ធ្លាក់ដាច់ពីគ្

Chuck was trying to help Serena properly shake a cocktail mixer when he saw Blair start walking to the doors. Her face was blank and she didn't even glance his way. Nate rushed to the bar, his words were a panicked, jumbled mess, but Chuck caught "Cotillion", "you engineered", and Chuck instantly dropped the shaker and rushed after Blair.

He caught her arm before she slid into a taxi. "Blair!"

But she jerked her arm free and, turning towards him, her other hand rose to connect with his cheek. The shock hurt more than the sting. They were wide-eyed as they stared at one another for the smallest moment. The look on Blair's face made his heart ache, even before her tears broke free in the next second. Still she held his eyes as the first sob broke. "I can't believe I fell in love with you."

While it was in the blink of an eye that Blair stole away into the taxi, time had slowed down as her words hit him.

"…I fell in love with you."

Nate was suddenly there, pulling him off the sidewalk. Chuck could register nothing, his entire being consumed with Blair's tear-streaked face and her words of love and disbelief. Nate had hauled him inside and propped him against the bar as Serena interrogated her boyfriend.

"Everything was fine—what did you say?"

Nate stared at the floor. "I couldn't believe she forgave Chuck after he was behind her downfall at Cotillion."

Serena looked from Nate to Chuck. She put her face in her hands. Idiots. They were both idiots. Chuck had never come clean about the Cotillion scheme and Nate had wandered straight into it. When she looked back up at the two boys—for they were boys in this moment—Chuck was still unresponsive. He had to be the primary focus right now. Serena took Nate's arm and pulled him towards the back of Victrola. "You need to go up to his room and make it safe. Take out everything of Blair's, change the sheets. Don't think, just do it."

She sent him off and turned to walk back to the bar.

But she stopped dead in her tracks.

Chuck was gone.

There was only one place in the world Chuck belonged and that was by Blair's side. There were no thoughts in his head except that he needed her. He felt his heart quicken as the elevator took him up to her apartment. The doors could not open fast enough once it came to a stop. He rushed into the foyer, expecting to climb the stairs to her room.

But no. He found the love of his life curled up on the marble stairs, her face buried in her arms, crying.

He sat next to her and pulled her shaking body into his arms. "Hush. It's going to be alright."

She hid her face against his chest as she gasped and sobbed with abandon. So he held her close, running his hand over her long brown hair as long as it took for her to calm. As time slipped by in uncounted minutes, she was in his arms and that was what was most important.

The sobbing had quieted to sniffles when he heard her. "Why?"

"Because I love you and I knew deep down, if you gave me a real chance, you would love me, too."

"So, you pushed me, and hurt me, and used our friends to get what you wanted?"

"No…Because I believed in us. Look at what we have now."

"And that was built on a lie. You could have told me. You could have done so many things differently. But instead you tore me down and punished me until I fit your expectation."

Chuck looked down at her, encircled in his arms, her gaze absently staring at the fabric of his dress shirt. "No, Blair, that's not it at all. Don't you see we love each other now? We can do anything."

Her voice was flat. "I don't want your love if this is what it does to you."

Panic hit Chuck anew. He did the only thing that made sense. He kissed her. He tasted the bitter salt of the tears that had dried on her lips but she was not kissing him back. After desperate moments of trying to make her kiss him back, Blair made a small cry and started to push away from him.

She fled his arms, scooting up one step and leaning back against the wall, then shaking her head at him. "No. No more, Chuck." She wrapped her arms around herself. "If you thought the power of being Queen had corrupted me, what has the power of your love done to you?"

Chuck swallowed hard. He had no answers to offer.

Blair stood. Looking down at him, her eyes were dark, her lips unsmiling. "I won't be your reason, your excuse. Please leave, Chuck. There is nothing here for you anymore."

As she walked up the spiral staircase, he watched, paralyzed by the ebb of icy reality seeping through his skin. The snap of her heels on the marble felt like the threads of destiny that had pulled them together breaking: snap, snap, snap.

