Blair's an old hand at getting the nurses to let her stay longer these days. When she leaves, exhausted after a particularly gruelling conversation with Serena about just what her best friend had been up to recently she's not looking her best. She doesn't even notice he's holding the door open for her until she's outside and he makes a noise as if to chastise her for not thanking him. She turns to snap that she's not exactly trying to be rude but the look on his face is so painfully familiar that she stops short. She bows her head and mumbles an apology. He shrugs, lifts his coffee cup at her own as if to say, guess I know why you're here too. The coffee's better from the place at the end of the road than inside, he says softly. She blinks, surprised and when she's finally found words- that she can't bear to be seen around this area, for people to look at her with the patronising kind of pity in their eyes that means nothing to her she wants to die and so the coffee inside is easier, less painful- he's gone.
The next time they cross paths it's in the elevator. They don't say anything but he notices she's still crying and passes her a handkerchief wordlessly. The initials are D.H and she wonders what his life was like before he had to come here. Before the ugliness of addiction reared its head in his life and changed everything forever. She takes the handkerchief home and washes it.
When they next meet he tells her to keep it, that he has an endless supply. She learns that it's his sister inside and she manages to offer the return info that her best friend's been in and out of here since they were fifteen. Dan, she learns, looks at her with sincerity as he says I'm sorry and she sniffs, tries not to tear up again. She never used to be one for tears. They were a waste of time with a mother like her's.
Then one day she can't physically make herself go inside. She sits on a bench opposite the center and thinks of the life she and Serena might have had if Serena hadn't met Georgina. If Serena hadn't been seduced by the dizzying, sick rush of the toxins she ruthlessly pushed into her veins for years. If Blair had noticed sooner. If she had just... done things differently. She starts when she notices him standing in front of her. His gloves don't match but she's long since stopped judging people for the quirks they like to use to be different and she accepts the coffee he offers gratefully. He sits with her long enough for the sun to be bright and almost warm overhead. I don't know how much longer- she starts but he grabs her hand and she exhales. As long as it takes he says firmly. You're stronger than you think. He looks like he hasn't shaved in some time. She wonders what it would be like to run her hand across his cheek, to feel the stubble beneath her palm. She pushes the thought away and follows when he strides determinedly across the street and in through the double doors.
He cracks at six months, burying his head in his hands outside his sister's room as his mother disappears down the hall, shrieking about how she can't handle this anymore. Blair sits down beside him and talks about why she can't stand Hemmingway. She finds him far too pretentious. Dan looks at her incredulously and then laughs. It's like a dam breaks and she lets him cling to her hand as the flood comes.
When they cross paths on the stairs a week later he hands her a copy of The Cider House Rules and tells her if she doesn't like Irving they can't be friends. She snorts in what an old version of herself would have considered an unladylike fashion but she's beyond that now. So beyond this season's looks and keeping her hair appointments that she doesn't care. She only cares that he looks marginally better, like maybe he's eaten something recently and had a few hours sleep.
She buys a camera and makes Serena use it to take pictures from her window. She makes Nate go to see her and sits outside on a plastic chair while the two of them talk for what feels like hours. Lily never appears but then, it's never been like that for either of them. They are each others' family. They've been nursing each other through break downs and broken hearts and grief stricken moments on bathroom floors for as long as she can remember. You never give up on family. You never let yourself break. You bend and curve and evolve to fit around them, to try and fix the hollows inside of one another.
The she finds herself listening to Ma Fleur one night and sobs on the empty bathroom floor. She uses the number he gave her and when he arrives he doesn't say anything about her state of undress or the mountains of tissues everywhere; he just holds her until she falls asleep. It's not the same as it is with Serena, he doesn't kiss the top of her head or whisper that everything's going to be ok. He doesn't lie to her or pretend they're invincible. He does let her hold on like he's the only anchor preventing her from being let loose into the depths, let's her dig her nails into his arms.
She stops going every other day.
She cuts her hair shorter. His eyes sparkle with amusement when they meet at the sign in desk, getting rid of some of the dead weight? Getting rid of Winter she responds haughtily. Everyone knows spring is the time for change- maybe you should get rid of the beard- you never know- there might be a handsome face under all that scruff.
