Dark Comforts: Chuck/Blair, Mature
Title: Dark Comforts
Author: Sky Samuelle
Summary: Blair and Chuck’s first time after she is raped by someone she trusted is rebirth and redemption for both of them. Post 221. Inspired by a GGanon prompt.
Rating: Mature
Spoilers: Very vague, up to Seder Anything.
Pairing: Chuck/Blair
Words: 4277
Warning: I’ll be kind enough to add that passionate Nate fans should skip this reading. Assuming that someone can actually be passionate about Nate, that is ;)
~*~*~*~*~*
It happens after she says to Nate she is not going to move in with him. He nods and seems to take her explanations in stride… they aren’t ready, they are so young, and so much has happened in their lives this year.
Somewhere along the first or second half of a bottle of whiskey he must have changed his mind, because when her boyfriend stumbles to her door that night, he has worked himself into an angry stupor.
He grabs her elbow and slurs in her face ‘ Tell me it’s not because of him,’ again and again as she tries to pull out of his hold, to shrug off his harsh caresses. She ‘s luckier in her attempts at the first than the second one.
Nate doesn’t listen as she calls his name, just forces her robe off her shoulders and her back to her bed.
Please, please don’t. Look at me. It’s me. It’s me.
She begs and cajoles, but his gaze just falls through her. She remembers reading once that rapists don’t see the person inside the body, so she tries to remind him.
But Nate doesn’t see her, just the ghost of Chuck’s hands on her body and heart.
You promised you would always love me, Blair. Always did, always will.
Her mind turns off and it awakens again when she’s sobbing, curled up, half-naked and sore on her bed. Nate’s still beside her, head between his hands as he chokes out a plea for forgiveness.
Oh God, what have I done? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
He turns himself in that morning. The Vanderbilts publicly estrange him and refuse to expend a penny on his behalf.
She hates him and them for that, too. They have taken away her last mask, her last chance for denial.
~*~*~*~*~*
Weeks pass in a blur of moments stained with shame, despair, guilt, and anger until summer comes about. She survives the scandal by bunking in the Van der Woodsens’ Hamptons house with Serena, Jenny, Chuck and Eric. They have never left her alone since that night.
Chuck in particular is always in the background, anywhere she is.
She finds relief in that, even if she resents him for many things. He broke her heart and drove her to Nate again, and he tried to do to Serena and Jenny what Nate has done to her. Blair would hate him for that if she didn’t know he already hates himself for all this three times as much as she never could. She knows it because she overheard him crying inside Serena’s room one night. Her best friend must be a better person than she is, because Blair knows she will never be able to forgive Nate.
He has taken away all that she had left: her dreams, her trust, her self-respect. She hates herself because she used to adore him, because even if she knew he was weak in his simple little ways, she was so infatuated with the idea of what she wanted him to be that she disregarded that. There must be something wrong with her if these are the only men she’s been capable of loving.
The agony burning in Chuck’s eyes every single time he looks at her is a vindication of sorts.
She doesn’t know what to do with the love she still feels toward the Basstard. It’s a useless emotion, but it’s also the one thing in her life that Nate has not destroyed, so she takes comfort in how protected his presence makes her feel.
They share an odd, patient kind of friendship now.
During one evening when they are alone and sitting on the couch, she gives in.
“You need to stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m falling apart and everybody notices except me. I just want everything to go back to normal, but I’m not stupid enough to believe that will happen. I’ll never again be the person I was before .You and Serena have to get to used to it.”
Chuck has the gall to scowl at her. “I understand it.”
For some reason, his leveled tone sets her on edge. “You DON’T, but it doesn’t matter. ”
She looks away but he doesn’t. The sudden silence disturbs her, although the responding tension in her companion’s stance suggests something poignant is about to be said.
Blair dares a sideways glance and sees his frown is deeper and his jaw is clenched hard.
