Dangle

She would try him on now and then like last year's favorite jacket that usually hung in the closet and inevitably ended up thrown on the bed in a heap. She left him dangling, twisting in the wind, and when the words came out of her mouth the first thing he thought was, "not again"

"I love you Dan."

He remembered how his hands used to shake around her, an imperceptible tremor and how he would always have something in his hands when he was around her, a piece of paper, a pencil, something to hold onto so he could hide her affect on him. He remember how he longed for her, watched her from afar, fantasized how it would be to touch her, to feel her hair in his fingers. There was a time when those words would have taken his breathe away. Now he waited for something, some clench in his chest, some lump in his throat to appear but instead he just looked at her and felt...

...nothing...

He stared at Serena, saw the importance of those words in her eyes, a flicker of pain as he paused for a little too long. She was beautiful. Tall, golden, flawless in every way, and he thought he could remember what it felt like to want her, to crave the feel of her lips on his, to dream of the day nothing would stand in their way. It was some sort of distant memory, shrouded in the hazy gauze of distant longings, overwhelmed by something stronger that made everything seem small and colorless in comparison. Dan was surprised that he didn't care. He just felt uncomfortable as he searched for the words to answer.

He didn't love her back.

He'd left her behind.

*****

He was spinning, twirling, falling as he watched Blair teeter toward him, her face shiny and bright and more than a little forced.

A recipe for disaster.

Dan's words to Rufus echoed in his head as he stared at her, his face feeling tight, jaw clenched. He wanted her to turn around, to walk away, because the one thing he didn't want was exactly that and he didn't know how much of this he could take. He clenched his fists tightly, feeling his fingernails digging into his palms, hoping the pain would keep him present, would still the shaking that threatened to give him away.

She didn't listen. She never listened. She was Blair, she was on a mission. Instead she just dangled in front of him, tempting, just out of reach, smiling, her voice high pitched, hyperactive, her arms around his shoulders, touching him. He tried not to flinch.

All he wanted was for her to go away.

It had been a silent agreement. No phone calls, no texts, no emails. Just pretend it didn't happen, deny everything, except in the darkest quietest hours when he allowed himself to feel the ghost of her lips against his, allowed himself to feel their searing imprint, to long for her. All of her. He promised himself he would stay away because now that he had kissed her, that she'd kissed him back, that he had that memory burned into his soul, there was no way he could stop himself again. The mere touch of her fingers branded him, made him burn white hot and bright, made him ache so badly and he knew only more of her, of Blair, could dull it.

Now she was here, in blatant violation of their unspoken treaty, pretending like nothing had happened.

"...if she had to kiss him at all it would be, perfunctory, like shaking someone's hand or petting a dog."

For a moment Dan let go of all the subtext and context and things you put into a sad teen literary effort about broken hearts and stared at Blair Waldorf, Queen of Denial.

Really?

She glanced at him, chattering away like she'd never had his lips on hers, never sighed and leaned into him, never slid her hands up his chest, tangled her fingers into the curls at the nape of his neck. Was she this obtuse? Was there something he had missed during all their talks about art and film and literature. Had he made a huge miscalculation of her intelligence? Was she checked out, did she need to be checked in somewhere? Like the insane asylum?

Then suddenly she was telling the girl in front of them she was going to demonstrate this brotherly kiss she was going on about, shushing Dan's protests, then her lips pressed onto his quickly, softly, and electricity shot through him.

He leaned in. He kissed her again.

Her hands skimmed across his back, fingers leaving trails, his hands went to her face and she melted into him. He could almost hear her body sigh.

He couldn't do this. Couldn't pretend to be friends and pretend not to be more and long to be lovers and have it all mixed up into one big maelstrom that threatened to drag him under every time she was around. So later, when her denial returned full-force and she sat in front of him, wringing her hands, going on about needing a friend, replaying all the scenes of the last year and a half where she was the damsel in distress in need of rescue and his part was the solid, supportive buddy who will never let her down, he knew what he had to do. He decided it was time to stop.

