A/N: okay, this is so seriously nasty shit. I'm not cutting any corners. This is intense and so people might be offended and shocked and I don't know. It was hard to write, I'll say that. If you don't like this kind of thing, well then don't read it. Thanks
disclaimer: clearly, it's not mine.
THE WOMAN WHO WALKED INTO DOORS
Chapter One.
...
Today she's wearing an oversized cotton button-down, one of Godric's, and sunglasses. It's January and New York is wet and grey. There is no sun. She pulls on red leather gloves, Chanel, all the way from Paris, and stows an umbrella in her handbag. She leaves her cell buried in her underwear drawer, so he can't find her. There's a smear of tracing solder hidden in the battery, she knows. Demetrius escorts her across the lobby to the waiting car – doctor's appointment, a post-natal check-up. She doesn't plan on staying long, it isn't a doctor's help that she needs.
Demetrius skulks by the door when they call her in; Suki gnaws at her Blackberry, like a little chipmunk wearing down a nut, constantly, wearing it down and down and down. She complains, loudly, when the receptionist informs them that Blair's usual consultant, Sandford Miller, is out on sick leave. Dr. Foley, a young woman with unruly red hair and the warmest eyes, snaps on a pair of rubber gloves. She turns around and Blair lowers her sunglasses.
"I need a back exit," she says. "Please."
Dr. Foley asks that she will at least let her stitch it first. She instructs her receptionist to call a cab. Blair winces at the rubbing alcohol's cold kiss against her split eyebrow, but it's mere force of habit. She feels nothing.
"There are people, you know," the good doctor says, in a low voice, "that you can call. I can give you numbers, addresses. Even if you just want to talk."
Blair shook her head. "It's nothing. I just – I walked into a door. Clumsy me."
Dr. Foley doesn't believe her, that much is obvious. She presses a plastic strip over the gash. "What kind of door? A door with a fist and a wedding band?"
She's glad he picked the simple platinum one, and not the emerald cut that matched her own. It hangs around her neck, as they speak, because it can't fit her swollen finger.
"I don't have to answer your questions," Blair snaps.
The doctor sighs and peels off her gloves, slapping them down into the trash. "You're right. You don't. But I bet you've got some questions of your own."
"Do you know who my husband is?" It's meant to a threat, almost, but it comes out wrong – maybe because she doesn't quite know the answer herself. Not anymore.
Dr. Foley raises an eyebrow. "Your cab is waiting," she mutters. "Lollipop?"
She takes one for Gracie, a red one, and thanks the young doctor. "Don't thank me," she replies, her voice heavy. "I didn't do anything."
"Exactly," Blair whispered.
Six Years Ago.
She hadn't meant for it to happen – Chuck. She bumped into him, one day, on the street, shopping in Berlin whilst her new husband met with important people and did important things because he was an important man. She had thought they were over, finished; she was married now – but just seeing him, looking at her like that, was enough to turn back the clock. Distance, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. They had a drink, for old time's sakes. And a fuck. On the bathroom floor. She never thought she'd be that girl, the one who cheats on her new husband with an old flame in secret, dirty places where they whisper nasty things and keep their shoes on. It had been an accident: she had stopped into the ladies' to powder her nose, only it was one of those European unisex bathrooms and he slunk in, like some great cat, Scotch in hand, watching her.
Clink – the lock snapped shut behind him.
His smirk was predatory.
Clink – he set his drink down on the marble counter.
Her hand shook as she reapplied her lipgloss.
He caught her wrist. Inhaled her perfume. Licked up her arm to the crease of her elbow. "Don't," he muttered. His eyes were black. "I want to taste you when I kiss you."
With a rough thumb, he rubbed the gloss off her lips.
"Chuck," she gasped. His hand on her thigh. "I'm married."
"Yeah. And?"
Clink – his other hand, pinky ring, braced the wall.
Blair blushed a hot red all the way down to her core. Chuck was shameless, always.
"And?" he probed as she burned. "And?"
His fingers caressed her through the flimsy panties. There was something bubbling in her belly and Blair swallowed more than saliva. She drained his scotch, grabbed his collar, tangled her fingers in his dark hair and dragged him down with her.
"And, oh, God, fuck, me."
