Will Not Remember, Cannot Forget

Chuck Bass cares about three things: money, the pleasures money brings, and Nathaniel.

Sometimes, however, he sort of cares about a fourth thing. He had distracted himself all summer, hoping he wouldn’t feel it, but he still does when he’s especially drunk, or high, or stoned, or… lately… breathing.

Occasionally, he thinks that perhaps he always cares about this fourth thing, that maybe he needs to amend his list to add it permanently.

Like right now.

In frustration, Chuck combs his hands through his hair angrily trying to clear his head. The very idea is ludicrous, and insane, and totally unacceptable because if it is true, if that is how he really feels, he is beyond fucked.

Thankfully, it isn’t true. It can’t be. But just to be safe, he should stay the hell away from her. After crashing her soiree, of course. He cannot miss that. She’d take it as an insult if he didn’t show after she had uninvited him. She’d certainly already instructed her doormen to make a show of keeping him out, forcing him to double or even triple the usual bribe to get inside, and it would be the height of rudeness if he didn’t reward her efforts because she could not actually deny him entrance outright and they both know it.

Chuck is the sole heir of Bass Industries, and even though his father had risen from the ranks of the middle classes to the upper echelon of Manhattan’s elite, and the Bass fortune, therefore, is new money, no one could risk insulting a Bass. In a single generation, the Bass name had become too powerful and influential to be looked down upon. To do so would be tantamount to social suicide.

But ignoring Blair’s attempts to keep him away and drawing attention to the fact her ministrations were merely pretense would also be a faux pas. A lesser snub, surely, but still one all the same, so despite his better judgment, he has to go.

He should not be so happy about that.

Within minutes of his arrival at the party, however, Chuck is regretting his decision. He is stuck on a couch, bored out of his mind, sandwiched between two of Blair’s cohort and they are babbling at him, practically begging for another go with him even though he won’t lower himself for a second round anyway because once is, and always will be the rule. Still, they keep making advances at him, with decreasing amounts of tact. Pathetic really, especially since he is fairly positive their Queen B has forbidden them any additional fraternization of the naked variety with him. It is so hard to find obedient minions, he reflects as he sips his scotch.

Then things only get worse.

Blair drags Nate off with a flippant comment and a challenging look at Chuck that tells him exactly what she intends to do with her boyfriend. Somehow he keeps his expression bland, but as his insides start clenching, he fully understands for the first time exactly how much it will bother him if she actually does sleep with Nathaniel. Not that he cares who she fucks, so long as it isn’t his friend, because if they ever do seal the deal, Chuck will have to hear about it, and just imagining that prospect is seriously turning his stomach.

Plus, if they have sex, it will be such a waste! They have no spark. Nate and Blair are like a green twig and a soggy match. There is no chemistry between them. Chuck is certain of this because if there was, no way would they have been chaste this long. Blair has a fuse just waiting to be lit and when it happens, the results will be explosive. There’d be fireworks! Hell, she had practically combusted in his arms, so he knows the passion in her is yearning to be unleashed. If Nathaniel did it for her at all, they would have been going at it like rabbits.

But they aren’t. So obviously, Nate’s touch doesn’t make her skin sing and her back arch. Not like Chuck’s had. If only…

Fuck!

It doesn’t matter anyway. The perfect couple is already in that room alone together and although he doesn’t want to think about it at all, he can’t help but envision them kissing, caressing, removing each other’s clothes…

The mental visual is making him sick, and for some horrible reason, he is unable to concentrate on anything else! He barely even registers when Blair’s lackeys start yammering about some message from Gossip Girl concerning Serena being spotted in Grand Central Station. Not until the blonde herself appears at the party amidst exclaims of “Serena! Serena!” does he completely realize what the cronies had been excited about.

Then the door behind which Nate and Blair had disappeared opens and Nathaniel reappears, looking decidedly un-disheveled, which means he hadn’t gotten laid after all! Chuck breaths a giddy sigh of relief, but does not miss catching the way his friend’s face lights up when he spots Serena. It is only upon seeing that unguarded look that Chuck finally grasps why Nate had cheated on Blair with Serena in the first place. He hadn’t slept with her because he could. He had done it because he cared about her. And from that smile, he cares about her still!

