Disclaimer: I don't own GG -- the books or the series.

A/N: Angsty-ness. My favorite.

I started out thinking that maybe – maybe – I would somehow someday end up fucking Blair Waldorf.

I look back now and realize that I did more than that. I – nearly – fucked up her entire life.

***

I still see her around sometimes. It's inevitable when we go around in the same circles and go to the same events – party after fucking party. If it weren't for the sight of Blair and the girls and the booze – in that order of priority with her maybe coming first or second depending on my mood – then I think I would have stopped going altogether. They're too bothersome, really. I've seen enough of the Upper East Side fuckers and their shit my whole life to care. My reputation went down years ago and my father's legacy is something I don't think I was ever meant to continue. I enjoy living off the family money. There's enough of it to go around. I have enough to spend for the said whores – no, excuse me, girls – and booze. But she, of course, is a different story altogether.

Tonight's little bash is no different from the usual. It's in celebration of some old schoolmates' engagement – who, I'm too inebriated to really think about right now. I refuse to try and dig that information out. I'm better off staring at a certain brunette ordering from the bar. She's wearing a red dress that kind of poufs – where did I learn that word? – out at the waist with pearls and some sparkly shoes. The image of an old Hollywood actress comes to mind but again, I can't recall the name. Some idol of hers – I don't think I ever bothered to take notice.

From a distance, she turns and unknowingly catches my eye. I give a smirk and she almost drops her martini. I think I like – I enjoy – still having that – maybe imagined – effect on her. I've provided countless excitement to her life over the years, after all – brought her out of the sad slump that was Nate Archibald. She was too good – and fiery and sexy and exciting – for him anyway. Screw the fact that he was – okay, is – my best friend. He was boring and looking away and I am just really known for snatching girls from under blind boyfriends' noses.

My breath catches when I see her approaching me. What the hell is she playing at? I'm the one who enjoys games. She's too prissy and bitchy for it. But in ten seconds flat she is in front of me in all her Chanel glory and I don't really have the time to think. All I'm aware of is the fact that she is this close with her sparkling – mischievous – eyes and her delectable lips. The scent of her perfume is enough to drive me wild and my alcohol-influenced senses are not helping me in the least. God help me if I decide to ride this girl in the middle of the Palace dance floor.

"Waldorf," I say smoothly. I deserve claps for self-restraint.

"Good to see you," she replies lightly, tilting her drink towards me.

Is it really? I kind of want to ask. But like I said, I have self-restraint – not usually but I do now. It's killing me but it's better than killing us both. "What up, B?"

"Don't go Brooklyn on me." Crinkling her nose, she looks as cute as she is sexy – which is to say a lot. Again, riding thoughts seep through my mind but I quickly push them out. Self-restraint. Self-restraint. Self-restraint. For a while I just stare at her and repeat that mantra.

"Sorry, I forgot you don't like it when your men hang out with that crowd," I tell her at last. "Or your best friend for that matter."

"I've gotten over Serena and Cabbage Patch. That was eons ago – so high school. Or have you forgotten how everyone has grown up and moved on with their lives?"

She is fiery. Damn I – almost – forgot how hot she is when she's all defensive and mad. Her eyebrows kind of scrunch together and she purses her red, red lips. Watching her is hypnotizing really. Every inch of her is so beautiful. It's not just her features either – it's the way she moves too. Her mannerisms – the way she's holding her glass right now and the way she kind of waves it around – are sometimes childish but still graceful. I suppose it's inbred.

But then, the point of all this rambling is that I find myself – still – attracted to her. Call me crazy or stupid or dreaming on or all of those altogether – I don't really give a fuck. Because the woman – she grew out of being a girl a long time ago – in front of me is just perfect and I want her and I feel she belongs with me.

Before I can dwell on the prospect of just letting lose and grabbing her, my hands have already done it and I'm grasping her hip tightly with my right hand. My other one takes the cocktail glass from her own and places it on the high table beside me. I pull her closer and breathe in even more of her scent – of perfume and slight sweat and just plain Blair – and just try to forget.