When they were done, he sat across the sinks, legs stretched out, eating jellybeans from the wall dispenser that sold cologne and tampons and breath mints while she coaxed her hair back into something resembling an elegant French twist. Her chest was still heaving, her lips a red that Maybelline would sell their soul for, and her panties – twisted. A fine layer of sweat clung to her, like his scent, glistening in the dim light. But she could have no such carnal manifestations and everyone who walked into this bathroom would know that she, Blair Divine, had just had sex. Maybe it was the smell of it, on her flesh, the gleam in her eyes; whatever it was, it was something real. He just sat there, looking so fucking smug, eating jellybeans. His hair had come free of the gel and hung down by his eyes, shadowing them. No one would guess what he had been up to. The rumpled shirt – untucked – the rush of colour in his cool cheeks, the bitemark rising a wicked purple by his Adam's apple; they could have come from anything.
He was raw sex. He was shameless.
Blair was ashamed, embarrassed, guilt-ridden and wretched, but not for Godric. She didn't even think of Godric. Chuck did strange things to her. When she was with him, all she thought about was him. Just him, and no one else. He was like a parasite, crawling up under her skin, laying eggs – black gooey things that attached themselves to her nerves qith sharp fangs and oozed up to her brain and whispered ChuckChuckChuck over and over and over.
He left her seven red jellybeans at the bottom of the tube. "Your favourite flavour," he says. "Oh. Wait. No. That's me." He kissed her cheek, winked in the mirror and told her, slapping her ass, "See you around, Waldorf."
"It's Divine," she yelled after him. "It's Divine."
"Tell me about it."
The cab brings her right up to the Empire's doors. She hurries on through, her head down, sunglasses on. No one can know she was here. What he would do, if he knew, it's not worth thinking about. She even takes the stairs. Her ribs ache as she climbs, higher and higher, the bruises, still swollen and tender, protesting with every step. But she works through the pain, grits her teeth. She is Blair Waldorf. She has to.
Knocking on his door is the hardest thing she's even done, and not because her fingers still ache from last week, when they got accidently caught in the car door. She doesn't have any right, no right at all, to be here. Not after what she did to him. She has garrisoned her heart against it, conditioning herself, repeating over and over that she had no other option. No choice. But it doesn't help her sleep at night and Godric has taken away her sleeping pills because he likes her to be awake when he gets home, so they can talk together, about the day, the children, about how much he loves her.
"He doesn't love you like I do," he hissed against her neck. She lay, naked beside him. It was cold, but he said he liked the silk of her skin, and who was she to deny her husband such a simple pleasure. "He never even told you. And I tell you, I tell you every day, because that's how much I love you." Even after everything, it was hard to hear the truth. But she knew not to cry. He touched her, all over. Made her shiver and shake in his arms. "And you love me, don't you?"
"Of course."
He pinched her waist, hard. She swallowed the gasp of pain.
"Then tell me," he commanded.
"I love you, Godric."
He breathed harder, and she felt him press against her. "Then show me."
Four Years Ago.
He was waiting for her. He sat on their bed, a shirt lying across his lap. A shirt that wasn't his. A shirt that smelt like someone else. Blair stopped, dead. She closed her eyes and heard the blood pound in her ears. So this was it.
"Godric," she began. "Godric. I can explain."
He was far too calm."How long? And don't lie, Blair. I couldn't bear it."
One year, seven months, twenty-three days, give or take a few hours – time difference between New York and Berlin. She hung her head, and told Godric: "Too long."
"I love you," he said. "Blair. I love you so much. And yet you do THIS!" He flung the shirt at her. It tented across her face, and she couldn't help breathing it in, just once. She quickly discarded it.
"And I love you too, Godric. I do."
"Not as much as him," he spat.
"It's not like that."
There were tears streaming down his face. It was unnerving, watching a grown man sob. "Is that the best you can do? It's not like that? What's it like Blair? It's it just sex? Do you just fuck in our bed? And where has he touched you? Tell me!"
"Godric," she gasped, flushing. Embarrassed. "I ... I ..."
"Huh? Well. Tell me. Where has he touched you? Did you take him in your mouth? Swallow him? Did he take you up the ass? Did you beg for him, on your knees, like a dog? Like a bitch in heat? TELL ME!"
