A/N
God, I'm crazy.
So crazy I think I might end up in crazytown with Ben and Juliet and…
Starting so many fics…
Uh.
Anyway.
I'd like to thank my wonderful beta Alice. This is not what I usually write but I was very inspired and I must admit I'm very very inspired to continue.
Reviews are always welcome, so please, even if you hate it, press the review button! Takes a minute or two, and it means much more to me.
Also I'll rate it T but it'll probably turn M in the later chapters, so consider yourself warned.
"Humphrey!" Blair snapped as she appeared, and he shook his head, slightly exasperated.
He knows it's their table, he knows it's their...well, not exactly a date, he knows the procedure.
But he was furtively enjoying the fact she was completely, inadmissibly late.
Delighted with his now mildly cold espresso doppio, he was casually leafing through a copy of New York Magazine. And now, since she had arrived, just a brief look at the movement of her eyelids and a snap of her perfectly manicured fingers were enough to acknowledge some drama on its way.
"I don't need a boyfriend like him. They're a dime a dozen_" she began in the well-known Waldorf manner.
"He...and I are invetitable, he always knows the right words to say and as a matter of fact we..."
"Blair," he interrupted, his voice guarded.
"Shut up Humphrey! Chuck and I are like Ying and Yang."
He responded with a light laugh, at how she just contradicted herself, rambling on faster than before, without even realizing it.
"It's ridiculous, but his therapist said that once and, before you start your intellectual judgemental speech, I'm pretty sure the woman didn't make it up. We really are." Her eyes flicked up at him.
"I prefer Holly and Paul of the 21st century though," she added, and he could sniff her wide-eyed routine fest coming soon. That would be too
much, seeing as it always got him.
She chose to roll her eyes and slightly purse her lips instead, then kept going.
"Much classier," she exhaled slowly. "The point is..."
Dan was still baffled trying to find even one thing paralleling Chuck and Paul. And as much as he tried, he failed miserably.
"Blair..." he said once again, faintly worried about her reaction knowing he interrupted.
"I don't care Humphrey, you're gonna let me finish!" she said, now significantly peeved with a wild gesture of her hand.
Dan was eyeing the waitress standing behind Blair's back, mumbling,
"She needs a latte. Sweet, sugar-coated latte with some extra..." he goggled at the mess she was at the moment, "extra, extra cream."
He spoke in a whisper trying not to interrupt her, but of course, she noticed and next second she carefully turned around, glaring at the focus of his attention.
When the waitress was gone she scoffed at him.
"How dare you order for me Humphrey!" she yelled, "You can't order for me, you can't give advice to me anymore, and most importantly we
can't..."
"Oh that's enough." he said looking at her astonished, his tone sharp.
"What's wrong? And don't say nothing 'cause you really are a mess, Blair, and it won't work, at least not for the brainy, witty guy I happen to be. So don't beat around the bush, go ahead and say it."
Her lips broke into in a smile, and even though it looked like she put so much effort in a single expression, deep inside she enjoyed bantering with him.
"Chuck and I have a problem," she told him, in what sounded like an exhausted voice, because of everything she had previously said, now literally holding her breath.
"O-okay." he said gently in relief. "Go on."
"He and I..."
"Did he do something to you? Blair, I knew it," Dan started. "I just knew it, and God, I can't believe he's fundamentally incapable of maintaining a simple relationship. Did he_" he trailed off, obviously irritated.
"Did he cheat on you? 'Cause if he did I'm gonna make him regret it and it'll be the last time that bastard sees the light of day...My God, Blair. He's a blithering idiot, and I have no excu..."
She was now staring at him, and somehow found it sweet.
The whole confusion thing, the state he was in, and the fact he was very upset with what he just heard. She found it so entertaining and somehow surprisingly hot. The whole way he gesticulated and talked and now all that anger. When his knee grazed hers, it was all so good that she'd let him ramble if only she didn't care so much about him.
"Dan, stop it." She shook her head, trying to protect herself of the flowing thoughts. "He didn't do anything. It wasn't Chuck."
That was enough for Dan. No, this was too much and he couldn't proceed this piece of information with a simple draught of coffee.
"Wait, so you're saying that...you were...cheating on Chuck?" he said, low enough that no one could hear.
No, he definitely couldn't live on caffeine anymore, he needed a fiery drink to save him, to spare him the flurry of the upcoming convictions somehow still buried, hidden beneath his tongue.
He swallowed and just when he opened his mouth to speak, she
anticipated his words.
"Listen to me. I did not cheat on Chuck. Hypothetically."
"Hypothetically? Wow, Blair, just..." he inserted an ironical chuckle, "Wow."
She was driving him up the wall, suddenly each and every word mattered to him so much, meant the world to him, like he depended on what she might say all of a sudden.
Not pussyfooting around and sparing him redundant details, she spoke straight this time. One single word, but straight enough that it almost got him scared.
"Yet," she added scanning his lips. "I didn't cheat on him yet," she replied this time more clear.
Suddenly the observing became two-sided and he noticed what he hadn't before, wrapped in the world of poetry, his own thoughts, the magazine
he was reading and hellishly good coffee.
When she arrived in a hurry, he wasn't able to see it, but now when she's quiet, pouting at him, nothing is stopping him and he does see it now.
In fact, clearer than anything else he had seen today.
Blair Waldorf put on ruby red lipstick. Not pinkish, or even reddish, no, those lips were vermilion.
"So, you just want to...cheat on Chuck, just like that? I mean, this is awkward for me to talk ab..."
"Spill it." She insisted and he found it really really dirty. The way her tongue was tingling on her upper lip to the point where she pressed it so hard she could taste her own lipstick.
"Wha..a..I..um. Why would you cheat on him, for starters. And how? You'll just enter a cheap bar, play some kind of a...twisted mouth-porn game," he said still under the impression of her previous actions.
"I don't know, Humphrey. Am I impressed and proud? Certainly not. Am I happy that, even though Chuck's supposed to be the one constantly toying with my feelings, I'm the one who wants to cheat?" Her brow furrowed, "No."
"That's just crazy, Blair. Did you drink anything?"
"Before this horrible latte? No," she said carefully licking off what's left of cream in the corners of her lips.
"I thought it was your favourite."
"You don't know me well enough, Dan," she added with a coy smile.
"Well, obviously." He laughed until she shot him a cross look. Then he turned serious and looked down, then cleared his throat, clutching his cup with both palms.
"Blair, how can I help you? Tell you to use protection? Don't screw up? Do I look like a life-coach?" he mumbled.
"No, not like that, I am not a teenager," she said with scorn.
"But yes, I need your help."
Her words really might be the end of him.
"And will you please stop judging and start...drinking?" she offered and next thing he knows, there's a flavoured vodka that appears in
front of them.
"Why are you ordering for m..."
"Returning the favour," she says politely with a radiant smile.
One drink and she's showing this devilish side of her he never had the opportunity to see before. One hundred eighty degrees.
"God, what are you up to, Blair?"
"Uh uh." She rolled her eyes "I'll give you another shot. Do your best, Humphrey," she says naughtily.
Three hundred sixty degrees.
He willingly accepts the glass and drinks it up.
"So, clean slate, starting over, tabula rasa," he said, coughing. "You need my help, to, cheat on Chuck?"
"Yes."
"What do you want me to do?"