They meet coincidentally one morning at the coffee shop on the corner and spend the day in there. It's been a while but slowly the art of flirtation comes back to her. The delight in teasing someone, in the flutter of butterflies and the fact he lifts one eyebrow in an oh so sexyfashion. For some reason she doesn't tell Serena about him. It's something surprisingly sweet and clean and the complete opposite of everything to do with this part of her life. It belongs to her. She's never had something so special and so damn fragile before.
She gets out of the car to offer him a lift home one rainy February day. He pulls a folded up card out of his pocket and passes it to her, Happy Valentine's Day he murmurs. She puts the card on the fridge and it makes something in her chest ease every time she sees it. But it also panics her, upends her world view. She's not cut out for someone good. For someone who can handle what she can't. She doesn't deserve it when she let Serena fall so far without a solution. Dan is everything she can't be, everything she's not allowed to have.
Jenny leaves in early April. Blair stands at the end of the corridor watching Dan help her into the elevator. He meets her eyes and she wants to go to him. She wants to explain herself, to close the distance that's been growing for weeks. But she doesn't move and he drops his head as the doors close. It's for the best. Jenny was a short term problem for Dan. He was strong and unbending in the face of disaster. He could fix his sister's holes and they could go back to their world where there are healthy people and functional relationships so unlike the ones Blair has ever known she's not sure she'd recognise them. She can't give Dan normal.
She misses the Styrofoam cups and his stupid, mismatching gloves. She misses his crooked smile and his ever moving hands. She misses his presence in the same way she misses Serena's infectious laugh and running through the city, wild on youth and excitement. She misses her life. She feels older than the world sometimes. And at others she feels far too young to be where she is. To have seen the things she has and to have swept too much aside already.
There's a note on Serena's door the next time she visits, Fourth time's the charm right? She scrunches up her eyes, willing away the panic that this might not be the last time for her. That Dan, the seemingly unbreakable Humphrey might not believe his sister is better. That Serena might not ever be better either. That he came back to leave her this. That it must mean something. She sits in her duck egg blue kitchen and thinks about the way she loves Serena. Her best friend, her mentor, her carer, her worst enemy, the devil on her shoulder, the only person who has ever really truly loved Blair back. Then she thinks of the disaster that was her sixteenth birthday party and the clouds of gold silk that covered up the scent of shame and betrayal; she thinks of endless nights of cleaning up after Serena's mistakes and of her own struggles cast aside in order to care for her best friend. She looks up at the card still stuck stubbornly to the refrigerator and allows the cathartic ache of want to take up residence in her heart. She wants a different life. She wants to feel happy and light. She wants her best friend to be whole and healthy but if Blair's always there then... then Serena will never feel the urge to fix her broken pieces. Because Blair will do it for her.
She takes Serena's hand the very next day and explains that as much as she loves her, as much as she will always be her best friend, she can't give up her whole life to her, she can't drown in this decay. The Cider House Rules was good but she loved The Fourth Hand more. She wants to pick up the phone and tell Dan so but she doesn't know how to start a conversation anymore. She goes to the theatre, to the park with Nate, she actually watches a movie. A movie which would have made Dan shift in discomfort beside her and despair for their generation if this is the kind of acting being produced. She decides The Good Wife can stay on her DVR but Pretty Little Liars cannot. She tries to feng shui her apartment but gives up and eats an entire Toblerone whilst reading Vogue. Vogue remains flawless. She gets time to herself and to rediscover all the little pieces that once made up Blair. Her lungs work properly again. She doesn't call the center. She doesn't check up on Serena's progress. She knows that when she's ready, Serena will find her way. They always have. Serena will come to her and Blair will forgive her, she already has. There's nothing lying between them now but Serena's decision to get well.
She cuts herself with a cheese grater one night and stems the bleeding on the nearest cloth. It turns out to be the handkerchief Dan gave her all those months ago and she sobs hysterically for second at ruining it; trying to convince herself she's just crying over the scrape. It's almost as if she's been on a precipice waiting for something and suddenly she's out the door, still holding her thumb.
She waits outside of Dan's apartment building swinging back and forth between the urge to run and the one to stay. When Dan appears beside her and slides his hand into hers, pulling her into him and smiling right to his eyes she breathes out. I should warn you i'm a mess, she says, holding up her torn thumb. His face is lit up and he laughs, it'll heal.