Blair backed away. Her foot caught the door and it snapped shut. Godric staggered to his feet.
"I love you, Blair," he kept saying. "I love you so much. Why don't you love me?"
"I do," she cried. "I do. I swear it, Godric. I love you."
"You're my wife. You're supposed to love me."
"I do love you. I love you!" She was shouting now, frantic and desperate. The transition was subconscious. Suddenly, she was flat against the wall. "Godric. I love you. I love you, I do. Godric!"
His hands were on her throat. "Blair." He sobbed against her breasts, his tears and snot and spit soaking through her sheer Stella McCartney blouse, $1,560 at Bendels. Limited. "Blair. Blair Blair Blair BLAIR!"
"I'm here," she murmuring, running her hands through his fair hair. "I'm here, Godric. I'm not going anywhere. I ... I love you."
"Only me?"
He was hiccupping.
"Only me?"
Maybe, she hesitated, just for a moment too long. When she recalled that night, how docile he was in her arms, and how everything just changed because of those things she couldn't say. From there on it was a blur, a haze of shame and shock and pain. She remembered big hands on her wrists, in her hair, dragging her, bodily, to the bathroom. He pushed her into the shower and slammed it on, full blast.
"It's too hot!" she screamed as scalding water plummeted down, hard as bullets. "Godric! It's too hot! It's burning me! Godric, turn it off, please! Please, Godric. Please!"
That was the first time she begged.
He told her undress and wash herself, only she kept on screaming and pleading, blinded by the rush of water, her hair matted down in front of her face, her clothes shielding her from the steam.
"Godric, please, let me out." She hammered on the shower door, the spray slamming into her back. "Let me out, it's too hot. It's burning me. Oh, God, Godric, please! I love you! I love you!"
He stood, watching her. His tears had dried. "You should have thought of that before you let him fuck you."
Blair swallows, and raps hard on the door. Maybe he won't be in. He's a busy man. Desperate, she turns away–
"Blair?"
"Chuck?"
It takes everything not to collapse against him. Even if he is staring at her like that, like she's the very last person he ever wants to see. He closes the door behind him, a solid barrier, and leans against it, arms folded, body closed. "What are doing here?"
"I need help." Her voice cracks. She must sound quite mad. "Please, Chuck. I need help."
He blinks. "So."
"You've got to help me."
He's in his shirt sleeves, rolled up to the elbow. Tendons stand up along his wrists like violin strings. Strong arms like that are meant to hold. Chuck picks some invisible lint from under his nails and flicks it away.
"I don't have to do anything of the sort."
She lets the sunglasses fall. There's a mirror mounted to their left, and she steals a glance. Hot tears of shame tumble down her cheeks. She's a mess. "Chuck, please. I beg you."
"I begged you, Blair, too. On my knees." He's ice. "Unless, of course, you've forgotten."
"How could I forget?"
His face contorts and suddenly he isn't quite human. He spits, "Well, you didn't have any problem killing it."
His words lash past her defences and draw blood. She can't look him in the eye. "I had no choice," she sobbed, distraught. "Chuck. I'm not asking for me. I'm asking for my children. My babies. They're only babies, Chuck."
"And what about my baby?" he asks, very quiet. "What about my baby Blair?"
"He would have killed me, Chuck, he would have murdered me. Please. You have to understand, I had to. I had to. I have to be there for my babies. He would have killed me." She's dissolving now. Her legs are shaking and it's hard to breath. Her chest aches for an entirely different reason. This is much worse. It won't fade like the old bruises; this scar tissue is here for life. And the worst is, she did it to herself. "He would have killed me, if he knew what we did ... What I did."
"I would have protected you." His voice is stiff with emotion. "I would have protected all of you. We could have run away. Started fresh."
Blair shakes her head, back and forth, back and forth. "No. No, you couldn't have. He would found me. Us. He would have taken my babies away from me."
Chuck's biting his lip so hard. "Just admit it," he grinds. "You're just using me. Like always. A scratching post for all those dirty itches. You don't want to leave him at all."
"I can't," she moans. "I can't. Can't you see that? Can't you understand?"