I want to forget everything – comforting her, fucking her, claiming her, hurting her, leaving her, betraying her. The list goes on. But I can't ever forget, can I? Because in my heart – I now realize I have one – she belongs to me and only me and letting go is as foreign a thought as giving up sex for good. She is my drug and I haven't had my fix in nearly six years and I'm just about hurting to have it.

"Blair," I whisper into her ear and I find myself flinching when she unconsciously jerks back.

I wonder how much has truly happened for the intimate act to now elicit such an unfavorable response. Where is the Blair that writhed under me in pleasure and was brought closer to climax by the sound of my – breathless and panting – voice in her ear? Had time passed so much that such a reminder is now revolting? Had I fucked up so badly that it had become too late?

"No," she blurts out shaking her head. "You can't do this to me. I'm sorry but not anymore."

There is a pleading tone in her voice and I draw back momentarily. She takes it as the chance to escape from my grasp and takes steps towards Isabel Baizen neé Coates. I look at her from the small distance again and I begin to see odd things in her façade. They are things that perhaps have been there all night – and every other night that I have stumbled upon her recently, for that matter – if only I'd given enough time to look.

Her hair is no longer wavy and slightly wild. It is straight and flat, brushing her shoulders. She's also colored it darker again – sort of like when she was still with dear old Nathaniel and was oblivious to his fucking of her blonde and leggy best friend. The make-up she has on isn't as – I don't know – sparkly as it used to be. Somehow it comes off as lighter, pinker, more natural and less stern and stark. Blemish-wise, her skin is free of it but wrinkles are perhaps another matter. Or maybe they are better called laugh lines? I conjure a recent image of her and there they are under her eyes and a little near her mouth – not really bad or anything. Of course they aren't wrinkles – she is Blair Waldorf for a reason. But they are definitely there, little miniscule folds in her otherwise smooth and impeccable skin, tainting even more the picture I have saved in my memory and held in my heart for so long. She is different, this Blair, and I recoil at the thought.

More than the oddities of her appearance per se, there is also that feeling I get from her that – when I think about it hard – is foreign yet also familiar. She seems happy enough. Happier, even, than when she was my official lady love. There is a kind of purity to this happiness. It is almost like it is burbling from somewhere in her – her heart, maybe? – and overflowing in her eyes and smile and laughter. The happiness is even in the way she puts her arms around her old minion and in the way she stretches her hand to undoubtedly show off a new bauble – a ring or bracelet of some sort.

Fuck it. She is happy and I have nothing to do with it and it just hurts like hell.

I continue to nurse my scotch and observe her with half-lidded eyes when a warm hand grips my shoulder. I turn with every intention to tell the intruder to fuck himself when I see that the hand belongs to my previously mentioned best friend. Nate Archibald is there in all his golden perfect boy glory. Glory – funny how he and Blair have that down to a T. That and happiness.

"What, no congratulatory hug?" he asks with a grin.

I give him a blank look and the grin on his face kind of falters. I feel sorry for him having to deal with a best friend like me but really, it isn't like he has a choice. The Upper East Side brought us together and the UES has a thing about keeping people like us that way. Together, I mean. Somehow, I think Nate has wanted to do me in for years but just hasn't had the balls to go against propriety and keeping amicable relations – and connections – with all the people who mattered emotionally and monetarily. I fucking slept with his girlfriend for crying out loud. That alone had to count for something. And then there were all the times I hurt the said girlfriend and even went so far as to leave her – making his so-called sacrifice all for nothing – crying and alone. I'd fucked this guy's life almost as much as I had Blair's.

I continue to stare at him indifferently and with a glance at the bottle of scotch on the table beside me, he decides to just shrug the question off. I honestly have no idea why I am supposed to be congratulating him. It's not like he is the one getting engaged. Right? I would know if he is. I'm his fucking best friend. He would tell me and I would just know. Besides, the couple getting married is – fuck it, I still can't remember. Not that it matters. I don't think I really care. For the past couple of hours there has been booze and Blair and if I happen to stumble upon a willing female soon then my purpose for attending tonight would have been fulfilled.

Nate tries to grab the glass in my hand but I rudely pull it away. "Easy there, Archibald. This is mine."

He looks at me weirdly and replies, "Yes well I guess I should allow you that. Give you at least that."

