Author's Note: Oh, Chair. Won't you learn?

Disclaimer: This should be relatively obvious. ;)

Blair Waldorf stumbles into Serena van der Woodsen's apartment, the smell of alcohol overwhelming the blonde's senses.

"Blair?"

"Yes, it's me. Can't you tell?" the brunette retorts. Her words are slow and slurred; she's not the normal Blair tonight.

"Blair, what happened?" Serena asks, masking her horror. Screw manners- this is her best friend, and Serena van der Woodsen is not one to judge. The brunette trips into the taller blonde's arms, and Serena falters a bit before straightening.

"I-I-" Blair stammers senselessly, arms flailing, feet tripping. Patiently, her best friend guides her to a fine leather couch. "I'm- It hurts!" Blair cries out. "So much. Here. It hurts too much!"

Serena notices the tear-stained cheeks and runny mascara. Blair Waldorf is never anything short of immaculate.

"What hurts?"

Blair flops backward, her brunette locks spilling onto the couch as she faces the ceiling with dazed eyes. Suddenly, she clamps her right hand into a fist, thumping it harshly against her heart.

"Here," she slurs.

"Blair," Serena asks cautiously, "what did you have?"

"Shots," comes the dazed reply.

"Shots?"

"Te-te-key-la,la,la!"

"Tequila shots? How many?"

Blair giggles hysterically.

"Enough to keep me from hurt-hurt-hurting!" She claps her hands before suddenly crying out in pain. "It's hurting!" Her hands claw at the air, groping. "Te-keeeey-la la la!" she calls in a singsong voice. Blair giggles once more.

"Blair, tell me the truth." Serena wraps her arms around the flailing petite girl, but suddenly Blair writhes out of her grasp and collapses on the floor at her best friend's feet. "What happened?" Serena asks, attempting to raise her best friend to a position more comfortable than lying prostrate on artful, yet scratchy carpet.

Serena watches in growing alarm as her normally composed best friend shivers violently.

"I-I-" Blair's voice trembles. Without warning, she bursts into sobs. It's not hysterical, like her laughter before, but broken and hopeless. Serena slides down from the couch in one fluid motion and wraps an arm around her friend.

"Shh," Serena soothes, softly rubbing her back. Sometimes, a Waldorf has to take a break from being self-sufficient and just be… be mothered. Loved. At the thought, Blair's sobs increase.

"I-I love him!" she whispers desperately, turning haunted brown eyes to face Serena's. "I love him so much, it-it hurts."

The circles stop for a moment, and Blair shivers violently, as if she's just been exposed to the freezing weather terrorizing the streets.

"It hurts! It hurts my heart so, so much," Blair slurs, and it's so unlike her that Serena has to wonder if love is really a cruel masquerade. "I can't even think his name without aching all ohh-ver," she rambles. "I want- I want-"

The brunette's eyes flash suddenly with a second of stubborn pride before returning to the glazed, drunken appearance she'd worn in the beginning. "I want te-keeeey-la!" she sings. With a giddy smile, Blair lets more alcoholic sensations take over her mind, while Serena wonders if she herself really knows what love is all about.

Blair likes the new, swirling, colorful sensations whirling around in her mind. They make the insides of her eyelids glow in the dark so she's not alone in the darkness, and they chase those burning, haunting images far away from her- even though they really aren't, but Blair likes to pretend.

Her head hurts, and her heart hurts, and her eyes are suddenly very, very sick of seeing so many neon colors flash and imprint their images upon her forever. Thank goodness the colors are saying bye-bye and the black at the edges of her vision is taking over. With a welcoming sigh, Blair falls into the black.

The black lets her feel a little and hear a little, but everything's like a dream- it has to be. What else?

She can feel strong, muscular arms carry her upward, and she remembers mumbling something about Eric feeling more muscular than he looks. And then Serena says-

What does Serena say?

Oh, right. That Eric isn't the one carrying her. She's confused, but she can't really remember a time when she wasn't, anyway, so she lets it go.

She can feel a protective, muscular arm slung over her, pressing her to a warm, muscular chest. Her head hurts like someone's hit it with a hammer a million times heavier than normal. But now, that crushing, overwhelming pain that makes her want to scream and cry and disappear all at once isn't what she's focused on. Suddenly, she's very, very afraid.

She's afraid of that warm, muscular arm that holds her to the burning hot body behind her.

She's afraid of her burning heart, and of the burning heat that encloses and caresses her.

She's afraid of fire.

She's afraid of the fire that she knows is in the eyes now closed behind her. She knows him always has, always will.

She's afraid of the fire burning her body where he touches her.

She's afraid of the fire that makes her- forces her- to turn in that burning embrace and press her burning mouth to his hot skin. He's always hot, not like the other man she was once afraid of, because he's not some perfect vampire. God forbid that he ever become perfect or unreal. She's afraid of that, too.

She's afraid of the searing fire that's racing up and down her skin as her lover responds with kisses of his own. She won't let go. She can't let go. She can't disappear, or be consumed, or anything that involves falling into him. She doesn't want that fire to take her -oh, but she wants it, too, so very, very much.

She pulls away from him suddenly, wrenching out of his grasp. The distance between them makes her shiver, and she pretends not to notice the feeling of loss that's making her heart ache all over again.

"No," she murmurs, choking back a sob. She can't cry in front of him, either, even if she's turned away from him. Blair Waldorf has dignity even when she's suffering a hangover.

