A/N They can't ruin my Dair in my head...que sera sera!
After all the insane drama, the closure that never happened, the heartbreaks and revenge sex, it happens like this:
They are in their late twenties. She was handed her mother's fashion company in order to make it even better, to create her own name, but she fails. Eleanor isn't that old now, but after several bad seasons, she decides to get back in charge and suggests her daughter to finish the damn college once and for all. Blair realizes that her mother is right.
It takes an eternity for her to realize that as long as she is Chuck's shadow she can't grow up or mature as a person. Her college isn't her priority as long as she is with him and her second wedding isn't helping her. It seems like a dream when she marries him and it seems like a cruel awake when they divorce almost three years later. She doesn't care anymore. She is all alone…Alone with her books and her thoughts and her sad realizations over the past mistakes. This time Paris doesn't help her, her father and Roman aren't a good company, and she barely yells at Dorota.
People would say that her divorce literally destroyed her. Truth is it helped her more than anything. She is no longer the control freak, the weak little girl with OCD…She starts wearing flats and jeans and simpler outfits. They are designers' of course, but she feels like vomiting when she organizes her wardrobe. All those flowery and old lady like designs and patterns...
….
His marriage fiasco with Serena ends five months later. They are both agreed that it was a mistake. She goes God knows where, west coast probably and he finishes his college meanwhile and gets his master degree in literature. He attended Blair's wedding, clapped and congratulated her and it all seemed like a dream. He thought he was over her and the entire drama and melancholy Blair was dragging around with herself. Several years later, when he heard she got divorced his heart skipped a beat. Not that she'd even think of him after everything, not after his second book, or the fact that he never failed to tell her what he thought of her idiotic delusion with Chuck Bass. He absorbed the news and moved on with his life. A new book was about to come out and he needed to be focused on that.
…..
Paris, late summer, the year isn't important. They are in their late twenties.
A bookstore café. Outside is pouring cats and dogs, and the black sky is cut by a lightening. Several people are reading peacefully inside the café, and the woman who works there sits behind the counter sipping her coffee and staring outside. A young woman walks towards the café, after she tosses her broken umbrella in the trash bin. She wears flats and jeans and a red plaid shirt with a simple black blazer over it. Nothing special, the woman who works there has seen so many girls like her before. The girl walks in, greets the woman and walks between the shelves.
On the other side, among the book shelves and the tables, there is a guy, handsome young man, wearing a simple black t-shirt and jeans, and his hair is long with untamed curls, and although he tried to make somewhat decent ponytail, some curls are sticking out around his face. He has three day long beard, and the woman can tell that he is a hipster or one of those self-proclaimed wannabe intellectual snobs…a writer even maybe. She keeps sipping her coffee, it's none of her business what her clients really are.
The girl in red plaid shirt finally picks a book. It's in French and the woman could have sworn that the girl was a foreigner, at least according to her accent. She opens the book in a certain page (doesn't start from the beginning at all) and starts reading it, as if she has read this book before. The woman doesn't really have to stare for too long to realize which book it is, at least based on the cover.
À l'intérieur
The woman smiles, because it seems like this guy on the other side of the bookstore reads the exact same book. She smirks and her attention is drawn by another customer that asks her something.
Half an hour later, the guy, the author of À l'intérieur, or Inside in English, stretches on his seat, closes the book and just when he is about to stand up and leave (although it's still raining outside) he notices this brunette on the other side, reading his book. In French. And it's no one else but her. He looks at her for quite some time. He forgot how it felt to watch Blair Waldorf reading a book she enjoys. Her face expressions say it all; he doesn't even have to ask which part she reads. He shakes all the thoughts from his head, pays the woman and grabs the door knob.
But how? How can one leave when the love of their life is sitting just few steps away from them, in the middle of Paris…in the middle of a foreign city where he has several days off during his European tour for his last book? He inhales, turns around and walks towards her. He stands in front of her and she doesn't even lift her head to look up. He knows that she can be totally shut out of the real world when she reads.
"So did they end up together in the end?" – He dares to say. She lifts her head, her eyes still refusing to leave the lines and then she finally looks up at him. She swallows to wet her throat and doesn't really know what to say. His face is kind and he seems refreshed and grown up and matured well and…she smiles.
"I'm not there yet. I will have to buy the book to check the ending." – She adds.
"I can tell you the ending." – He says. – "I mean, I wrote the book…" – She tries to sustain the smile.
"You did?" – And she turns the cover. – "Daniel"
"Humphrey" – He adds. They both accept this game of playing strangers. And they really are, after half a decade. "And you mademoiselle?" – He sits opposite of her and puts his hand above hers. There are no diamond wedding rings, just her bare small pale hand.
"Blair" – She says. – "Nice to meet you"
They stay like that for a while, in silence, feeling comfortable with each other.
"How are you" – She finally asks.
"I think I'm good. And you?"
"Strange." – She says. – "Weightless, sort of. No drama, just myself, my books and this city."
"How long are you here?" – He asks.
"Don't know…You?"
"It's among the last tour cities in Europe…" – He says.
"What's the book about this time?" – She asks.
"About…" – He sighs. – "This man that leaves his entire life back and decides to travel the world and meets a girl and…"
"Where does he meet her?" – She asks.
"In the same spot from where he runs away…"
"How's the reception, do people like it?" – She asks quietly.
"Yes…critics say that I have to get out of my comfort zone when comes to my characters, because according to them I always write about the same character…the same woman…It's that obvious."
"Nobody can tell you what to do…" – Blair whispers.
"How does Inside sound in French?" – He changes the subject.
"When she says "Il n'y a rien entre nous, ni alors ni maintenant, rien." it sounds just…"* – She sighs.
"Je ne te crois pas."** – He adds in French, although his accent isn't nearly good as hers. She smiles. – "What's with the outfit though?" – He asks.
"I need a break from everything…Heels, dresses…my old self."
"I like it" – He says.
"I'm sorry Dan." – He looks down when she says that.
"It doesn't seem like it'll stop raining any time soon and I'm free tomorrow. There is a theater near by and they're showing…
"Tati, the entire week" – She finishes the sentence. – "I saw on my way here"
"Blair" – He says with pleading voice and his eyes are like they used to be, dear and full with love again. He isn't the writer Daniel Humphrey and she isn't Queen B in that moment. They are just two kids, meeting again far from the crime scene, and in that moment they know that the past is just prologue and it all starts from there.
"There is a show that starts within ten minutes" – She says quietly.
"Let's go" – He says, taking her small hand into his and they are leaving the café together.
The woman who works there smiles when they leave. She recognizes him from magazines. And she knows that this is the girl he writes about. She just knows by the way he holds her hand.
It's still raining, Paris is quiet, dark and wet. A couple buys tickets and walks into the cinema. There are just few heads sticking out from the seats. In the middle of the theater a girl rests her head on the guy's shoulder. A quiet laughs are interrupting the comedy…
The End
* There is nothing between us, not then, not now, nothing.
** I don't believe you