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Constance Billiard and St Judes were a place of treason and humiliation. Anyone could be targeted, it might unleash war, but it was still accepted. And reigning on that world of thoroughly structured chaos were those who called themselves the NJBC, Blair Waldorf, Serena Van der Woodsen, Chuck Bass and Nathaniel Archibald, though Nathaniel was more a mascot than anything else. They were often at war, be it Serena and Blair, Serena and Chuck or Chuck and Blair mattered little, because they were the only ones able to survive sparing with one of them, anyone else who tried found themselves banished from the great island of Manhattan.
How could teenagers have so much power ? The answer was simple : money and the most efficient schemes ever witnessed. Well, that and the fact that as soon as you went against one of them, they would all join together in order to destroy you, delaying whatever squabble they might have.
But even if they had the ability to destroy anyone who openly went against them, it was not really a problem to spread rumors against them as long as you didn’t try to take them down.
There was only one person who was out of reach, for anyone who tried to do anything against him would have to face the wrath of the whole NJBC and there would be no exceptions. It didn’t matter what the situation between the different members of the NJBC was, no one was allowed to go after Eric Van der Woodsen.
People first thought that he was just under his sister’s protection, and while they didn’t try anything against him by lack of interest, it wasn’t so scary. Then one day his sister went away to boarding school and some jock found that Eric would be a good person to bully. No one had ever seen Blair Waldorf move so fast. In seconds she found herself between the jock and Eric, the guy was a year older, but he knew the ruthless Queen B, had read all about how she could destroy a person. “I’ll consider this a declaration of war,” she had said, a smile on her lips despite the hatred that shone in her eyes. Mere days later, the boy’s parents decided to send him to a boarding school in Switzerland after receiving very interesting pictures of their son.
After that, Blair took it upon herself to make him sit with her from time to time, just to remind people that no one was allowed to touch one hair of E’s pretty blonde head.
It took quite some time before anyone else dared to go after Eric, but it happened, because some people were just homophobic assholes. They were three, it was just a week after his coming out and these three guys who he had never seen but apparently knew him through Gossip Girl went after him. At that moment he remembered how his mother had said she was scared when she learned about him, he was scared too. But thankfully nothing happened, because a black limo stopped beside them and Chuck Bass walked out of it. He took a picture of the guys before sending Eric into the limo and sending one last glare at the men he said, “Say goodbye to your lives, you picked the wrong guy to mess with.” When the men laughed it off, asking who he thought he was he answered with all the arrogance in the world “I’m Chuck Bass,” before slipping into his limo.
Eric never asked Chuck if he had done something, he never learned that two of these guys owned a start-up that had bankrupted just a few weeks after the altercation and no one told him that the last one lost his job two days after he had the awful idea to stop E’s walk.
No one was allowed to go after Eric, that was law and anyone who went against it was bound to destroy their future, unless Eric took it upon himself to protect whoever had hurt him, which is how the only persons who ever got away with hurting him were Jenny and Chuck and Blair themselves, though Blair had never hurt him on purpose she had made a few honest mistakes.
It might have seemed strange to most people, Eric didn’t seem so close to any of them, except for Serena but she was his sister, but Eric had always known they would have his back. Blair was a mother hen to all the NJBC, protecting them from anyone but herself, caring about the little details, and that was even stronger with Eric. The kid was an angel, she had said so all her life, he had been over at her house a lot when he was little, with Lily always being on the move. She remembered one stormy night in the Hamptons, she had heard his cries and went running for him, they hadn’t slept that night, because he couldn’t and so she had stayed up with him, making him forget the thunder with her games. He had also been there for her, during the divorce, more than once had he popped up at the apartment, walking up the stairs and simply lying down next to her, they talked about everything and anything, and during the span of an hour she actually had a good time.
Chuck was always the one to remind them to have fun but who also made sure that they didn’t go too far, Eric could talk to him about anything, he’d been the first to know he was gay. Whatever doubt Eric had, his first call usually was Chuck, because Chuck didn’t judge and was never disappointed, he accepted him as he was, except for the moments when Chuck was just too messed up to like anyone, even him, but it was alright, E forgave him. Chuck was also the one who first took Eric clubbing, E couldn’t help but notice that Chuck had drank far less than he usually would that night, and he hadn’t taken his eyes off him. No matter what people said, Chuck Bass really could be soft.
Eric Van der Woodsen was soft, he wouldn’t hurt a fly, but anyone who saw him as a possible victim should know that the second they targeted the Prince of the Upper East Side they signed their death warrant.