Title: The Butterfly Effect
Rating: K+
Pairing: Blair/Chuck, CWverse, some speculation on episode 1.10
Disclaimer: I own neither the characters, nor the show, nor the books, I just find the two of them epic in a sad sort of way.
Summary: Blair and butterflies always seemed to go together in his world.
The Butterfly Effect
There had been no warning, just the feeling of something fluttering against his face. Chuck Bass, all of eight years old, opened his eyes and found himself focusing, cross-eyed, at the orange and black butterfly that rested on his nose. He let out a breath and it started, flying away in a dizzy, random pattern that only butterflies knew.
"Did you have to scare it away?"
Chuck sat up, surprised, to face the girl at his side. Dark eyes regarded him with contempt and she tossed brown curls over her shoulder, hair ribbons staying perfectly in place as she smoothed down her dress. "Blair Waldorf," she informed him, extending one tiny hand in a gesture too adult for someone under ten.
"Chuck Bass," he replied, gripping the hand lightly, but firmly, because there was no such thing as too adult for children in their world.
"Why were you asleep?"
"I was bored."
She looked around and he followed her gaze, from the well-dressed socialites to the perfectly landscaped courtyard the garden party was taking place in. "Why?"
A shrug and he straightened the bow tie his mother had insisted he wear. "It's what I do."
"That's juvenile," she informed him, rolling her eyes and walking away.
He watched her go.
He found his attention straying away from Julie Carrington's lips to a silver butterfly that was perched on a head of smooth dark hair. He broke away from the model as the butterfly turned, sparkles on its wings catching the light, and started toward him.
"Chuck."
"Nathaniel," he returned the greeting, "Blair. You know Julie?"
Nate gave the older girl a smile, but Blair's red lips had quirked into that devious smirk he had learned to recognize as a sign that she was about to say something incredibly amusing. "Hello, Julie."
Bitch. She had learned restraint. Must be all that time playing perfect daughter, perfect friend, perfect girlfriend. She'd begun to believe it herself. Chuck found himself disappointed.
The taste of champagne and strawberries, crisp and bubbly, never left his tongue. The scent of Chanel No. 5, always classic, never quite disappeared. And the sound of her purring in his ear, breathy with want and need and all those things Blair Waldorf pretended not to be, never failed to wake him in the middle of the night.
The butterflies, metaphorical at this point, were unwanted. But they stayed, fluttering, as she finally granted him her porcelain skin and ruby lips and all that dark hair.
He had never been the guy to want a woman exclusively. Women were cheap, flighty things that were more trouble than they were worth. They were good as arm candy and bed warmers, as a soft release from the life of the Upper East Side's elite. As an escape.
Blair was none of those things. She refused to be. He found himself watching her constantly, angry and confused and enchanted. Her icy demeanor fascinated him, made her his match, and her vulnerability startled him. Captivated him.
She had somehow managed to get his heart on a string, but Chuck knew she'd have no compunction using those golden scissors in her other hand to cut him loose.
How unfortunate for him.
Chuck Bass didn't lose well. And losing something he truly wanted…that was simply unthinkable. So the sound of her giving in to Nate was unacceptable. He had known it would happen, she had wrapped herself up so fully in her perfect persona that if there was even a chance for her happily ever after, she'd run back to it with open arms.
It didn't make the sight of her, so beautiful in her silver dress and his necklace, in Nathaniel's arms any easier. It didn't make the thought of Nathaniel's lips on hers, his hands on her skin, her body beneath his, any more palatable.
Blair was his now, anything else was intolerable.
So when he found her in the hotel room, Nate away to fulfill one of her girly after-requests of bottled water or chocolates, he told her she was fool and she laughed at him.
"He doesn't love you. He'll never love you."
"And you love me Chuck?" she shot back.
He said nothing. There was nothing he could say to keep her innocence to himself, not when she was so determined not to let him have it. She wanted her fairytale. And he…he wanted to tell her that the butterflies had been murdered. But they were simply fluttering more furiously, making him sick to his stomach while she just stared at him with those dark eyes, merciless and defenseless at the same time.
He walked away, and she let him go.
Bass men were not chumps. This was a fact of life. However, Chuck still felt like a complete sap as he waited for her. The news of the Archibald-Waldorf wedding being called off had started the fluttering all over again, and his response had been a groan of dismay at the slightly anxious feeling it aroused and then a graceful capitulation to the inevitable.
His gift hadn't been the most expensive. It wasn't intended to be. It was meant as a simple reminder of what she was to him and what he could be to her.
So when she strolled into Tiffany's that morning, looking perfect but broken, and so very Blair, he wasn't surprised that she was wearing his present.
It was a necklace, an echo of their past. And it was all the things he thought about her. The chain was delicate, but strong. The metal was platinum, elegant and timeless. The pendant was the perfect size to rest in the hollow of her throat, fitting against her as she had once fit against him.
It was a butterfly, wings made of rubies and body of onyx.
She sat down across from him in the empty jewelry store on Fifth Avenue and met his eyes as she picked up her champagne flute. The toast was silent, and he thought about the taste of her as she dipped a strawberry in whipped cream and eyed the waffles on her plate with interest.
When he told her to pick out a ring, she smiled.
The End