On the Inside…

Dan

If he had to pin it down, he would say it was her eyes.

Somehow, no matter what she did or how she insulted him or pushed him around (quite literally, most of the time) it always seemed to boil down to her eyes.

Dan Humphry had never really understood the power those eyes had over him but now that he thought about it, and he thought about her quite often lately, it had always been there. Five years ago, when he was infatuated with a shiny, glittery blonde with a tinkling laugh and back when Blair Waldorf was little more than the bitch who had dedicated her life to making his miserable, her eyes still had power over him. That's probably why, when his girlfriend and his girlfriend's best friend were running in opposite directions in tears after a falling out at a fashion show all those years ago, he chose to chase after the latter.

Chose to sit in a cramped hallway and pour his heart out to the one person who he knew couldn't care less.

It was because he saw those huge brown eyes and for a brief moment when she didn't have the foresight to put her mask back on, he glimpsed the vulnerability she hid behind all the time.

Ever since then, he had somehow always gone back for more. Every time she had come to him needing his help…with Chuck, with NYU, with fitting in, with scheming, with everything… he had never really been able to resist her.

'Just say no', if only it were that easy.

How does one say 'no' to Blair Waldorf?

He didn't know exactly when he fell in love with her but it had been coming for a while. For some reason their 'friendship' was the easiest one he had ever encountered. Naturally, not her, she was never easy to deal with. She was still demanding, pushy, exhausting and the snob she always was. And yet they could tell each other everything. At a point in both their lives where they had both been ceremoniously crushed and crippled by the significant 'loves of their lives', they somehow helped each other pick up the pieces and put them back together. He knew, deep, deep down that she felt it too but he knew just as clearly that she would, could never admit to it. He knew that kiss had meant something and that 'something' was terrifying for them both. But while, it made him want to delve deeper it made her shut down and run to what she considered familiar. And whatever else Chuck and Blair/ Blair and Chuck may have been, they were certainly familiar.

Of course, she was too Blair to do the kind thing and cut him off completely. No, she had to string him along until he was completely, madly in love with her and she was in the process of being crowned Princess, literally. Dan laughed bitterly at the realisation that his first kiss made her feel she wanted to live with Chuck and his second was contrived so she could live with Louis. He didn't dare think what a third could mean and yet…it was all he could think about most of the time.

When she told him about the baby, his could feel his insides shattering. She was having someone else's baby and he was…well, he wasn't even really in the picture and it was now finally time to admit it. But then she turned to him and in true Humphry fashion he decided he would play the confidant, the nursemaid…really, whatever she needed because he had missed her while she was gone and he realised he was completely useless without her in his life. Those three months in the Hampton's had been hell and now she was here and she occasionally leaned on him. And, of course, she really did smell nice. Yes, it was pathetic but he was beyond caring at this point.

And then the damned book came out and what he always knew would happen finally happened. There was a hopeful, tiny, stupid part of his heart that had believed she would read his 383-page sonnet to her and find it in her heart to admit her own feelings. It was a stupid thing to cling to but he had clung to it nevertheless, until she stormed into that damned study and told him their 'friendship' was now over.

She'd said the same thing dozens of times before and never really meant it but this time he chose to believe her. Not because she had meant it but because he was tired … and frankly, he was done. It was an odd self-righteous rage that now burned inside him. All those years of putting up with all the shit they all had put him through…Serena and her mood swings, and her boyfriends and her madness; Nate and his theatrics; Blair and her bitchiness, Yale, Jenny, Vanessa…he had put up with it all and with his usual quiet stoicism and one mistake on his part was enough for everyone to leave him. He wrote the truth, as truthful as fiction could be, and that was enough to kill everything.

So be it.

Dan spent the week after the book launch getting piss drunk, the kind of drunk that would have made Chuck proud. Then he changed his address, having cash finally allowed him to leave the loft and he moved to small apartment uptown with a snazzy view. He bought himself a flat screen and rearranged his bookshelg every day because it never quite fit. He ordered take out every day and forgot to shower for a while. He dropped his dad a voicemail telling him the keys to the loft were in the mail but didn't take any of his calls. Then one night, when he was slightly sober, after six cups of coffee, he logged off of gossip girl and unsubscribed.

It was the final tethering.

They didn't want him and now he finally had a reason to leave behind the fragments of his high school self. Lily, called him to tell him Blair had been calling him non stop and that she had even been to the loft asking for him; that Nate had asked where he was and that Serena needed to speak to him about some 'movie thing' but he politely told her he was 'not going to be available and he'd changed his cell and could she please convey that to his…fri-, to them'.

"For how long, Dan? You can't do this indefinitely, honey. You're not Charles," she said.

"No. But I am done. I'll see you all when I want to. I just need to get away. I'm busy enough as is, so" he murmured.

Hanging up on his life could be the best thing he did or the worst but either way he knew it was what he needed. He needed to get away from a pair of brown eyes that had somehow taken up residence in his heart.

The fact that he had to drink himself to sleep every night and that he hadn't shaved in two weeks had nothing to do with anything.

Besides, Alessandra said it made him seem more 'legit'.

Go figure.