anything less than i love you is lying
Title: anything less than i love you is lying
Characters: Blair Waldorf/Chuck Bass, Serena van der Woodsen, Nate Archibald
Rating/Word Count: PG/2263
One Line Excerpt: Chuck, Blair, and all they ways they love each other. Six ways the relationship could've happened.
It's all a bit tragic, really, isn't it?
Smee, Peter Pan
1.
blair keeps chuck.
I wish I never knew you, Blair whispers into Chuck's ear as he plants kisses down her neck.
Don't be ridiculous Waldorf, he murmurs into her collarbone and he smirks while she gasps.
She leaves after with a flip of her hair and a tug on her dress.
I still hate you, she throws over her shoulder on her way out.
He swirls around a glass of scotch, and ignores the way his own words echo in the empty room.
Carter nuzzles Blair's neck like some sort of lovesick puppy at a benefit and Chuck swallows the bile in his throat.
Blair fucks him in the coat closet while Carter waits for the car and her wedding band glints even in the darkness.
You know, she says with seduction and secrecy and Blair in her voice, I think I'm slowly turning into you.
He smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes.
You say that like it's a bad thing, all heavy eyelids and velvety voice.
Her laugh is cruel, but then again it always has been.
(intermission)
Let's be clear-
Chuck fucks lots of girls. More girls than you could ever dream of, ever imagine, and that's because he's Chuck Bass.
He fucks Blair too. He doesn't make love to her because they don't have love.
They have need and want and fear because Chuck wants Blair (has always, always wanted Blair) more than she'll ever want him.
Blair's playing the hostess, brings Chuck a glass of scotch before he asks for it, shoots him a withering glance when he steadies his hand on the small of her back.
I've been trying to convince Blair to go with me for months now, Carter says to Serena in casual conversation and she places a hand on her elbow while leaning in while they talk about the glories of Southeast Asia.
He pulls her into a bedroom under the pretense of asking about a painting.
You Basstard, let go of me!
It's the same as when they were teenagers. She stamps her foot; he admires her legs.
They'll fuck and Blair will leave, chase after more perfect, attainable things and Chuck will watch her leave, maybe light a cigar as he lounges in a velvet smoking jacket.
Love dances around the edge of his subconscious and it's only when he dreams that the word slips out.
Oh well.
Basses don't do love anyways.
2.
chuck keeps blair.
The asphalt feels sticky underneath her brand new Ferragamo's but Blair places one foot in front of the other anyways.
There is no boy waiting for her at the end of the runway, but she swallows the feeling in her throat and forges ahead.
"You're back," Chuck intones in a monotonous voice and Blair takes his apathy to be hidden passion that he's too afraid to face.
"Of course I am."
She smiles beautifully and kisses him chastely.
His sweater smells like Nate. Blair thinks its odd.
So this is what happens:
Chuck and Blair are in a relationship.
Chuck and Blair go to the movies.
Blair loves Chuck more than he will ever ever, ever love her.
"Love you," she chirps on her way out of the door one morning.
His response is the swish of the Business section in the Times.
"Why doesn't he love me?"
Blair's out of breath and out of energy and out of love. She keeps giving it and giving it and giving it and Chuck won't even pick it up, doesn't even register it's there before stomping on it on his way to work.
Her eyes tear up and her gaze drifts downward and she toys with the hem of her dress.
"Oh, B," Serena sighs sympathetically because BlairandChuck has become a more shattered, horrible version of BlairandNate and she has no words for her loveless best friend.
"Maybe you should leave him," she says after a moment's hesitation and the fury in Blair's eyes tells her it was the wrong thing.
The fury fades to despair and Serena watches the brunette lose all hope.
"I wish I could," Blair says feebly before walking out of the apartment and back towards her charade of a life.
She walks in on him fucking his secretary. He at least has the decency to look surprised.
She has the decency to forget the indiscretion and continue living her life as planned.
The perfect husband in the movie might've changed, but damned if she'll rewrite the script now.
3.
chuck and blair destroy each other.
She dates Nate and he fucks nameless faceless women and they dance around each other forever.
Blair and Chuck and Nate and Serena (funny how she says it that way in her head) are all at dinner to 'catch up'.
Chuck cracks a joke about Blair's ass.
Blair responds with quickly with a barb about Chuck's hair.
Nate looks confused, and Serena flirts with the waiter.
Blair and Nate break up.
Blair surprises Chuck by showing up in a trench with not. A. Piece. Of. Clothing underneath. As if he could resist that.