The mouth that caressed her so easily before is silent, and against her own will, Blair's eyes well up with tears. She wills him silently with all her mind to say something, anything. She wants one word, right now, to drop from his mouth in that husky morning voice of his-

But wait. No. No, they can't be. No, she can't be. Because she's him and he's her, and to her at least, she's nothing without him. She doesn't care if no one else understands this; the point is that she can. She can understand it and she bears the pain of it, but what's true for her is not true for him. She's sure of that. Because if she's wrong- and she really, really wants to be wrong- then he would say something to her. And she would listen, and then they'd kiss and burn each other and he'd brand his name on her skin forever with his lips and tongue and teeth and fingers and-

She's burning again at the very thought, even though there's a cold distance between the two of them and the air is heavy with a pregnant silence that's just begging to be broken. So, she does.

She was never one to say no to begging.

"I can't be heartbroken all over again," she says coolly, assuming the calm composure of a Waldorf like she always does.

The one thing she never knows about Chuck is how much he knows her. Right now, he knows that she's faking it again, but he can't help himself from torturing her with his words, even though he knows that she's in enough pain already. Because they're not Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck, the newest couple to be monitored daily and destroyed by Gossip Girl.

They're Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck, the two who hate how much they love each other and how much they know each other and care for each other and really, really see each other. That never gets on Gossip Girl. Only when he does something wrong, he thinks, fists clenching.

"But it's okay for you to hurt me?" he asks, knowing fully well how much he's hurting her. He smiles a little crookedly- but his smile is never perfect, after all- at her continued silence. "Because you know you do," he continues softly, in little more than a whisper. "You promise to stay with me, and then you leave me, and you pretend like it's okay because you're always the victim here," he hisses. She shivers, and he watches her hug herself as she rubs her arms self-consciously. He slowly reaches a hand out, extending one finger, and traces up and down her arm. His touch is so light, but it sears her and burns her and brands her all at once.

She wants more. She wants to feel more. She wants to be consumed.

But she can't be. She can't be consumed, because she doesn't want to be Blair and Chuck, Chuck and Blair, the teens having another scandalous affair.

She wants to be Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck, the only people in the world who can love each other so much it hurts. This love is nothing without the hurt.

He reaches his hand out farther, tracing delicately up over the short sleeves of her dress to the hollow at the base of her throat. She's still silent. His finger continues down her neck to the very edge of the conservative neckline. Chuck Bass doesn't do conservative.

He doesn't realize he's holding his breath as he slides his finger down under the neckline and scoots closer to her. She's breathing heavily, but his breath is almost ragged as his finger continues its agonizingly slow journey down to that tantalizing dip. He stops there, and gently places his mouth on the nape of her neck.

"Blair," he murmurs silkily, his voice vibrating through her neck. The way he says her name is so delicious, sending waves of heat rippling throughout her petite frame, and she wants only him to say her name all her life, because it's the most beautiful sound in the world. She doesn't tell him that, though.

"Charles," she says instead. He withdraws his finger and backs away from her neck. She feels like crying and the air is suddenly freezing.

"Why do you have to be so stubborn?" he asks. His voice, although husky, holds frustration. It doesn't matter though; it's not like anything can ever make him less attractive to her. She pulls away from him more, sitting up straight and smoothing out invisible wrinkles in her clothes. Her head feels like a ton of bricks, and she winces at the pain.

"Why do you keep doing this to m- us?" she asks without looking at him. He plunges into his reply without hesitation.

"Why do you keep doing this to us?"

She looks at him sharply, and the pain throbs in her head worse than before.

"I do nothing," she defends. "You're the one who… maintains physical contact!"

"Oh, but you want it," he murmurs with a smirk, leaning in again. She tries leaning away, putting one hand to her forehead as it throbs painfully from the slight movement.

He leans closer anyway. Chuck Bass doesn't make things easy.

Neither does Blair Waldorf.

"That's a bad hangover you've got there," he smirks. "First time getting this drunk?" She swallows.

"No!" she claims, turning her head from him. "I, um… I've gotten drunk before." With you.

The unspoken words ring in both of their ears.

"With me," he whispers. His breath ghosts across her skin, and she's burning again.

"Drunkenness is for fools," she tries to hiss.

"Ah, of course it is. Yet here you are, suffering one of the worst hangovers I've ever seen." He leans back again, gazing in the other direction, and she knows he's toying with her.

"You were drunk last night, too," she says, refusing to look at him.

"I'm drunk every night, Blair," he says, and her heart feels heavy at the exhaustion in his voice. "But," he muses, after a long silence, "yes, last night was different." She wants to crawl under the covers and disappear, but they smell like him anyway, so she can't escape.

"Why? Found a new whore?" she spits out venomously. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see him turning his head languidly to her. She can feel his gaze passing over her body, but she's not burning. She's shivering.

"Why were you drunk?" he asks. She wrestles with telling him the whole truth and forcing him to answer her question. She settles for neither.

"Why do you care?"

He chuckles darkly at her stubbornness, and it's not a carefree laugh. It's heavy with the past and the present, and it chills her to the bone.

"I was drunk for the same reason you were."

Author's Note: I seem to be loving this temperature-based sensation lately. Should I encourage it or murder it? Please review, I'm begging you! Begging you! They'll help me survive midterms.