When he speaks, his voice doesn’t even sound like his. It’s neutral and clear, like if coming from somewhere far away inside him. “My first time wasn’t with Georgina… that was just something I did so I could tip it to Gossip Girl. At the time, it seemed important. I wanted it to be my decision. I lost my true V card about six months before that, with a German au pair to whom Bart paid extra cash to look after me in the summer. Blonde hair and blue eyes. Endless legs. I thought she was beautiful. Maybe it’s the reason I didn’t think I had a right to complain when her hands wandered. ”
He ‘s the one who is looking at his feet now, while she can’t avoid drinking the sight of him in. She can’t see anything but the defeated slump of his shoulders, the vacuous lack of expression in his profile, even while his words are conjuring ugly images to match his ugly confession.
Blonde. Blue eyes. Like Jenny and Serena and Nate- the fleeting thought nearly hysterical laughter to bubble in her throat.
He continues on a slightly self-deprecating note “She said it wouldn’t be normal if I didn’t enjoy it, that if my body reacted in certain ways I had to want it as much she did, and I believed her. I really believed her. ”
On instinct, her hand clasps his on top of his knee. It’s the first time she’s touched him since It happened, so it’s not surprising that his neck twists so violently toward her. What is surprising is the heat that flares in her body when their eyes unexpectedly meet and hold on. It’s not desire, the intimacy that warms them and ties them tighter together in that painful moment. It’s a naked, crude understanding that calls her back from those walls of numbness she has so carefully built around herself.
She is finally seeing him as clearly as he has always seen her. It’s like she is breathing him in, absorbing all that makes him so thick, taking in all the invisible scars that made him who he is today. Finally knowing why the possibility of this terrified him so much Iast year.
It’s all too much to be put into words and Chuck is still staring at her like his recent bout of frankness is tearing him to pieces. Blair supposes she could do that herself, if she mocked or accused or simply pulled away. He‘s defenseless to her now, and he doesn’t know that she is just as defenseless to him. So she inhales sharply and interlaces her fingers with his.
Her gesture sends a shudder up his spine, yet he leans a little toward her, running his thumb along the back of her hand, experimenting how much physical proximity she is going to be able to bear.
“Sometimes I think the only way I think I will ever feel safe again is if he died. I fantasize about paying someone to beat him to death. I spend hours picturing every detail of how I would crack his head open with something heavy if he was free, and he looked for me. It’s the only way I can get up in the morning. ” She whispers softy and his touch and gaze never leave her. Soothing circles are being traced on her wrist as he whispers back, just as softly:
“If I thought it was a good thing for you, I would have had it arranged ages ago. ”
She believes him and it doesn’t disgust her, it gratifies her as much those faint twin smirks on their lips. For possibly the first time in their history Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass are in the same place at the same time, and even though it’s a dark, dark place, they feel so very brittle and so alive in their mutual awareness of each other.
She had once swore to love him through his darkest thought or action, and it’s a bizarre irony that she had to take back that promise before inevitably proving herself right and watching him reciprocate. Apparently being Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck means that they only get it right by accident.
“I hate it, knowing he was the last one to ever touch me, and I hate the way every part of me feels dead when I touch it. I hate how my body feels like it’s no longer mine. ”
“You need to give yourself time”
“You could help me to make time burn faster. ”
Perhaps it’s cruel and strange to put it in those terms, but she is tired of being pathetic. She wants this sickness over and done, she refuses to accept that there’s nothing she can do about it. Chuck tilts his head to the side, studying her face in apt concentration, and doesn’t resist when she takes her hand from his.
“How so?”
Blair’s smile is sad while she tucks a brown lock behind her ear, almost regretting what she just voiced. But it’s not the first time she has weighed her options and considered this thing, so she won’t allow herself to back out. It’s been months: she needs to know that she has not been reduced to nothing but a victim.
Self-consciously, she wets her numb mouth, repressing the instinct to sink her teeth in her bottom lip until pain tingles in. “Come upstairs with me. Show me I can still be just like any other girl. Let’s replay my seventeenth birthday night. ”
She tries to sound coy, but her voice quivers at the end of her sentence. There’s an endless, despicable distance between that night and today, but she remembers a broken heart that stopped hurting while he filled her up, murmuring how beautiful she was.