"No. Blair. It's you who doesn't understand." He drags his hands down his face, turning away, turning back. He lashes out, smacking the wall, kicking. "Do you– " he begins. He braces himself against the door. Exhales. "Do you love him? Huh? Blair? Do you?"
"He's my husband."
"Oh no." He shakes his head, laughing that empty laugh. His mouth twists upwards into a sneer. "That's not an answer. Do you love Godric Divine? Answer the fucking question."
"Chuck– l can't– I– "
"Answer the question, Blair," he repeats, in his Chuck Bass voice. "Do. You. Love. Him?"
"He loves me, Chuck. He tells me ... All the time."
She's aware of him, standing close to her. His hands are warm on her face as he wipes away her tears. The silk ascot ghosts over the bruise. How can they do it, men, be so gentle and then cut so deep? He murmurs, cupping her chin, holding her gaze with more than his hands: "Blair. Just answer the question."
She turns away from his embrace. It's self-preservation, he's already sucking her in. She can't say no to him, she never could. She never wanted to. "You can't ask me that, Chuck."
"ANSWER THE QUESTION!" he howls. "DO YOU LOVE ME?"
But Blair can only cry.
"Please, Chuck," she whispers. "He knew about us. If he had know, about the pregnancy ... He would have killed me."
She was naked, her body coated in white foam. Beneath, her skin was raw and pink. She had stopped crying. She couldn't think, her brain full of the drumming and rush of the shower, a Niagara Falls inside her own head. She supposed this was what shock felt like. Godric, fully clothed, stepped into the shower, and instinctively, she cowered.
"Use this." His voice was steel. "On you."
He held out a rough wire pad, the kind used to clean congealed pots.
"TAKE IT!"
Blair did as she was told. "Tell me what do to," she said, her voice toneless.
"Clean yourself. Clean all of him off your skin."
The scrape of the wire against her tender skin brought tears erupting from her eyes. She rubbed it down her arms, just ghosting it off the surface.
"Harder."
She dragged it across her belly.
"Harder."
Her breasts. It made her nipples stiffened and she flushed, ducking her head for shame.
"Look at me."
Blair held her head up high and scrubbed down her legs.
"Clean out your dirty cunt."
She stopped. Now that she had stopped moving, she realised she was shaking from head to foot. Goosebumbs shot up all over her body despite the hot water.
"Clean yourself," Godric snarled. "Or I will."
She held the pad between her legs.
"Do it."
Blair closed her eyes. She would not do this. She would not let him treat her like some common whore. She threw the pad at his feet. The look on her face showed him how much he disgusted her. She made to push past him. He grabbed her by the hair. Blair screamed.
"I'm your wife!" she yelled, kicking and thrashing. "I'm your WIFE!"
Godric raised an eyebrow. "My wife? My faithful little wife who takes other men into my bed and lets them put their dirty dicks inside her and then makes love to me between the same sheets. My fucking wife."
Blair spat in his face. "I changed the sheets. Pig."
His fist collided with her face and she was thrown, spinning, smacking against the wall. A wet slap. Stuck to the surface, she could only gasp and splutter. There was no pain, only shock and blood. So much blood. It ran, hot and red, down her chin. She gagged and spat it out, but it only filled up again.
He had hit her, Godric had hit her.
The words didn't make sense. Godric loved her, he told her so, all the time. He knew everything about her, all her favourites, all her secrets. She kept blinking, flapping against the wall, making little gurgling sounds, like a helpless baby. Godric would never leave her. He would never hurt her. He had promised her so. He loved her.
Godric was behind her. His body, so big and thick and muscular, held her up against the shower wall, like so many times before. But, this time, he spread her arms wide, flat against the tiles. He tangled his fingers in her hair, scrunching up a great handful, pulling it so tight she screamed, thinking he would rip her scalp off. He forced her head to the side, her cheek, the bruised one, squished up against the stall. She whimpered in pain. He slapped her bare ass, told her shut up.
Blair closed her mouth. Tears, hot and salty, splashed down her cheeks, mixing in with the blood still gushing from her nose.
"I love you." Godric's words slithered up her throat, crawling into her ear like an insect. She sobbed against the tiles, writhing and thrashing, but he pinned her in place. She could feel him, against her back. "I love you, Blair, so much."
