A/N - So, this is another companion one-shot. I kept getting people asking for more DS, so here it is. I'm so glad they're back.
"I'd really like it if you weren't so sad anymore." It's a nice sentiment, but he can tell right away that she doesn't want to hear what he has to say.
"I'm not in the mood, Dan." She gets out of her bed, coming towards him so she can push him out the door of her room. She's in a lacey black little number that Dan really wishes she weren't wearing at the moment. He focuses on her face instead, as hard as it is, and in it he finds the same bleak look she'd been wearing since her façade with Steven crumbled the previous week.
"You're never in the mood. What is going on with you? You told me that you're not upset over your break up with Steven, so why are you so—"
"Don't you have to work on some plan to get my former best friend to sleep with you again or something?" her words are so biting that he actually stops putting up a fight and lets her slam the door in his face.
"Serena, you can't do this."
"I'm letting you crash here. Unless you want to be homeless, then I can do whatever I want." She says from behind the door. He feels her weight against the door, hears a light thud. She probably slid to the floor. He does the same, mirroring her on the other side of the door.
Dan Humphrey feels like shit. He leans his head back against the door. He can't seem to focus on anything with her moping in the next room. He's trying to write the last few chapters for his serial and he can't get through any of them. Of course, it didn't help that Vanity Fair was dying for the Serena van der Woodsen chapter ever since the debut of his home movie with her. He couldn't finish it. In fact, he'd re-read what he had so far earlier that day and he hated it. It was cruel. But so were all of his other chapters, save for the one about Chuck.
"Hey, Dan?" Her voice is so quiet; he's surprised that he even heard her through the door.
"Yeah?"
"You want to know why I'm sad?"
"Yeah."
She doesn't respond, but he can hear the shuffling of paper. Something pokes him from behind and he realizes that she's slipped a few sheets of paper under the door. He picks them up, almost drops them when he sees the title.
"Where'd you find this?" he asks, looking through the pages.
"I kept the original pages. You tore them out of your notebook and gave them to me as part of my Christmas present, five years ago. I forgot I even had it until I was unpacking my things. I've read it eighteen times since I found it a few days ago." It's hard to hear her through the door, but he thinks she sounds embarrassed.
"I can't believe you kept this." He doesn't try to hide the surprise in his voice.
"You really can't believe it? Because I think it's the only nice thing you ever wrote about me." The sadness has seeped back in and covered the embarrassment in her voice.
Dan looks at the first page. He hasn't looked at this piece in a long time.
10-8-05
"Hey! I heard you were coming, it's really nice to finally meet you!"
She was breathtaking. Her hair was golden and her legs went on forever. She seemed to glow and sparkle, and I know I'm not crazy because I was sober when I met her. I couldn't believe that she was actually real. I'd never gotten a good look at her around school before. I'd never really had a chance to, she was always surrounded. She was Serena. How could she not be? So, I'm standing there and this perfect girl is smiling at me. There's no way she knows who I am. Nonetheless, she was speaking to me.
"Hi. Yeah, thanks. It's really nice to meet you too." And it was, it was so nice.
"You're Derek, right? Nate's cousin?" She's grinning broadly now, completely flushed. Her champagne flute was empty. This was someone's fourteenth birthday party and she was drunk. My heart sank at her words even though I'd already figured that she had probably confused me for someone else.
"Uh, no, I'm Dan. I go to school with Nate."
She found this utterly hysterical and burst into laughter. It sounded like bells.
"Oh my gosh, I can be such an idiot sometimes." She smacks her forehead with the back of her free hand, still laughing through her words. "I'm so sorry, Dan. It was nice meeting you!" And she bounced off towards the birthday boy, wrapping her long thin arms around him in a tight hug. Nate was positively beaming at her once their hug was over. I didn't blame him.
I haven't spoken to Serena since then. She disappeared halfway through our sophomore year. It's been two months that she's been gone now. She's at boarding school, but it doesn't really matter where she is because she's not here anymore.
I'd been invited to that party by accident, and I can't figure out whether it was a blessing or a curse. I'll never get to know her, but from that point on, that was all I wanted to do. That night, I watched her dance on a tabletop with her little brunette friend, laughing her head off. I watched that same friend get into a fight with Nate, whom I found out was her boyfriend. She sat by herself for a while, and I could tell that she wanted to cry. Serena, surrounded by a large group of people all watching her, as usual, took one look at her friend and slipped out of her circle.
Drunk as she was, she managed to make her friend laugh quite a lot. She'd tug lightly on her friend's hair, whisper something in her ear, and they'd both burst into laughter. Serena eventually enveloped her friend into a hug. Was I the only person who wasn't getting hugged by her that night?
The two left the party with linked arms, a bottle of champagne dangling from Serena's hand, and two flutes in the hand of her friend. She completely turned her back on the good time she was having, deciding she was needed elsewhere. That was it for me. Suddenly, she was the greatest person in the world and always out of reach. I suppose the romantic in me thought that it was tragic. The realist in me said to keep my head down and keep walking.
