going crazy without you. Can we just talk, or… something? The last word was almost inaudible.
Covertly, he watched Blair out of the corner of his eye, and saw her twist the phone cord a little between her fingers, then release it.
We will, she said evenly, but now isn't the right time. Get some rest. We'll talk soon, okay?
The unmistakable sound of Serena letting out a sob escaped from the earpiece before, to her credit, she covered it. Okay. I love you.
Blair rolled onto her side and put the receiver back into its cradle. When she sighed, lowering herself to her back again, she yawned an apology that was cut short by the phone trilling.
She didn't have to answer it to know. It was Serena, heartbroken that Blair didn't say she loved her too.
With a groan of frustration that she didn't bother to swallow, Blair pushed herself out of bed and leant over the cradle, finding the cord that connected it and ripping the jack out. She got back into bed panting, her heavy exhalations the only sound in the room.
Not having shifted from his spot next to her pillow, now he slowly moved away, a chilly fist squeezing at his heart at what he'd just seen.
Blair said nothing else, just shut her eyes and laid back, and he did the same, ticking over the way she twisted the phone cord and disconnected the cable, thinking that she knows Serena would have calmed down and gone to bed if she'd just said I love you too.
After a few minutes of complete silence, he noiselessly turned his head and looked at her profile for a long moment.
Nate's eyebrows flick up quickly, arms crossing over his chest. "She said something about how Dan loves a girl who doesn't exist. I mean, I guess she was talking about herself."
"Unless Humphrey's a phasmomaniac."
"A phasmo-what?"
"Someone who's obsessed with ghosts." He pulls out the satin lapel and its ivory counterpart, and hands them off to a birdlike young sales associate to find in his size. "Was that it?"
"She kinda yelled at me," Nate sighs, sorting listlessly through a rack of black jackets pre-paired with vest and tie combinations. "She was like, 'Nate, don't you get it? No one loves me, because I don't deserve it.'"
He raises an eyebrow from where he stands inspecting a slate blue jacket. "And did you take the opportunity?"
Nate pauses, then lets out a burst of laughter, his face relaxing as he rolls his eyes. "Shut up."
Chuck shrugs, going back to the jacket.
"No. I told her we all love her no matter what. I didn't know what else to do."
He blinks and waits, looking at the jacket's lining like he couldn't care less what Serena had to say to that.
"So she just said thank you and hung up."
"Just a little extra emotion on the classic Drunk Serena," he says with a tip of the head.
"Yeah," Nate nods slowly, "I mean, with everything that's happened."
He begins unbuttoning a double-breasted purple jacket. "You think she was home at that point? I didn't see her last night," he volunteers, hoping this will nip any questioning Nate might want to do in the bud.
"Uh… it was quiet on her end, so probably. Hopefully she just went to bed."
Probably popped an oxy and then went to bed.
"Just another Friday night on the Upper East Side."
Nate chuckles, worry lifting. "What'd you do? Afterparty? Any new talent on the field?"
He's checking the inside pockets of the purple jacket, which have tiny zippers, and his fingers brush the velvet lapel as he withdraws them. He smiles down at it, and swallows while Nate's safely looking the other way, remembering Blair standing in front of him, their fingers brushing together at the front closure of her purple velvet robe.
The room was dark, but she had that same look in her eyes as when she ran her fingers over his tie in her red silk, not glittering up at him- she hasn't glittered since it happened- but warm, the faintest smile on her lips, her gaze steady and sure.
I almost forgot, she whispered.
Her eyes crinkled a little; the backs of his knuckles hovered, just grazing her sash.
You're Chuck Bass.
"Skipped the afterparty," he says to Nate over his shoulder, catching his eye, voice low enough to indicate he doesn't wish to smarm audibly in a classy tailor's shop: "Saw another old friend."