“You have never been like any other girl,” Chuck smirks, but his coyness ends up just as fake as hers.
“Don’t get banal on my account, Bass. Let’s do it. ”
“Blair-”
“It has worked fine for you, has not? ”
He shakes his head, cringing. “I felt dirty. I made sure I would get used to the feeling. It’s not what I want for you.”
“It’s not the same. I trust you. I’ve been thinking about this for a while. ”
And to that, he can reply nothing.
They keep observing each other for awhile, each one of them refusing to budge, but finally it’s time for him to give in, to breath out resignedly “Think some more then. Ask me again in three days if you feel the same way. I won’t say no. ”
~*~*~*~*~*
Blair asks him again, three days later, when he slides inside his bedroom just to find her perched on the edge of his bed. The asshole has been avoiding her for whole the day.
Chuck only nods and takes off his jacket, slowly placing it back in his closet.
She gets up to stand behind him, lays her hand on his shoulder and focuses on the bodily warmth seeping through the cloth of his striped shirt to her palm until he turns to face her.
He gulps with the strangest mix of reverence and anxiety in his eyes and she smiles up tentatively to reassure him that she truly wants this.
Chuck cups her face with both his hands, pausing too long before kissing her forehead, her nose, her cheek, her closed lips.
She moves his hands onto her hips and they stay there, firm but gentle as she undoes all the buttons of his shirt and pulls it out from his pants. He presses butterfly kisses upon her lips until her mouth opens up in response and her tongue delves confidently in to meet his.
Even as his fingers are mussing her hair and he holds his palm open on the small of her back, he’s careful to let her know she has full control over everything that is going on. His prudence doesn’t calm her down at first, and she kisses him too hard until she feels her lips swelling against his. Blair stops abruptly, stepping back, catching her breath as she tries to come to terms with the fact she can’t just get lost in the feeling. It used to be the best thing in the world, the way she felt when Chuck kissed her, but now all that she is able to experience are her nerves and her heart thundering loud in her ears as she trembles. Her eyes flutter closed at the idea that she has lost it forever. Their butterflies, her fire ...him. All gone out of her reach.
“It’s all right, don’t rush yourself. I’m right here with you, Blair.”
He coos, his lips brushing her earlobe, his nose in her mussed tresses, his voice rich in that slow, rumbling drawl he knows she gets especially hot for. Her heart skips a beat and not in fear or panic for the first time in months. She allows his smell to wash over her as his hands skim over her sides, tracing lazy patterns on the top of her thighs, her waist, her ribcage, her shoulder blades. His caresses are slow, deliberate and she knows she could shake them off easily if she wanted to.
“I’ll stop as soon you want me to,”--Chuck never ceases talking as he touches her, and it’s surprising how much it helps. Lulled by his gravelly tone, she feels like she’s being enveloped inside a Chuck-cocoon, where everything is soft-edged and nothing can bruise her. “You are strong and beautiful and clean. Flawless. No one can take that from you. ”
Blair sags against him, her arms encircling him while she runs her hands up and down his spine, appreciating the strength in his back, the feeling of his skin under her fingertips, his scent in her nostrils. It’s not scary, it’s not threatening. It’s the man she loves surrounding her with traces of his presence.
She sighs when his lips brush and rub on her sensitive neck, without kissing but nonetheless awakening a pleasant tingle underneath her skin. His tongue darts out to taste the curve between her jaw and throat, lingering until her sigh draws into a distinct purr.
Blair opens her eyes to stare upwards at the ceiling while she cranes her neck to give him better access.
“Stop” she mutters, just once and so quietly that she ‘s certain he might not hear her. But Chuck does hear it and his hands drop to his sides right away, his gaze immediately seeking hers.
She smiles again, a new calm spreading throughout her veins her as her hands reach for his and guide them up, to cup her breasts, pressing herself against him once more. She kisses him again, more deeply, memorizing his taste, caught in the sensation of his fondling touch and her hardening nipples.
