SEASONS

Author: Sky Samuelle

Summary: Future One-shot. Georgina Sparks is with Carter Baizen in India when she gets a wind of Charles Bass' wedding to her worst enemy, Blair Waldrof.

Ships: Main Chuck&Blair and Georgina&Carter, because I think Carter is tailored for G, as much Chuck is for Blair. Mentions of past Georgina-Chuck.

There's something to be said about wandering around the world like it is your personal playground: you begin to lose your sense of time, until your awareness of the seasonal cycle lowers and lowers to the point you end spending the holidays in a tropical country like India.

You realize Christmas had been only when New Year come and gone…. just like you wanted, because then you can't remember last time those festivities didn't bore you to death.

You could remember when you received a phone call by an old acquaintance who is been a guest to the Bass-Waldrof Wedding.

Blair Waldrof and Charles Bass, married with in a grand ceremony during a White Christmas, how lovely.

Georgina can just picture Blair glowing in her glittering, demure, designer white wedding gown as she gets down off of her princess carriage, pulled by two lovely white ponies, taking Harold's arm, as if she was in a Disney movie and she was the princess finally marrying her prince... oh yes she could picture it like she was right there watching among the shadows, rather than getting told the news second hand.

Georgina grits her teeth and imagines about little this or that detail, snapshots forming in her head of Serena, stunning bridesmaid with a lavender dress which becomes her eyes, an-all-grown-up little Eric as one of the groomsmen and pretty boy Nate sharing the best-man speech with the crowd.

Ages ago, those people had been her friends, and when they were twelve and Lily had organized a Christmas party, riding the enthusiasm of her second marriage, Serena had insisted that Georgina stayed all-the night long.

Charlie was been as insensible to the festive cheer as she was, but he had kissed her after they had accidentally found themselves face to face under the mistletoe. A glance up to the dangling evergreen and they were smirking and scurrying toward Serena's room. It hadn't been a kiss placed on her lips.

The phone call ends and Georgina still can't imagine Chuck Bass adult and in a tux, promising to forever cherish the queen bitch.

Girls like Blair were meant to stick to the missionary position under proper gentlemen like Nate Archibald, while all the Chucks of this world gallivanted around the globe, fantasizing about the girls who had made them men.

How had those two even made it to altar without murdering each other?

Apparently universe had not only been going askew, but it had flipped completely upside down.

Chuck Bas. Married. Now that was a thought.

At the times when Nate was been eager for occasions of Serena-gazing outside Blair's watch, the two boys had intruded the parties she and S attended at the most unexpected moment.

It is strange, how Chuck was been that one boy who didn't look down on her for putting out easily – agreed, he did the same, but guys tended to assume that was solely their prerogative- at least until she had boasted about sucking off his uncle Jack. Chuck had taken that insignificant episode quite seriously.

"I like you "

He told her, playing with her dark locks, after having kissed her at long on his bed.

"Why?... "

"You are cold and cruel, like a blade"

"What? Like you? " She asked , rolling on her stomach, her smirk wide and growing by the minute.

"Not just yet, but I'll get there"

His eyes were been soft, dark with envy-tinged adoration, and this was when Georgina knew he fancied her not so much because she was pretty, but because she was empty without being shallow. Hard even while volatile. Chuck Bass wanted to be like her and that was the reason Georgina decided he deserved being divested of what was left of his innocence. It was not the first time she had sex, but it was the first time she wanted to, and the first time she enjoyed it.

Their sexual history after that was been built on a singular mix of mutual admiration and indifference. They avoided each other for a week, uncomfortable with each other for that disturbing, unwanted feeling of intimacy which they had shared by chance, until they simply… didn't avoided each other anymore.

They had nothing serious, they were been young and playing around once in awhile, but later… Georgina could admit it could have turned differently. If she had pressed him on that. If she had not ridiculed him each time he spoke her without sexual innuendo. If she had hidden from him her adventure with his uncle, rather than flaunting it only to see how he would react. If she had not slipped hallucinogens in his drink when he gave the cold shoulder for that.

They never were in love… but there was a mutual awareness, Chuck understood her as well she understood him. Not because they talked, but because they were both growing up so full of poison that once in awhile they craved to cut somebody else or everybody else, just to have that poison spill out. They could stare into each other eyes and smirk, because there was the same shallow abyss staring back.

If it wasn't been so terrifying, that understanding could have brought them close, but they were who they were, and that feeling of undesired exposure brought them only to avoidance.

