5 Things You Don't Know About the New Chuck Bass & 1 Thing You Already Should
He'll never find violence entertaining again.
How many hours did he and Nathaniel use to waste stoned out of their minds, playing Halo and pretending to blow each other's brains out? Or watching every action movie made to man, commenting ad nauseam about how cool the explosions were, how sick the shooting was and how hot the girls were that got off on all the sexy violence?
What the fuck was sexy about violence?
When he's laying in a hospital bed feeling practically paralyzed from the waist down, he can recall this one movie when this bad ass guy got shot three times in the chest without wavering from the mission. He kept shooting, kept being the bad ass he was, kept saving the girl, the day, the universe...
When Chuck got shot, his feet gave out from under him in slow motion. He crumbled on his side like a meek coward and was left there-wondering how the hell the guys in the action movies could still stand. He also wondered how they, the people who wrote those movies, could be such terrible terrible liars.
It was an illusion shattered, a moment when nonfiction for all intensive purposes shot fiction in the gut and simply said "hurts, doesn't it?"
Fuck, it hurt.
To the kids watching at home, make no mistake: violence isn't fun.
He's still a hopeless romantic.
He never wanted to be.
Christ, anyone who ever met him (hated him, fucked him, got charmed by him) knew how badly he tried to paint himself to be a miserable cynic with an unhealthy libido. And he tried to play the part-over and over again he tried to suppress the urge to embrace his hidden desire to be romantic.
After he got shot, he pretended that the hopeless romantic who stood at the top of the Empire State Building (in his best suit with his bouquet of flowers, begging for forgiveness), the hopeless romantic who struggled to hold on to a rejected engagement ring in his breast pocket (even after it was over, over, over and he wanted to forget), the same hopeless romantic who time and time again wielded red roses (trash can), yellow roses (trash can), pink peonies (elevator floor), pink roses ("I love you"), and more and more peonies ("I'm sorry" "Forgive me" "You're beautiful" "I still love you") for the woman he loved...he pretended this man simply curled up and died on the dirty street in Prague.
But his plan backfired: the romantic in him didn't die, the cynic did. Now, against his better judgement, every day seems like a gift he never knew he should care about. Now he was less concerned about how fast he could win Blair back or how soon she would forgive him. Now he just focuses on taking one day at a time, knowing that someday, eventually, they would be together again.
You might think him a hopeless case, that no amount of love and forgiveness could cause he to take him back.
Then again, he never claimed to be a rational romantic.
One day, maybe not this year or this decade, but one day (not someday or maybe or we'll see-day) he plans on telling her that it was her face in his mind that kept his slowing heart from stopping completely. He would tell her that she was his superhero because even from the other side of the world, Blair Waldorf managed to save his life yet again.
Eva isn't his girlfriend.
Or at least, not at first. After Lily came to visit him at the shitty hospital in Prague he was first transported to, she immediately had him transferred to one of the finest hospitals in Paris, France where she could overlook his recovery for the duration of the summer.
Eva started off as his physical therapist. She was a sweet girl, soft spoken, soft features-she wasn't his type per say, then again only one girl had ever really fit that description-but she was a kind, beautiful girl and he was drawn to her light.
Despite the hair, she wasn't anything like his step-sister. She wasn't a bubbling floozy who bounced around from party to party in search of an endless good time. But she was loving and considerate and so obviously taken by the broken man in front of her that it didn't take long for him to take her on a date.
Eva's positivity-her utter lack of drama and personal stresses-made her a true physical therapist. She was healing him, quite literally, both by helping him regain his physical strength and by purging his mind of depraved, self-loathing thoughts that consumed his entire.
He liked that she's never been to New York. He likes that she scrunches up her nose at the notion of such a loud, busy, dirty city that everyone claimed to love. He likes that she makes him forget about home.
And while he would probably never love her, he loved the way he felt around her. He loved that when he was with her, he wasn't the conniving asshole he was in Manhattan. He was a new person, starting over from scratch, and for the first time in a long time, he was genuinely happy when he was with her.
(There was always something missing, of course, some nagging feeling always clawing away in the back of his heart telling him to never ever forget her. As if he'd ever have a choice.)
He hates walking with a cane.
Bart always told him that showing any sign of weakness-physical or mental-would show the world he was a cowardly boy and this was simply unacceptable. So imagine what it's like for someone like him, raised by someone like Bart, to hobble around the cobble-stone streets of Paris with a fucking cane.
Eva is almost always with him, which he both appreciates (when she holds his hand to steady him) and resents (when he has to ask her to slow down because the pain is too much). She understands, of course, she understands absolutely everything because she knows absolutely nothing about who he was, who he now is, or who he'll be tomorrow.
But still she holds his hand and allows him to squeeze the shit out of it as he engages in a silent battle with his ego as he allows strangers to watch him rely on a manmade crutch to walk. He hates it, but he uses it because he literally has no other choice.
Vulnerable, in pain, exposed. Entirely, for the whole world to see. At long last.
Gossip Girl would have a field day if she knew.
He can't wait to get the fuck out of Paris.
It's a beautiful city, don't get him wrong. But ever since he got there, he's felt like he's been drowning in her. In her favorite stores, eating her favorite macaroons, visiting her favorite movie theaters and museums. Everything her, but doing it without her and it just felt wrong.
He thinks about asking Eva if they can leave, go to some obscure place where she has never stepped foot in so he didn't have to think about what he's done. But he knows if he did, Eva would look at him for a moment-puzzled-before letting out a pleasant laugh and telling him he's crazy to ever want to leave the City of Love.
This is exactly the problem, but he can't tell her that.
Two days ago when he made his first solo venture out by himself, he swore he could feel her eyes on him as he crossed the street. It was an insane thought and he knew that he must be losing his mind to even entertain the idea that she...but it still spook him enough to stumble and almost loose his balance.
That night he tried not to think about it (it was all he thought about) and then Lily called to inform him that she and Serena were there for the summer. All summer.
Small world, even smaller city.
After that, every day just felt like he was overstaying his welcome.
Eva only ever calls him "Charles"
That was the name on his hospital records, the name his stepmother called him, the name she thought he went by.
Not that he ever bothered to correct her-once upon a time he made a promise to a lady that without her by his side, he was never be "Chuck Bass" again.
He intended on keeping that promise.
FIN.