And Chuck can use that; will use that because it has become suddenly imperative for a certain couple to break up. Nate and Blair cannot have sex because Chuck isn’t sure he could withstand that. There is only so much physical illness one can endure before dying, right? It’s a matter of survival, him or them, and right now he is going to be a selfish bastard and do what is in his own best interest, and at the moment what is best for him is the end of them!

His opportunity comes along with surprising ease too. A scant week later, at his father’s annual foundation brunch, Chuck witnesses Nate surreptitiously nod towards the hallway at Serena, indicating like in every movie ever made that he wants to talk to her without being seen.

Amateur.

Following at a careful distance after glaring at the Brooklyn-ite trash the blonde had brought with her, Chuck overhears his friend tell Serena to meet him in a few minutes in suite 1812. With a triumphant smirk, Chuck immediately hones in on Blair, handing over the other key to suite 1812 and telling her she knows what she has to do to ensure her future happiness with Nate.

It all works according to plan. Blair takes Nate up to Chuck’s suite to consummate their relationship and finds Serena already waiting. A fight ensues, and even spills down into the main reception area so Chuck can watch. The only thing that doesn’t work out quite right is that for reasons he can’t fathom, Blair and Nathaniel don’t break up. Thankfully, however, the ordeal does drive a wedge between them and all likelihood of them fornicating in the foreseeable future is put on hold indefinitely.

After that averted disaster, Chuck decides to avoid Blair for a while. He needs space, time to think, to refocus and not lose perspective of who he is and what they are and can never be. He probably would have succeeded too except that she calls him! Asks for his help, invites him over to her house, into her room, the sacrosanct space where he had never been even when they had been friends as kids, and he can’t refuse such an occasion!

Then he keeps coming up with excuses to talk to her. He even starts letting slip some rather transparent, less than suave, and totally unsmooth lines, like “If I was your man, I wouldn’t need clues to find you.” If he was her man? He cringes at the implication of attachment those words contain. How much more obvious can he get? Why doesn’t he just tattoo her name across his forehead or shout how much he loves her in front of the entire damn school?

Wait a minute!

Had he just put Blair and love in the same thought?

This cannot be happening. Certainly he doesn’t love Blair. ‘Love’ was way too strong a word. It was closer to ‘like’ than ‘love.’ He likes Blair. Sometimes. Maybe. Depending on how one defines ‘like,’ of course. Not ‘like’ as in ‘let’s spend the entire summer in Tuscany together.’ It was more of an ‘I must be mad, I’m surprised and ashamed, and this is just pathetic’ kind of ‘like.’

Even if Blair did seem to enjoy summers in Italy…

Oh God, what the hell is he thinking?!?

First off, Blair doesn’t like him. Not like that. Whatever attraction her body may have for him, her brain knows better, and his should too! She has made that fact abundantly clear. Furthermore, she claims to love Nate, or at least the idea of Nate, so what does it matter to Chuck who she falls on her back for so long as he doesn’t have to know about it.

Which brings him to his second point.

He absolutely cannot like her because to do so is foolhardy. Nothing can come of it. Ever! Even if she did like him, which she doesn’t. Not that he cares.

Nate is his best friend and she is Nate’s girlfriend, and thus obviously off-limits. But eventually when she is his ex-girlfriend, and they will break up if it is the last thing Chuck does, she will still not be fair game. The guy code forbids it, and his best friend would not still be his best friend if he knew how much Chuck is beginning to resent that rule.

But all of animosity towards something he can never have pales in comparison to what flashes through him the night his limo door opens and Chuck expects to welcome Nathaniel to his first business venture, the burlesque club Victrola, and Blair climbs out alone instead.

“Where’s Nate?” he asks.

She blinks at him, slightly dazed. “I think we just broke up.”

Euphoria.