Work Text:
The moment Blair’s plane touches down in NY, Chuck has one foot inside a private jet, Serena’s voice offering up a steady stream of attempted dissuasion in his ear.
“Europe” he tells the pilot, expression unreadable, unbuttoning his blazer and folding himself into the nearest seat.
“Anywhere— just get me out of here.”
He enters clutching nothing more than a briefcase, filled with everything he needs to successfully run a company from next to anywhere in the world. His only baggage, except, of course, the tragically obvious.
He lands in Austria an eternity later, his phone blinking angrily at him with missed calls. He calls Lily, misjudging the time difference and waking her, her voice a tired litany in his ear. “Just know that we love you, Charles. You’ll always have a home here with us.” He says his apologies and goodnights in the same breath, throat tight with emotion and warmth for her sleepy, affectionate farewells.
He ignores the nine missed calls from Serena, her picture staring back at him with accusing, smiling eyes.
There’s no one else.
♦
“Serena—” Chuck near begs into the receiver, his voice traveling through her like ground gravel, a sound like glasswork splintering in her ear. “Don’t, please.”
The pause between them feels heavy with overturned emotion. When he speaks again, his words have turned smooth and collected once more, no trace of the previous grief.
“It's unbearable.”
“Alright” she manages, her toes curling in the peach fuzz carpet, biting her tongue against the words she aches to say, and stares at the contrast between it and her cyan nail polish. “I won’t.”
She never brings up news concerning Blair again, no matter how much she yearns to, to speak about it to someone who’ll understand.
She picks up a magazine during lunch, and stares at the headline, BROOKLYN AND UPPER EAST SIDE? Absorbing the blurry picture underneath, the twin brunettes carrying coffees downtown, walking happily arm in arm.
♦
She takes the next flight down, surprises him in his nightclothes and robe.
Mussy haired and staring at her through pinched, sleep-blurred eyes, he still manages to unerringly reach out and distinguish the dark as dirt Americano from her creamy latté, smoothly snatching it from the cardboard tray. He brings it to his mouth with a filthy groan, curling around the Styrofoam in a way that is both amusing and sensual to watch.
Serena clears her throat, ignoring the twinge of pleasure the familiarity brings her and pointedly elbows her way inside.
The suite is immaculate German design; all clean lines, glossy counters and leather furnishings. She glances at paperwork spread across the coffee table, his slippers stacked haphazardly by the couch and the mussed pillows.
Then she turns to him, leaning by the still open door and studying her quietly and as efficiently as she had studied his home-away-from home. “You should’ve gone to Switzerland” she jokes,
“They do way better chocolate.”
“Watches,” he corrects, sounding as groggy as he looks. But the coffee has helped, his eyes sharp as they study her, the brown so deep it could be black in the dim.
“Whatever.” She says, and doesn’t tell him how much she’d wished he’d shown up in New York and turned Dan and Blair’s new found bliss into some new kind of hell instead. But there’s something like knowing in his coal colored gaze when he orders them both breakfast, sounding crisp and annoyingly awake ordering their semmeln and cold-cuts, juices and jam, one eye on her as he drawls into the receiver.
Afterwards, she ignores his protestations concerning work and I have meetings, Serena— and drags him across the city, enjoying all that Salzburg has to offer.
They lunch in the middle of a lake, a blue blanket swept underneath them whose corners are fastened down by white capped mountains and impeccably beautiful build-work. It’s almost nauseatingly picture-esque, and by the end of it Chuck’s brows have managed to actually separate from each other, the frown lines smoothing out, allowing his expression to relax at long last.
It’s not a smile; but watching the soft lines of his face, Serena feels it’s some kind of triumph either way. Her own lips stretch in response, a wide, white grin spread across her face for the duration of time back to the hotel.
There's no hurry; she'll get there. In time.