A/N: One shot. Behold the result of watching the newest episode and then listening to a melancholy 90's song for half an hour. Review?
I always felt like I was outside
Looking in on you
You were always the mysterious one
With dark eyes and careless hair
You stood in my doorway
with nothing to say - Jewel
It was fate.
That was the only explanation, a string of words that led nowhere and yet she was still beside herself, in every inch of his gaze as he said it.
Things could have been different but they aren't.
She said it to hurt and he felt it strike, quick like a lash of sorrow. She had been so clear and concise, the thought nailed between them.
How different? Jenny Humphrey was right.
It was funny. Two people could destroy each other when they had once loved so passionately. He couldn't do it anymore, bring her pain the same way that he held onto her beauty, the same thoughts that swirled in his head as though he were swimming through their time together, so close and yet so far away. He couldn't have brought himself to touch her, to dreg up the mornings they had spent under the sheets.
The first time she had kissed him and he felt as though he had never touched a woman before, not really.
Any piece of her was something he wanted even if all she had wanted was to see him disappear. The rug had been pulled from beneath their feet as though they were expecting nothing less. There were so many games, times when he wanted to tell her that he wouldn't have given her up but she had made the decision, she had walked away and he knew she wouldn't turn around, couldn't open the door even if he pleaded.
Even still, he stood there. He was always waiting and hoping, like a tree in the desert searching for signs of rain.
She heard him breathing on the other side of the door. Blair imagined the rise and fall of his chest beneath her fingers. The smell of his cologne assaulted her senses as though he had just wrapped her in his arms and told her that everything would turn out.
She could find nothing in his embrace and yet his handshake had jolted her, awoken something inside she couldn't quiet. He was empty of everything that reminded her of who he used to be, they weren't the same people.
They had loved each other too much and yet not enough to balance.
"Would you have changed if I asked you to?" She whispered. It was almost too faint to be heard.
He swallowed hard. The first words he could remember that were stripped of anger, softer than crushed rose petals.
"I would have done anything," He replied.
If only she would open the door, let him in. He imagined her cheek pressed against the oak, her lips puckering as she worried and thought of words that didn't quite catch anything worth saying.
If only she knew how much he wanted to hear her voice, even if it was nothing. How much he wanted to have anything to reply with. They were an expanse of cold gestures that had once been the centerfold of a romance too great for descriptions. Or perhaps they were none of that, just two people with nothing more than a handful of charged emotion to drive them forward, loyalty that had grown sensibly even in the midst of recklessness.
Where had his love been the moment he touched Jenny? He had said that he had been mourning their relationship and yet she had tucked the bouquet in her jacket all the way from the Empire State Building. The candle that burned and flickered out in their bedroom as she had spoken with him, explained everything.
And he had been willing to cover it up.
But she was sick of scheming against him, there was too much history.
She could still remember how he tasted, a mixture of scotch and lust. It was enough to know that she kept him somewhere inside herself, the love they had shared, even if it had dried into nothing more than a truce, a handshake, the melted down movements of the boy she never quite got over.
But she could keep saying until it was true.
He had done only what he had to do. There wasn't enough left in him to keep fighting her without giving up other parts of himself that still belonged to the memory of her touch and their love as though she had been the sun, warming him in every way.
If they had to leave each other on any term, it had to be enough for a truce.
He had shaken her hand, laid out the term and fought the urge to gather her up in his arms, press her close. She didn't want what he had to offer her. He didn't know what he could give her, except himself.
She had been on the verge of tears, he had seen it and suddenly the door had been shut and he couldn't bring himself to leave just yet. She was right there, close enough for him to hear her shifting her weight. He sighed.
"I wish you still loved me," He said without thinking. He needed to just walk out.
"I wish I had more to say," She replied.
Why couldn't she just walk away? Climb under the covers and listen for his footsteps as they retreated? She needed him in some way she couldn't explain, so deeply it was a part of her but she couldn't have him, the romance had been ruined.
He was right.
It hadn't been more of one or another, they were equal if nothing else. A truce was appropriate.
She didn't want to be a part of this show anymore, who was stronger? Who had more stance, what was more important? She didn't know.
"Talk ..." She asked, "Say anything."
"You don't want to hear what I have to say," He said.
There was a long silence. He sighed. He couldn't tell her anything. He could barely form thoughts beyond apologies that she didn't want. Besides, neither could be blamed and yet why did he feel so strongly that he would say anything if it brought her a fraction closer? She was still there in his heart.
"I loved you ..." She bit her lip. This was a conversation they had already had. "You wanted to punish me for taking the only thing you had away from you? Eva was nothing."
"What else was there? You washed your hands of me."
"I tried," She edged. "Why else did things get so complicated?"
Things between the two of them always were.
"You wanted to take it away from me because I'd hurt you."
"I wanted you to know that you couldn't bring home some peasant and tell everyone that she saved you. She wasn't on the roof with you that night, she didn't hold you as you cried into her arms after your father died. Eva didn't forgive you for disappearing and then reappearing and you didn't cheat on her when you finally had sense enough to make decisions on your own."
She couldn't help the broken way the words fell off her lips."I still loved you after all of that even."
"What do you want me to say? You'll hate me anyway. " He was growing angry, he couldn't have told anyone that Eva had saved him, he knew that Blair was the only person in his life that had changed him but she hadn't let him keep hold of her.
They had only been together long enough to fall apart all over again.
He traced shapes into the door. "This isn't calling a truce," He said gruffly.
The door slipped open and he stumbled forward, bent over as he looked up at her face.
"Do you know anything?" She said, her words softer than they had been.
"I know you," He replied, "Isn't that enough?"
She blinked. "It would be if I was still the same woman."
He knew she wasn't and with that, she turned on her heel and closed the door once again. Blair listened as he retreated from the other side of the door. They might as well have been on separate continents.