Blair leaves a few hours later, tingly feelings all over her body still and Chuck still sleeping soundly.
(when he wakes, he might wonder if this is how she felt the morning she woke up to find a note in his place)
(when she leaves, she might wonder if this is how it feels to do the leaving)
(they both hate it)
She marries Nate and he marries a Russian model named Tatiana.
Sometimes, they fuck.
It's an affair to remember that no one ever will.
"This is so unhealthy," she murmurs into his chest after they've finished with round two of the week.
Chuck laughs at that, and Blair glares at him.
"You're a recovering bulimic and I'm a functioning alcoholic and we can't stop fucking each other even though we're married to other, lesser people. When have we ever been healthy?"
He knows she'll either laugh in agreement or stomp off in anger. It's a forty-sixty chance probably, but he's never been one to sugarcoat the truth.
She leaves in a huff, so he pours himself another glass.
"This is getting old," he says to no one before downing the glass and straightening his tie.
4.
blair's not there.
Blair just smiles politely at the women in their ugly argyle J. Crew sweaters while they complain about Serena's whore-y clothing and Nate's mediocrity and Nelly Yuki's promise (You two are friends, are you not?) and Chuck's lack of a moral compass.
In her head she thinks:
Yes, Serena does dress like a call girl but it probably relates back to her incredible amount of daddy issues and Nate's certainly not the sharpest stiletto in the closet but he means well and Nelly Yuki will never do anything of worth in her life and -
She stops when she thinks of Chuck.
Her heart races as it usually does but she clamps her teeth and ignores the feeling that gives her the chills that she's come to know as her "spidey sense" which deals exclusively with Chuck because this is the Colony Club and it's important to her future.
He takes her virginity, and her confidence, and her love and leaves on a jet plane only to return a broken, drugged-out mess who is probably even more incapable of love now so she will take what she can get and she feels the Colony Club in the grasp of her perfectly manicured hands.
No one's there to stop him.
Chuck jumps.
If he was a religious man, he might have prayed. But he's not and all he has time for is a whispered scream of her name before he hits the ground.
Blair gets the call as the women leave, declaring her a perfect candidate for the Club and they'll surely be in touch with her soon.
She smiles big, for real this time, because after failing for so long it feels like she's finally won something.
Her phone goes off and she picks it up with a giddy Hello?
There's been an accident, Serena declares over the phone before she breaks out into heaving sobs and Blair's spidey sense is still tingling.
Blair attends two funerals, and cries at one but hates at the other.
"Don't you guys get it?" she exasperatedly exclaims to her dimwitted friends. "This is all Bart's fault! He did this to Chuck! It was all those cold stares and disappointing tones and ignored pictures and missed moments and-"
Serena and Nate watch in horror as Blair gasps and chokes for breath while crying at the same time and sinking to the ground in her perfect black Jason Wu.
"Don't you get it? It's my entire fault. It's my fault. It's my entire fault. I should've been there! I should've-"
Her sobs don't get any softer and Serena just holds her while Nate leaves to give them some privacy and Blair breaks down.
When she sleeps, she dreams they jump together.
5.
nothing of consequence happens.
I think I loved you once, Chuck whispers into her ear when he dances with her at her wedding.
You better have, she says with an easy laugh and the grace of a queen.
He smiles back, wonders when she changed the height of her heels so that their fit is just a bit off.
God, we were kind of crazy, huh? Her eyes sparkle under the flattering lighting and Chuck wonders when they stopped.
Yeah, we were.
The song ends. It was something tasteful but cliché, and Chuck thinks he likes the silence better.
Carter reclaims his bride.
Chuck goes home with a brunette, and he doesn't think of Blair.
It's easier than either of them could have ever hoped for.
6.
and they all lived happily ever after.
"I love you," one of them says-
(in the end it doesn't matter which one says it first, but you like to think it's Chuck)
"I love you too."
"Marry me Waldorf?"
She laughs, mischievous grin and all and that's how Chuck knows that this not going to go according to his plan. Much more likely, it will go according to hers.
"Why don't you try a little harder Bass?"
She leaves with the sway of her hips swathed in Alice + Olivia. He smacks his head against the table and pockets the ring.
The waiter laughs and brings over a check instead of champagne.
He asks again.
The proposal involves Paris, a new hotel, and lots of Chanel.
She says yes.
They have sex on every possible surface after; Chuck smiles when the ring flashes in his eyes.
The wedding is at St. Patrick's in the fall and if you try hard enough, you can almost smell the money.
