I Have Seen The Moment Of My Greatness Flicker
Title: I Have Seen The Moment Of My Greatness Flicker
Word Count: 1358
Rating: R for language. Pardon my French. And Jack's
Pairing: Jack/Georgina,Blair/Chuck hints of Blair/Jack.
Summary: Obsessions are bred of nothing and lead to nothing on the Upper East Side. They are no exception.
Title from T.S.Eliot's Prufrock.
The first time he sees her, she’s tumbling out of his nephew’s bed. She’s a slight fey child, wide baby blues tainted with the glory of freshly stolen virtue and black hair, a tangled mess.
“Ms. Sparks,” he drawls in a fake Aussie accent that he will bury when he’s older, accompanied by one of those slow smirks that his nephew will strive to emulate for years to come but right now it’s all his. Trademarked to young Bass.
Her lips twist in something too close to irony for a girl of her tender years and she’s all together too sharp to be Lolita. She plucks the cigarette out of his hand and doesn’t bat an eyelid when it’s more than just tobacco.
They kiss but that’s all and she’s stolen his lighter too- (he figures this out much later and doesn’t mind as much as he should- it’s gold, engraved and a present from big bad Bart- behave, he thinks it said but he never checked.) Her hips sway clumsily as she traipses off in heels too high and a skirt to short. My sin, my soul, indeed.
***
The next time is later-much later and he regrets this in the throes of passion, thinking of all those lost years he could have spent with her meticulous love-making skills. She’s playing hooky in Vegas, only just escaped from some high-class boot camp. Sin city’s sirens were impossible to ignore so he made a detour on his way back down under, memories of Lily van der Woodsen’s almost rape and a certain delectable Waldorf make his whiskey taste bitterer than ever before.
She’s the type to dance on tables in bars like these and it figures that of all the gin joints he’d find her favorite spot. He fucks her in the coat closet and she doesn’t give any indication of remembering him till she comes.
***
She’s not the sort to crawl out of bed before a man even wakes up. Too damn lazy and he appreciates this because he doesn’t wanted to be reminded of his last piece of brunette jailbait. He might just have a fondness for women his nephew’s had, he thinks idly as they share a joint at noon, legs stills twisted with each others in the sheets. If only just to prove that he’s better at something and it sure as hell isn’t numbers.
They get along well for a day or two and there are no regrets when she leaves, just a lack of drama. They aren’t lovers or partners or friends. It’s not quantifiable.
Thank God, for that.
***
Centuries later when bones have been buried and old squabbles smoothed over, Serena invites G to the wedding. Some misplaced sense of obligation, he supposes and the girl did look half sane the last time she visited New York.
He calls her up because he’s feeling nostalgic and he somehow managed to retain her number (somehow nothing- you just don’t lose the number if the sex was that good). He tries to wheedle his way into plus one but she laughs her cold, cruel laugh.
The dying fall hits him like a ton of bricks and he’s awed and horrified at the same time. He’s been relegated to Georgina Spark’s secret fuck buddy. He admits this is something he did not see coming.
She laughs some more at his silence and tells him she’s taking Nathaniel. “Who are you and what have you done with the girl I screwed two weeks ago” (because it’s a sporadic arrangement that’s more regular than it should be and he finds himself flying to her every few months or so because she’s that good)?
The line clicks dead and he downs a tumbler or two, toasting psycho brunettes and lost nephews in absentia.
***
Crashing parties is a Bass trait apparently and he slips into a Waldorf soiree. Second engagement, first marriage and the bitch is as beautiful as ever.
His nephew grits his teeth but does nothing, choosing instead to focus all his latent hatred on the groom-to-be. He admires young Charles carefully captured languor and he’s gotten the smirk just right this time around. The tight jaw is a give away and Jack could spot a Bass tell a mile away.
He can practically smell the envy and as the rings are exchanged, the boy chokes out a little, green fingers closing around his throat.
Bass men aren’t made to kneel on one knee. Bart tried and look how that turned out, the van der Woodsen slut with a new (old?) lover before he was cold in his grave.
We learn from our elders mistakes. They are both good students, thinks Jack and Georgie’s giggling her husky giggle across the room at something the Archibald boy said.
He offers Chuck a tumbler as a peace offering and he’s still shoot him in the back if he gets the chance but blood runs thicker than water and thicker than betrayal too.
***
“I’m going to get him to marry me.”
“I beg your fucking pardon.” He sits up straight. She looks more demented than ever. The coke’s left rings around her eyes but her sham of a boyfriend can’t see it. She’s translucent enough to be invisible but his eyes are popping out of his head right now.
“It’s not that ridiculous a concept. He needs a wife, I need the money. Marriage de convenience.”
He’s silent and she oddly resents this in a detached sort of way.
“I have money.”
Now this? This is funny and reminds her why she keeps him around. Georgina Sparks may be many things but she’s not a fool- never that, she swears and her rich chortles echo in the bare room.
Somewhere along the lines the bastard lost his sense of humor. She get’s kicked of Jack Bass’ room for the first and last time.
***
Two more years. There’s finally an event so bloody unexpected that even the black sheep Bass is invited. The Waldorf-Bass wedding reception.
He almost had a coronary when the invite arrived, gold plated and rich smelling. Reception only cause the happy couple eloped in Tuscany and he still remembers enough of a drunken Blair’s slurs to want to pat his asshole nephew on the back.
He frowns because his first instinct is to call the Archibald bride and mock the card till the wee hours of night, wine being freely poured at each end of the line and cracks getting sillier as time trickles past them.
This is wrong. He puts on his coat and goes out to hunt for blondes, sighing at his hairline in the vestibule mirror. There will be time.
There must be time.
***
He marries late in life. Very late. She’s a Baizen girl, hair more red than brown and the sort of wit that comes straight from Cosmopolitan.
Sparks has popped out a kid by this point and it’s a boy that smirks. A drunken hallway encounter at her bachelorette party and he’ll never admit that it was a half-ass attempt to win the bitch back.
Never had her in the first place, he supposes but all this is too maudlin for a cocktail party evening so he grabs the wife and heads out the door. The house haunts him. The freesia’s that Annabelle drapes it with are entirely without scent to him and he’s tortured by the heady smell of Valentino and coke and her.
The door shuts too softly. Turn up the volume, I’m not deaf yet.
***
He creeps up behind her, smiling like a Cheshire cat with pupils as wide as the pond she just crossed. London was a dream- the horrible happy kind and she’s glad to be back in New York (minus Nate- she grins).
“So is Archibald a good dad to my kid?”
A quick intake of breath- brief moment of stupidity, (how does he know?)
“How do you know the smirk isn’t Chuck’s? Fidelity isn’t a Bass’ strongest suit and he was just about due for his seven year itch. “
“It’s the original.” He bends to whisper this in her ear, each syllable tripping it's way down her spine and she lets out a seductive growl, nails digging into his forearms.
Coat closet. Perhaps, things do come full circle after all.