He rammed his fingers, three of them, right up inside her. Blair wailed, her fingers scrambling against the slick tiles, searching for a purchase, but it was no use. Her breasts were flat, teats rock hard against the cold tiles and her belly, growling. Heat began to pool up inside her and she panted. She could feel herself blush as her body betrayed her. She bucked against his hand. Mortified. He laughed at her.
"You're panting like a wet dog," he told her, pumping harder. "Like a little bitch."
She came with a strangled cry and he spanked her buttocks until she remembered to tell him she had come. That was one of his rules, always tell him when she came. They had been married for two years now, and it still embarrassed her. Godric held his wet fingers to her mouth. "Suck," he ordered.
Blair did as she was told, and Godric told her he loved her.
When Chuck answers, his voice is dead. "Just like you killed it."
"Her."
"Don't fucking tell me that!" He's almost crying.
"Chuck."
"Don't come back."
"Chuck– " She reaches for him, catching his hand. His fingers are warm. So soft. "Chuck. Help me."
His hand curls around her, for just the tiniest moment. She caresses his thumb, pretending. Then he rips his hand free, shoving her away, slamming the door between them. She hits the wall. The blow slams through her body, an earthquake on the inside. Blair caves in on herself. She sinks to the floor and the sobs tearing from her throat are almost animal in nature. This is what happens when there is nothing left.
The door opens, and she, such a fool, raises her head and hopes. Chuck dumps his cell her lap. "You want help, call women's services. I'm done. You don't deserve my help. You don't deserve me, or my daughter, and I'm fucking glad you killed her, you know that? No child deserves such a dirty whore as a mother."
She's so blinded by tears, she can't see the cracks in his heart. He's so blinded by rage, too heartbroken, he doesn't want to see the handprint, dark across her throat.
He positioned himself behind her, his manhood pushing against somewhere she didn't want him to be.
"Please." Gossip Girl was right, all those years ago, the night everything went wrong. The night he left, for good. She was weak. "Please. Godric, please. Don't ... please don't."
His hand pressed her head against the wall, but he needn't have bothered. She wasn't going anywhere. She was spent. Her face ached and her mouth was dry, her lips caked in her own blood. She had to breathe through it, her mouth, because he had broken her nose. His free hand pinches at her ass, her hips, her stomach, between her legs. And her body responds, grinding, and groaning. Her mind is somewhere else, locked up where it can only watch this happen. She feels like a doll, putty in his huge hands.
"Where do you want me, then, my love?" His voice is husky, but it doesn't arouse her like it used to. It scares her. He caresses her ass, the valley between the pert cheeks, and more. "Tell me."
"Please ..."
"Please isn't a hole in your sweet body, my love. Tell me where you want me to put my huge cock."
Blair closed her eyes. She swallowed what little pride she had left, crying, bleeding, and told him to put his ... huge cock ... into her ... into her ... pussy.
He forced the bar of soap – vanilla husk and honey, all the way from Florence, Italy (Chuck washed her with it, all of her, in the hotel, with slow hands; he chose her over tennis with Berlesconi, but she chose Godric over him, and that's why, when the bathwater ran cold, he left, and she had to take another bath before her husband came home) – into her mouth, telling her to wash out her vulgar mouth before she kissed her husband. Then he did what he wanted and she tried not to scream, but it was no use. It hurt. In more ways than one, it hurt.
When Oscar, the Empire's manager, tells him a woman was taken from the hotel to hospital by ambulance in the early afternoon, he just shakes his head and orders another drink. He doesn't think about her anymore, not after what she did.
He thinks about her all the time.
Georgia lays a hand on his shoulder. He holds her hand, over his shoulder, rests his cheek down on it. She kisses his forehead.
"C'mon, sugar." Her caramel drawl is so different to polished New York enunciation. She picks up his drink, his jacket, all the little pieces. "I'll call the hospital in the mornin', send some flowers. Whatcha think, huh?"
Chuck thinks. He thinks about how he would love nothing more than to kill the bastard, wring his pathetic neck with his bare hands. And he thinks how, almost, he understands what the guy is going through. Nothing kills a man like a beautiful woman. Especially one who doesn't love him back."I think it's a little too late for flowers."