There are Vanderbilts, Kennedys (what's left of them at least), van der Woodsens, Mortimers, Rockefellers, and Morgans.
Nate's the best man (dressed in black) and Serena's the maid of honor (clothed in burgundy).
The Wedding March plays and Nate clasps Chuck on the shoulder.
Blair walks in, Harold proudly displaying her and Chuck catches his breath when he meets her gaze.
She wears the Vera Wang like it's her birthright (which it is; Vera's been a friend of the family for ever and Blair's only been dreaming of this for longer) and when she reaches the end of the aisle she doesn't look back at Daddy Dearest when she takes Chuck's arm.
They both say I do; Chuck dips her low when they kiss.
Serena probably yells inappropriately; Nate probably watches her.
Blair gets pregnant.
And bitchier.
Chuck grimaces when she throws her shoes at him but buys Haagen-Daaz ice cream at one in the morning anyways.
Sometimes he sends Dorota, but it's really the thought that counts anyway.
Plus, he says to defend himself; it takes a lot of energy to call.
This is the card the Upper East Side receives in the mail:
Charles and Blair Bass
Are pleased to introduce
Ethan Charles Bass
8 pounds, 2 ounces
On March 17, 2017
(this is what no one gets to see but a privileged few:
Blair is sweaty and red but beaming as Ethan is placed in her arms and Chuck watches with his arms around both of them with a look of disbelief on his face.
You did good, Nate says with his arms around Serena and Chuck won't take his eyes off Blair and Ethan when he responds with a breathless, Yeah, I did.)
It's printed on blue paper with footprints and black ink.
Nate and Serena take Ethan for the night when he's two.
Chuck stays home and takes Blair for the night, if you get what I'm saying.
Evelyn Audrey Bass is just as stubborn as both her parents and 19 hours after Blair first checks into the private suite at the hospital, she emerges into the world as her mother screams one last time.
She's small, a mere 6 pounds and 7 ounces, but she has lovely chestnut curls and long lashes.
"I'm in trouble," Chuck murmurs to himself when he holds her for the first time and watches as her rosebud lips pucker. Blair watches from the bed and grins.
Ethan takes one look at her and asks his parents to take her back and bring a little brother instead, thanks.
It's better than either of them could have ever hoped for.
Characters: Blair Waldorf/Chuck Bass, Serena van der Woodsen, Nate Archibald
Rating/Word Count: PG/2263
One Line Excerpt: Chuck, Blair, and all they ways they love each other. Six ways the relationship could've happened.
It's all a bit tragic, really, isn't it?
Smee, Peter Pan
1.
blair keeps chuck.
I wish I never knew you, Blair whispers into Chuck's ear as he plants kisses down her neck.
Don't be ridiculous Waldorf, he murmurs into her collarbone and he smirks while she gasps.
She leaves after with a flip of her hair and a tug on her dress.
I still hate you, she throws over her shoulder on her way out.
He swirls around a glass of scotch, and ignores the way his own words echo in the empty room.
Carter nuzzles Blair's neck like some sort of lovesick puppy at a benefit and Chuck swallows the bile in his throat.
Blair fucks him in the coat closet while Carter waits for the car and her wedding band glints even in the darkness.
You know, she says with seduction and secrecy and Blair in her voice, I think I'm slowly turning into you.
He smiles but it doesn't reach his eyes.
You say that like it's a bad thing, all heavy eyelids and velvety voice.
Her laugh is cruel, but then again it always has been.
(intermission)
Let's be clear-
Chuck fucks lots of girls. More girls than you could ever dream of, ever imagine, and that's because he's Chuck Bass.
He fucks Blair too. He doesn't make love to her because they don't have love.
They have need and want and fear because Chuck wants Blair (has always, always wanted Blair) more than she'll ever want him.
Blair's playing the hostess, brings Chuck a glass of scotch before he asks for it, shoots him a withering glance when he steadies his hand on the small of her back.
I've been trying to convince Blair to go with me for months now, Carter says to Serena in casual conversation and she places a hand on her elbow while leaning in while they talk about the glories of Southeast Asia.
He pulls her into a bedroom under the pretense of asking about a painting.
You Basstard, let go of me!
It's the same as when they were teenagers. She stamps her foot; he admires her legs.
They'll fuck and Blair will leave, chase after more perfect, attainable things and Chuck will watch her leave, maybe light a cigar as he lounges in a velvet smoking jacket.
Love dances around the edge of his subconscious and it's only when he dreams that the word slips out.