Then he turns away and gets lost in the crowd and I curse him for being so damn deep and brooding. We are so different from each other, Nate and I, and yet we have been best friends for years. Maybe we balance each other that way, like Serena and Blair do. Serena is the happy shining bombshell and Blair is the serious polished princess. He is the thoughtful golden knight-in-fucking-armor and I'm the selfish horny bastard – sounds just about right.

I am about to take another swig of liquor when a blonde takes the microphone on the makeshift platform in the middle of the room. From my position, she is nothing but a hazy vision of long hair and breasts and legs but I am pretty sure that she is Serena van der Woodsen. When her sing-song voice blasts over the speakers I am even surer of her identity and proceed to lightly place the glass in my hand down. I will listen to my former step-sister – Lily has since moved on to Rufus, the father of S's boyfriend – and see if I will maybe catch the names of my engaged classmates. Once I do then maybe I can approach them, offer the cursory congratulations, grab my whore for the night and leave the Palace bar to drink myself to rough sex and sleep elsewhere.

I scan the room for Blair again while listening to Serena's chirping about love and destiny and happily-ever-after. The former – or not so former – object of my affections is nowhere to be found and I curse my alcohol-altered eyesight. But even then there are no blurs of red and brown hair so she must have truly disappeared. I frown at the thought of losing her from my grasp once more, not really learning from my mistakes some five years and odd months ago it seems. But Blair is elusive when she wants to be and that should have been fair warning enough for me.

"Let us give a toast everyone, to the couple we all know and love – "

I see her suddenly, my Blair. But before I can make a move towards her, nausea overcomes me and I can feel my dinner rising up slowly to my throat. I stumble awkwardly away towards the comfort room and unleash wave after wave of vomit into the toilet bowl. The acrid sent of partly digested food invades my nostrils and I get up to leave the cubicle. I wash my face with cold water and begin to feel slightly better. The buzzing in my head has vanished somewhat and I am able to stand up straighter. When I look in the mirror, I see the rumpled reflection of a defeated little boy who has just learned that he has to start growing up and I fight the urge to smash the mirror into little pieces.

I leave the tiled room and return to the bar and smile slightly when I realize that my vision has cleared up somewhat. From afar I can see the figures of the soon-to-be-married couple engaged in a passionate kiss onstage and I remember just how and why I had ended up severely smashed.

The bride-and-groom-to-be are none other than Blair Waldorf and Nate Archibald. I should have figured out that that was how it was always going to be.

But I didn't, did I? And that was why I nearly fucked up their entire lives. Blair had always been in-love with him – always had, always would. Nate was all the same. He fucked Serena because she was different – and a little bit of a slut back then – and he had been packed full of overactive hormones. Blair fucked me because I was different and she was hurt and vulnerable. And maybe, just maybe, there is that hope that she had loved me in her own way but never as much as she loved my lucky bastard of a best friend. She cared for me and tried to be the right one for me but that never worked because I wasn't the right one for her. I think I fucked her up more than Nate did when he slept with Serena because at least he could blame hormones and his dick but I had no one to blame but myself. I was an ass and I left her and I threw away everything that she had given up to be with me. I left her and by the time I'd decided to look back, she'd been swept back up in the tide of nose nuzzles and snow kisses and playground love and suddenly Nate Archibald was the knight-in-shining-armor again.

I'd had my chance with Blair Waldorf. I think now I know that that is all it ever was – a chance. It was a make-or-break thing. I could either win her or lose her and of course I ended up with the latter. I fight back the tears – fucking tears on Chuck Bass' face – because when I think about it, we could have been happy if I'd only tried harder. The opportunity – the moment was staring at me in the face and I lost it when I took her for granted and did to her exactly what her first boyfriend had when they had first broken up. The only difference is that she took him back.

She took him back in the end because what they have is the real thing. They're endgame and I was some sort of rebound who could have made the shot but started to piss in my pants halfway. Now I'm nothing but a blip in their radar, an important but forgettable period of the epic love story that is – and always will be – Blair and Nate.

This time, I don't think any amount of kisses and moans and limo sex will ever change that again.

A/N: Review?