The sound dissipated and in its vacuum, Chuck wondered where the will or energy came from to pull himself up, to leave Blair's. Time had become a slippery construct, had it taken him minutes, or hours, to move from that spot? On the street, he started walking with no real idea of a destination. The universe hadn't forgotten that it was still spring as gray clouds rolled in, mocking him as it began to rain. But as his mind turned over memories of Blair, he found it suitable punishment. He hadn't thought about when she ran outside with no coat into the bitter winter cold after Cotillion. She had to have been cold like that. He allowed more memories of her pain well up inside, he wanted the pain, wanted the tears that followed.

He had spent so much time carving out a definition of himself that was in opposition to his father. And yet he had hurt the person who meant everything to him and now, just like his father, Chuck stood alone in the world. Everything he had ever done was for Blair. To make her happy and whole. Was that wrong?

That question turned over and over in his mind as his pain and love for Blair continued to fill every breath when Nate finally found him and pulled him into a taxi.

Chuck was half baked, standing on a corner across from the MET after a sleepless night. Nate had tried to distract him, plied him with weed to make his mind fuzzy, as his heartache turned to numbness. Nothing could erase Blair from his mind. So here he stood, watching the Queen's court begin to assemble on the MET steps.

Everyone turned to see Blair approaching and Chuck felt his heart speed up. Serena and Nate walked behind Blair and all the girls began whisper. As Chuck watched, it was just like before. Blair climbed to the top of the steps and elegantly sat down. On the step below, Serena and Nate took their place at her right, Penelope to her left. The remaining group of minions stopped whispering.

Chuck pulled out a fresh joint and lit it before turning and sliding back into the dark shelter of his limo. Blair had lost no time in becoming Queen again. But he wasn't surprised; it was who Blair was, to bury her disappointment with the distraction of school and her social circle. But what about Chuck? He glanced at his gaunt reflection in the window, unsure if he ever wanted to lose the feeling of dull pain in his chest because it would mean he had forgotten Blair.

At lunch, Chuck sighed when he spotted Hazel standing next to his locker. He gruffly acknowledged the girl as he put his books away.

Hazel was practically purring. "You're single now."

"Yes." Chuck stared into his locker so he wouldn't have to look at Hazel. "And you should probably not be talking to me."

"Since when have rules kept Chuck Bass from what he wants?"

Chuck's voice went flat. "What does that mean?"

Surely, Blair hadn't told everyone…

"Just showing that I know you, that I'm like you. I don't know or care what happened with Blair. Because she was never right for you, but I could be if you gave me a chance."

Chuck felt his stomach drop away at the sound of a wish so similar to his own. He finally turned to look at Hazel, who was holding her textbooks to her chest, with such earnestness shining in her eyes.

"There's nothing here for you, Hazel. Please leave me alone." Chuck ended his reply by shoving his locker door shut and walking away.

Blair and Serena met after school at the Rose Club, in the same booth Blair and Chuck always used to sit in. Blair stood there in the Plaza, picturing a younger Chuck and Blair sitting there, seeing him tease her as she sipped a Shirley Temple. It only served to make Blair more determined to overwrite what memories she could. Not that Serena could know that.

Blair made small talk about fashion before she asked what she wanted to know most, "What is your impression of how the day went?"

Serena forked a bit of her salad niçoise. "It was nice of Chuck to leave you alone."

Blair fought the skip of her heart at his name. "I mean the transfer of power."

Serena looked over at Blair with those big blue eyes. "Oh. No one made a peep when you asked if anyone objected to your reign. Everyone was looking at Penelope waiting, expecting something."

"Well, it helps that Cece is giving us a very socially acceptable white lie for the rumor mill to digest. But I am sorry your grandma is ill. If you ever want to stay with me or there's anything I can do?" Blair gave her friend a side hug.

"Thanks, B."

The girls ate in thoughtful silence for a time. Serena took a moment to pause, resting her head on her best friend's shoulder. "Are you really okay? I heard what you said yesterday—"

"Of course I'm not." Blair's voice became soft. "But there's too much to do to linger on it. I'm Queen and it's the last term before summer break. And I haven't really seen or talked to my best friend in months. Should we have a sleepover this weekend? Just you and me, or the minions too?"

The smile Blair gave to Serena was fake, and while Serena certainly saw through it, they both knew that it was simply part of Blair trying to carry on.

Title is Khmer for "Falls Apart". Kisses to Anjum for being le editress.