Oh well.
Basses don't do love anyways.
2.
chuck keeps blair.
The asphalt feels sticky underneath her brand new Ferragamo's but Blair places one foot in front of the other anyways.
There is no boy waiting for her at the end of the runway, but she swallows the feeling in her throat and forges ahead.
"You're back," Chuck intones in a monotonous voice and Blair takes his apathy to be hidden passion that he's too afraid to face.
"Of course I am."
She smiles beautifully and kisses him chastely.
His sweater smells like Nate. Blair thinks its odd.
So this is what happens:
Chuck and Blair are in a relationship.
Chuck and Blair go to the movies.
Blair loves Chuck more than he will ever ever, ever love her.
"Love you," she chirps on her way out of the door one morning.
His response is the swish of the Business section in the Times.
"Why doesn't he love me?"
Blair's out of breath and out of energy and out of love. She keeps giving it and giving it and giving it and Chuck won't even pick it up, doesn't even register it's there before stomping on it on his way to work.
Her eyes tear up and her gaze drifts downward and she toys with the hem of her dress.
"Oh, B," Serena sighs sympathetically because BlairandChuck has become a more shattered, horrible version of BlairandNate and she has no words for her loveless best friend.
"Maybe you should leave him," she says after a moment's hesitation and the fury in Blair's eyes tells her it was the wrong thing.
The fury fades to despair and Serena watches the brunette lose all hope.
"I wish I could," Blair says feebly before walking out of the apartment and back towards her charade of a life.
She walks in on him fucking his secretary. He at least has the decency to look surprised.
She has the decency to forget the indiscretion and continue living her life as planned.
The perfect husband in the movie might've changed, but damned if she'll rewrite the script now.
3.
chuck and blair destroy each other.
She dates Nate and he fucks nameless faceless women and they dance around each other forever.
Blair and Chuck and Nate and Serena (funny how she says it that way in her head) are all at dinner to 'catch up'.
Chuck cracks a joke about Blair's ass.
Blair responds with quickly with a barb about Chuck's hair.
Nate looks confused, and Serena flirts with the waiter.
Blair and Nate break up.
Blair surprises Chuck by showing up in a trench with not. A. Piece. Of. Clothing underneath. As if he could resist that.
Blair leaves a few hours later, tingly feelings all over her body still and Chuck still sleeping soundly.
(when he wakes, he might wonder if this is how she felt the morning she woke up to find a note in his place)
(when she leaves, she might wonder if this is how it feels to do the leaving)
(they both hate it)
She marries Nate and he marries a Russian model named Tatiana.
Sometimes, they fuck.
It's an affair to remember that no one ever will.
"This is so unhealthy," she murmurs into his chest after they've finished with round two of the week.
Chuck laughs at that, and Blair glares at him.
"You're a recovering bulimic and I'm a functioning alcoholic and we can't stop fucking each other even though we're married to other, lesser people. When have we ever been healthy?"
He knows she'll either laugh in agreement or stomp off in anger. It's a forty-sixty chance probably, but he's never been one to sugarcoat the truth.
She leaves in a huff, so he pours himself another glass.
"This is getting old," he says to no one before downing the glass and straightening his tie.
4.
blair's not there.
Blair just smiles politely at the women in their ugly argyle J. Crew sweaters while they complain about Serena's whore-y clothing and Nate's mediocrity and Nelly Yuki's promise (You two are friends, are you not?) and Chuck's lack of a moral compass.
In her head she thinks:
Yes, Serena does dress like a call girl but it probably relates back to her incredible amount of daddy issues and Nate's certainly not the sharpest stiletto in the closet but he means well and Nelly Yuki will never do anything of worth in her life and -
She stops when she thinks of Chuck.
Her heart races as it usually does but she clamps her teeth and ignores the feeling that gives her the chills that she's come to know as her "spidey sense" which deals exclusively with Chuck because this is the Colony Club and it's important to her future.
He takes her virginity, and her confidence, and her love and leaves on a jet plane only to return a broken, drugged-out mess who is probably even more incapable of love now so she will take what she can get and she feels the Colony Club in the grasp of her perfectly manicured hands.
No one's there to stop him.
Chuck jumps.
If he was a religious man, he might have prayed. But he's not and all he has time for is a whispered scream of her name before he hits the ground.
Blair gets the call as the women leave, declaring her a perfect candidate for the Club and they'll surely be in touch with her soon.
She smiles big, for real this time, because after failing for so long it feels like she's finally won something.