There’s nothing dirty or wrong in the liquid heat that throbs between her legs. Her body sings for her again, opening up to her desire, expressing her need to have Chuck closer. Such an exhilarating freedom to experience anew.
She slides her slip off her shoulders, shivering as the black silk nightgown pools at her feet and leaves her exposed.
Chuck doesn’t move for a long moment, his attention all on the shifting emotions on her visage. He looks uncertain but then he shakes himself out of it and his expression clears, becoming resolute.
He kneels in front of her, adoration and longing so nude upon his handsome, sharp features that she doesn’t feel any more naked than he is.
“I love you, Blair.” -it shocks her how easily he says it now and how easily she believes him-“I would do anything for you. Just tell me. ”
Standing there, gazing down at him, she feels a new strength surging within. It’s a rush of her desire, the pull of the magnetism that always existed between them. It doesn’t matter how often they let each other down in past, at this moment she is proud of her passion for Chuck Bass and she’s proud she has inspired the devotion that has brought him here tonight, on his knees.
“Touch me.” She commands sultrily, lifting up his chin and drawing his head closer to her pale stomach. Chuck brings one of his arms around her hips, pressing his cheek to her belly, his hot mouth to her navel. His other hand wraps around her ankle and travels up her leg to her knee and back down, kneading every inch of her flesh.
Her fingers play with his hair, not to guide him but to control his pace, slowing him down if she wants more attention here or there while her lover kisses and nibbles his way up and down her stomach, almost reaching her aching breasts, lingering the apex of her thighs.
At one point, he bends down and slips his tongue to suckle a burning trail from the hollow behind her knee to her inner thigh. Blair throws her head back and melts, drunk with lust as his breath hovers on her center, straining against him as his lips close around her clit and his fingertips brush over her slit.
Biting on her bottom lip, she grips his hair hard, her hips bucking while he hesitates, maybe misinterpreting her roughness.
“Don’t stop,” she warns, a throaty moan tumbling out of her mouth as two fingers tease her opening from behind, poking inside and out. His tongue curls around her clit, suckling so gently, so sensuously that she needs to grasp his shoulders with both hands because it’s quite difficult to stay upright if your legs are giving out.
Air rushes out of her lungs and liquid fire laps up in her abdomen in a steady, relentless crescendo…her knees wobble to rest on him, yet the pressure inside her keeps growing, growing until it feels like she’s going to burst into famished flames, the same flames that are dancing underneath her skin while she writhes against the insistence of the mouth that is exploring her so intimately, nipping and probing inside of her.
Blair falls beyond the edge before she can even sense it approaching, a litany of colorful expletives cascading out of her lips.
She feels him pulling out of her wet recesses, still hot and quivering inside, intensely aware of every pore of her body, every burning muscle.
She takes a deep breath, exhales in a shudder of agonizing pleasure.
When she looks down at him, Chuck is licking his lips, smirking at her.
Chuck has a lot of different smirks - the sleazy one he used ever so often to rile up Serena or her, the arrogant one, the downright malicious one, the self-satisfied one, the sexually-sated- but- always- ready- to- go one - but this one might be her favorite: it’s probably his first, the boyish naughty one she remembers since they were children.
Blair smirks back and allows him to get up, enjoying his cringe as he gets back on his feet with a certain discomfort, due to the obvious erection bulging in his pants.
It makes her at once self-conscious and smug, to be confronted with the evidence that she can still, after everything, arouse him this much.
A flicker of alarm rises in the back of her mind and she squares her shoulders bravely, determined not to allow that spark to grow into full-blown anxiety.
It’s her body, she ‘s in control. She will stay in control, and that resolution is her mantra while her fingers fumble with his belt.
Chuck stills her, takes hold of her shaking hands to bring them to his wet lips, lining kisses on her knuckles. She has no concept of how her Chuck became this person…this grown up who does or speaks the right thing at the right time.
“We can stop here tonight. Take it slow.”
She loves him the most when he is like this, talking low to her like if they are sharing secrets, with a serious but soft expression she is nearly certain he never shows anyone else.
“Slow never served us all that well.”
