A/N: Oh, Dair. How you torture me. Also Adele-thanks for the inspiration!
He never saw it coming.
That's the first line he would write with his pretentious fountain pen (a gift from Vanessa not so long ago-but that's irrelevant) as he worked at night (Blair's favourite time of day) and his insipid faux-hipster lamp (quote extracted from B. Waldorf) flickered over his head.
They were in the darkness, on the chaise lounge and (not for the first time, natch) he is rewarded with the rare moment of Blair Waldorf being vulnerable.
Broken. God, she was so broken.
All this time he'd thought Serena was the most tragic story of a fallen angel he'd ever read, when here was the besieged queen, desperately climbing the ladder to heaven and being dragged down to hell by her own natural instincts.
It gripped his heart like a certain brunette's iron fist.
He doesn't know what to say-doesn't really say anything, really-nothing that can explain how his heart feels right now. Fitzgerald, Tolstoy, Salinger, Steinbeck-there was no way to describe it with ink and gold.
Because Blair isn't Serena. Blair is the exact opposite of Serena and encapsulates everything he abhors about the Upper East Side.
So it is against all logic that his heart clenches painfully when a tear slides down her cheek.
None of them deserve her. Not the princes, not the Lords, not that manipulative snake. Not even him.
(This is hard for him to admit.)
He lays his hand on hers because it's all he can think of doing right now.
She looks up at him with her big, round, doe eyes that suddenly look so much deeper than pools of blue and lies and he thinks he might kiss her.
But he doesn't.
Because she's Blair Waldorf and he's Dan Humphrey and she pulls her hand away because he cares and he's in love with Serena anyway and she's supposed to be in love with Chuck (but maybe she's just an obsessive masochist) and he's from Brooklyn and even though his hand made her feel safe she can't handle being a fucking charity case getting a disease.
But sometimes Dan sits in his loft like a loner and takes to his desk, writing about Miss Blair Waldorf Claire Warnock.