Scene.

He was no longer going to play this part she'd given him. He didn't want to be her friend. He wanted to wake up next to her, to inhale the way she smelled after she showered, all crisp and fresh, to tease her over coffee, to relay boring and inane phone messages left for her on his voicemail, to sort through the mail together. He wanted to make plans to stay in on Friday nights, to watch movies on the couch but really be studying her profile, to plant a suggestive kiss on the inside of her wrist right when he knew it was her favorite scene, then to tumble back into bed only to wake up again. He wanted her smile, the way her eyes sparkled, her laugh, the dimples in her cheeks, the spot behind her ear that he always longed to kiss, the crook of her neck, her warm, smooth skin, the flutter of her eyelashes, her long, dainty fingers that curled into his.

He wanted her. All of her.

The friendship she asked for, sitting across from him, paled in comparison to what he could have, and Dan knew that this part of their lives was over. So he told her. Bluntly, with no uncertainty, and if she couldn't hear that, she really did need that insane asylum. Or maybe he did.

"I want more. I want you."

He'd been so good at unrequited love with Serena, placing her on a pedestal. longing from afar. So good that he'd practically turned it into an art form, and it had taken a lot for him to realize that she was far from perfect. But that was for high school and he was way beyond those days. What he felt for Blair was something deeper, stronger, something grown-up. It was rooted in imperfection, not idolizing, not romanticizing. He understood her, how she functioned, that deep below all of her trite and dismissive remarks was someone who felt inadequate and insecure. And he loved that about her too, that Queen B was beyond flawed, that she struggled, that deep down all she'd ever wanted was to be loved for who she was.

And he did.

He almost smiled when she peeked round the door to the loft. A wry smile that would relay that life in general was one giant cruel joke. Instead he sighed a little and confessed his transgressions once again. Because he was finished with what little game playing there had been.

Finished in more ways than one.

Yes, he had lied. He sent the video, he had wanted her to stop the farce of a marriage she was about to enter into, he had wanted her all to himself. Dan wasn't some martyr character in a bad 40s romantic drama who would throw himself on the sword for the woman he loved. In his own way he had fought for her, even if he didn't think he would end up with the spoils. So he lied. Was it specifically to keep Blair from running back to Chuck Bass for the umpteenth time, to keep them from resurrecting that destructive vignette where the only outcome would be pain again and again and again. Maybe. He told himself it was just for her, only for her happiness. If she was happy, he was happy. Maybe.

Yes, he was a horrible person, a scheming, manipulating, jack-ass of a person. So he told her that, put it out there before she could dig into him with her verbal blades.

"That's not why I came."

Then it was Chuck, weaving his lies and his schemes, blaming anyone he could for the negative outcomes of his behavior, all of that had still won her back, and yet again Dan wondered if he had ever known her at all if she was going to yet again run back into Bass' arms.

"No."

She stared across the room at him and he saw one of her eyebrows arch up in mild amusement, an almost smile flicker across her face and that was the moment that the floor dropped out of the room and he was suddenly dangling in the open air, hanging by the threads of her words, twisting again. A strange feeling started to grow in his chest, a heavy suffocating kind of joy that started at the center and spread out toward his fingertips, and he felt like maybe he was floating. He stood up and walked toward her. Step by step, and he could hear his own voice sounding casual.

Liar.

Dan felt anything but casual. He felt like the room was spinning away from him as he stood close to Blair, breathed in the way she smelled, watched her mouth as she told him that she'd told Chuck he no longer had her heart.

"I realized it belonged to someone else."

Suddenly he was no longer floating, he snapped back to reality and for the first time in a long time he felt tied down to the ground. His lips met hers and their kiss was like a first kiss, the kind of kiss you see in the movies when the star crossed lovers find their way back into each others arms.

It was the beginning.