“Are you sure?”
At that reminder, she rolls her eyes at him, her lips twitching in a reluctant grin.
“Quit the clichés, Bass. I’m good. Better than good. ”
At least until a few seconds ago, but she is going get there again, soon. She helps him out of his shirt, watches him get out of his pants and boxers, abandoning his garments on the floor.
He backtracks to his bed, sitting there, one arm reaching out to her. She goes to him because regardless of the circumstances, it’s still them and coming to him is second nature.
She holds herself up on him, clutching onto his shoulders as she straddles him. Chuck guides her into position, his hands on her hips, massaging her soothingly. Her cheeks heat as she senses his dark eyes traveling along her nudity, rediscovering those hidden places he once knew so well, but any discomfort fades when she feels him cupping her buttocks, stroking her lovingly. The patient rhythm of his touch spikes her arousal higher, gets her to undulate and rock over him.
“You are gorgeous,” he tells her, with the same level of awe as the time he complimented her for stepping up to his challenge and stripping in his burlesque club.
He’s even more handsome tonight than he was then, and the sensation of his skin under her fingertips while she traces his features in wonder, amazed that they have ever been anything less than they are right now, is overwhelming.
Blair leans in and plunders his mouth, nibbling on his lips before truly tasting him.
And finally, with excruciating slowness, she lowers herself on his hard length, sinking on him, adjusting to the feeling of a man penetrating her inch by inch. There are tears in her eyes as she makes a conscious effort to keep them wide open, remembering that the coal eyes staring back at her are dark, not pale, noticing that the gaze in them is intense, not unfocused, that the breath heavy on her chin doesn’t stink of alcohol and violation.
A comforting sound of unintelligible murmurs wraps around her senses, and even if she can’t force herself to understand the words, it matters.
Hands stroke her hair, her face, the tense column of her neck but it’s only his voice, roughened by something much like anguish or despair, that brings her back to herself and to him.
“Let go, Blair. You are hurting yourself like this. Let it all go.”
Suddenly she becomes aware of the sweat on her back, the pain throbbing between her legs and the tension that clenches the muscles of her thighs. She breathes in and relaxes, trembling as she spreads herself wider and shifts to do what he asked her to. Let it all go. Easier said than done, but in the end she manages to look at Chuck and truly see him once more. Everything else just…fades and dies as she allows herself to welcome him back.
He slides in easily once she stops resisting, and the masochistic part of her that believed she needed the pain to stay conscious and vigilant surrenders to the pleasure that coils in her womb.
“Blair…”
She hears him moaning her name in between trailing moist, lingering kisses on her throat. Chuck pushes all the way to the back in a single thrust and it’s amazing, how empowered and powerless she feels at the same time, as his cock strokes her deeper, longer, slower.
Her skin is on fire, and the feel of him inside is beginning to drive her wild. She grinds on him frantically, her pussy wet and aching as her walls clasp him firmly, her breasts flat against his chest as her arms anchor her to his body.
They move together with a sort of primal grace, fiercely holding and rocking on each other.
His drive increases, in and out, Blair matches to the beat thrumming relentlessly in her head, twisting and scratching, crying out his name in abandon.
She unravels in his embrace, coming apart under the pressure of the love ebbing in her blood and the primitive, heated revelry of his body inside hers.
Spent, she burrows her nose in his neck and rubs his shoulders while Chuck expends himself, clutching her tighter to his chest.
For a long while, there’s nothing but the harsh sound of their mingled, panting breath and the intense sensation of their shaking, entwined limbs.
Eventually their world stop spinning and quiets, leaving them slightly dizzy and mostly peaceful, magnificently sated.
They lay on the bed, curled around each other after Chuck has wrapped his Egyptian cotton sheets around them. He asks her if it’s okay, but Blair just nods, snuggling closer, even though they are sweaty and it should be disgusting. She is glad it is not.
She is tired but she is safe, for the first time since she can remember.
They are still Chuck and Blair and tomorrow will be a new day. Perhaps it’s not much, as far as certainties go, but it’s enough for her.
END.
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