Well, water under the bridge now.

Georgina has stopped caring what happens in New York a long time ago.

Yet… it stings a little that Snow White has managed to crack the hard Bass shell and to stake a claim on the needy, affection-starved child underneath.

It's pathetic, and likely to not last. Or perhaps not, if that bizarrely unilateral loyalty to Nate is anything to go by.

When Georgina remembers Chuck, she likes to think of the kid who strived to not be human. Or, of the angry teenager who let her feed on his fury to disperse her numbness.

She will never acknowledge that it makes her feel less lonely, knowing she has an intellectual twin out of here.

She will never acknowledge she feels lonely, occasionally.

That Blair Waldrof…once a spoilsport, always a spoilsport.

The body resting beside her stirs and Georgina allows her gaze to linger over it, to slide along the smooth planes of that muscled back, the firm roundness of that ass.

Anyone that knows both of them knows that there's no comparison between Chuck Bass and Carter Baizen.

Chuck's body used to be slender, it moved with a feline grace. Carter's is broader, stockier, but somehow less imposing.

Chuck is a calculating mess of entwining contradictions, ever hiding under a thousand well-crafted masks. His mind never stops inquiring, analyzing, weighting risks and options: the chaos he creates has always some sort of order or meaning, because under every pretence of superficiality he is as much of a control freak as the woman he has married.

Carter breathes to simulate a complexity he has not. He has no darkness inside, but he likes to think the contrary, probably because he would hate to fill in his father's dull shoes. His charm is in his superficiality, his determined tension toward the life's basic pleasures: squandering his trust fund as long he can afford to, sex, travels, fine liqueurs. He and Georgina are similar in that, if anything else: they enjoy knowing their existence has no deeper meaning, no ultimate purpose. They both flow through their days riding chaos like it doesn't matter where it is taking them or where they will be tomorrow.

They chase their empty caprices while trusting their inherent ability to survive for their vices.

This why they are here, together, working on billions-worthy fraud. Carter is in for the thrill of risk, Georgina for… okay, it's because this is what she is, what she knows how to do best.

Deep down, Georgina thinks she has always hated Carter, since he was dancing his way around Serena, all easy smiles and charming pick-up lines.

Even then, Georgina loved to mock him, ridicule him before her blonde friend just to catch that fleeting moment of embarrassment on his handsome, arrogant face while Serena would giggle.

Carter is not a decent human being, because it amuses him to play the bad guy and he does that choice remorselessly every day. Yet he is simple, and he enjoys life so easily.

He enjoys her company so easily too, although she makes no mystery of how lowly she thinks of him.

It should to amuse her, but for some reason it only irritates her, especially now.

She has never wanted love, feeling it or receiving it. But if she had done so, she has more or less taken for granted that the only person who could love her it was Chuck Bass.

She is cold, hard, cruel, ruthless. Evil, many would say, except that Georgina doesn't really believe evilness exists. People are simply animals, acting on their instincts but convinced there are above those.

Either way, she is been evil for so long than she hardly remembers being anything else.

She loves the destruction she creates like an artist would love their paintings; Carter just enjoys walking the line between winning and losing.

She frowns, feeling his hand encircling her ankle, with that gentleness she loathes and yet she can never bring herself to shake away.

He opens his baby-blue eyes and gives her that annoying rogue grin. She arches an imperious eyebrow, her expression impassive, to demonstrate she doesn't find –never found, never will find- his antics attractive.

His gaze seems to linger on her face too often or too long nowadays, and the intensity behind it isn't something she recognizes.

He doesn't understand her more than she understands him, but yet she finds herself playing her night to his bright-burning star, so they fit together in a way they both fail to explain.

Carter doesn't care to hide the fascination plain to see on his ever-expressive face as she slithers underneath him, his forearms tense while he stares half-resentfully at the blankness portrayed by her delicate features.

Georgina's face is still youthful, doll-like and almost innocent when unmarred by make-up.

Carter sometimes wonders if she has ever been truly a child, if she has ever been content or at peace. He also wonders what has made her the way she is, but he pushes the questions away because he has a misgiving that the answers, if he could ever grasp them, would only anger him.

Lately, he can't sleep very much or very well when she is close.

He kisses her full, unresponsive mouth striving to contain his irritation when she fails to respond, but he knows his impatience shows right through when he feels a smirk swelling against his lips.

Something in his stomach stirs, powerful and dark. Almost-but not quite-fluttering. It must be something he has eaten.