Her phone goes off and she picks it up with a giddy Hello?
There's been an accident, Serena declares over the phone before she breaks out into heaving sobs and Blair's spidey sense is still tingling.
Blair attends two funerals, and cries at one but hates at the other.
"Don't you guys get it?" she exasperatedly exclaims to her dimwitted friends. "This is all Bart's fault! He did this to Chuck! It was all those cold stares and disappointing tones and ignored pictures and missed moments and-"
Serena and Nate watch in horror as Blair gasps and chokes for breath while crying at the same time and sinking to the ground in her perfect black Jason Wu.
"Don't you get it? It's my entire fault. It's my fault. It's my entire fault. I should've been there! I should've-"
Her sobs don't get any softer and Serena just holds her while Nate leaves to give them some privacy and Blair breaks down.
When she sleeps, she dreams they jump together.
5.
nothing of consequence happens.
I think I loved you once, Chuck whispers into her ear when he dances with her at her wedding.
You better have, she says with an easy laugh and the grace of a queen.
He smiles back, wonders when she changed the height of her heels so that their fit is just a bit off.
God, we were kind of crazy, huh? Her eyes sparkle under the flattering lighting and Chuck wonders when they stopped.
Yeah, we were.
The song ends. It was something tasteful but cliché, and Chuck thinks he likes the silence better.
Carter reclaims his bride.
Chuck goes home with a brunette, and he doesn't think of Blair.
It's easier than either of them could have ever hoped for.
6.
and they all lived happily ever after.
"I love you," one of them says-
(in the end it doesn't matter which one says it first, but you like to think it's Chuck)
"I love you too."
"Marry me Waldorf?"
She laughs, mischievous grin and all and that's how Chuck knows that this not going to go according to his plan. Much more likely, it will go according to hers.
"Why don't you try a little harder Bass?"
She leaves with the sway of her hips swathed in Alice + Olivia. He smacks his head against the table and pockets the ring.
The waiter laughs and brings over a check instead of champagne.
He asks again.
The proposal involves Paris, a new hotel, and lots of Chanel.
She says yes.
They have sex on every possible surface after; Chuck smiles when the ring flashes in his eyes.
The wedding is at St. Patrick's in the fall and if you try hard enough, you can almost smell the money.
There are Vanderbilts, Kennedys (what's left of them at least), van der Woodsens, Mortimers, Rockefellers, and Morgans.
Nate's the best man (dressed in black) and Serena's the maid of honor (clothed in burgundy).
The Wedding March plays and Nate clasps Chuck on the shoulder.
Blair walks in, Harold proudly displaying her and Chuck catches his breath when he meets her gaze.
She wears the Vera Wang like it's her birthright (which it is; Vera's been a friend of the family for ever and Blair's only been dreaming of this for longer) and when she reaches the end of the aisle she doesn't look back at Daddy Dearest when she takes Chuck's arm.
They both say I do; Chuck dips her low when they kiss.
Serena probably yells inappropriately; Nate probably watches her.
Blair gets pregnant.
And bitchier.
Chuck grimaces when she throws her shoes at him but buys Haagen-Daaz ice cream at one in the morning anyways.
Sometimes he sends Dorota, but it's really the thought that counts anyway.
Plus, he says to defend himself; it takes a lot of energy to call.
This is the card the Upper East Side receives in the mail:
Charles and Blair Bass
Are pleased to introduce
Ethan Charles Bass
8 pounds, 2 ounces
On March 17, 2017
(this is what no one gets to see but a privileged few:
Blair is sweaty and red but beaming as Ethan is placed in her arms and Chuck watches with his arms around both of them with a look of disbelief on his face.
You did good, Nate says with his arms around Serena and Chuck won't take his eyes off Blair and Ethan when he responds with a breathless, Yeah, I did.)
It's printed on blue paper with footprints and black ink.
Nate and Serena take Ethan for the night when he's two.
Chuck stays home and takes Blair for the night, if you get what I'm saying.
Evelyn Audrey Bass is just as stubborn as both her parents and 19 hours after Blair first checks into the private suite at the hospital, she emerges into the world as her mother screams one last time.
She's small, a mere 6 pounds and 7 ounces, but she has lovely chestnut curls and long lashes.
"I'm in trouble," Chuck murmurs to himself when he holds her for the first time and watches as her rosebud lips pucker. Blair watches from the bed and grins.
Ethan takes one look at her and asks his parents to take her back and bring a little brother instead, thanks.
It's better than either of them could have ever hoped for.