I found a compromise. For a year and half, I followed her life on GossipGirl, a website I'd never even bothered to look at until I'd gotten home from that party. She lived a much more adventurous life than I did, to say the least. But was it so bad that I wanted to be a part of it? Late night parties, overly sexual teenagers with trust funds, crazy freedom and a life without real family. I didn't like how that sounded, but if it meant I could be around her, I wanted it.
Looking back, sometimes I regret not making an effort to talk to her more. I couldn't seem to pluck up the courage very often, and when I did it was hard to be coherent. It also didn't help that she didn't remember meeting me at all. I dropped one of my books walking past her one day, because I'd been staring at her and wasn't paying attention, as usual, and she heard the sound and ran over and picked it up.
"Here you go. Hey, are you new at St. Jude's?"
I was devastated, but at least she was directly speaking to me again. I think that maybe when I'm old and decaying and finally letting go of this pathetic crush, I'll laugh at how ridiculous I am. Serena laughs all the time. It always seems like she's having such a good time. I caught her once, just once, looking upset.-
Dan couldn't read anymore of it. He put the pages down. He knew what happened next. He'd watched her like a hawk for almost two years before she disappeared from his life. When he'd seen her at Grand Central at the start of their junior year in high school it felt like everything was right in the world. It wasn't New York without Serena van der Woodsen, it just wasn't.
"Serena, I—" He didn't know what he wanted to say, so he just closed his mouth instead.
"How could you go from feeling that way about someone to hating them?" She takes a deep breath and a shaky one comes out. Was she crying?
"I don't hate you. I never hated you."
"Could've fooled me. Have you forgotten about the last conversation we had before I left for the summer? Or the talk we had when you were interviewing girls to sleep with?" Yes, she was definitely crying now, he could hear it. Her weight was still pressing on the door, she hadn't moved.
He sighs, running a hand through his hair and looking back at his short story. He flips to the last page.
If Serena ever comes back to New York, I'm going to do everything I can to get to know her. Is it bad to want to love someone? Because I want to love her. It's probably weird. It's definitely weird. But if by some miracle she notices me, I'll never let her go. Even if she's not as perfect as she seems. I don't care. I can tell when she's happy, that she is a genuine person. I just know it, I have this feeling. I knew from the first time I saw her. Serena looks like forever.
He'd written that in 2006. That was six years ago. How could so much have changed since then?
"I said some horrible things to you. But that's because it felt like you weren't the same girl I fell in love with." He didn't know what else he could possibly say.
"You said all of that stuff because you knew I loved you and that it would hurt me." She stops and a few sobs escape. He can tell that she doesn't want him to hear her cry. "You said all of that because you loved Blair and you thought this would ruin things with you and her for good, even though you knew she'd dumped you for Chuck. Worst of all, you'd grown to believe that I was the character you'd written about in your book, not the girl you wanted to know in the piece you'd given me."
She's given up on hiding the fact that she's crying; she's much louder now. He's completely lost. Part of him wants to open the door and hold her but another part knows that it would only further complicate things. She probably wouldn't find him comforting anyway.
10-8-05 was the inspiration for Inside. It was supposed to be a story about him and Serena, but as his attention moved from one girl to another, the story changed. But he was now realizing that he'd been wrong. He'd thought that he'd changed the story so that Blair was the focus. What he'd really done is took Blair and made her Serena. But what was the point of that? Did it mean he'd lied? How could he betray the most honest thing he'd ever written, and turn it into a love story about another girl? He felt dirty. He felt ashamed. What was he doing to Serena?
"Serena, please stop crying."
"Shut up, I hate you."
Even though he knows she doesn't mean it, it hurts him. A powerful wave of regret hits him along with the shame and the guilt. Why hadn't he seen things clearly until now? Why hadn't he said anything when she'd said that she loves him and she always will, at Blair's wedding? That's not the kind of the thing you just brush off. His fourteen year old self would be disgusted with him.
He'd made her who she was. He'd ignored her and broken her heart, he hadn't even tried to be her friend. He had his eyes on a different prize and she ceased to exist. She saw an opportunity and took it; he'd played a hand in how low she'd sunk last summer before she took off.
"I used to be a really nice guy." He said, thinking aloud. "Especially to you."
"Yeah. You were the greatest person that I knew." She's not crying anymore. He tries not to feel too stung by the fact that she was using the past tense. He was no longer the greatest person that she knows.
"I'm sorry that I'm not that person anymore."
"Do you mean that?"
"Yeah, Serena, I do." He's not lying. He'd give anything to go back to that. To go back to how he'd felt with her, in that time in his life. He had never known love like that, though he'd loved both Vanessa and Blair since then. Maybe it was because she was his first. She was special, she was always meant to be special. She would always be special and he was ashamed for trying to erase that.
"Dan?"
"Yeah?"
"What did you think when you first saw me?" He can feel her back press against the door, like she was taking a really deep breath.
He says his answer without hesitation because the words were right in front of him, in his own handwriting. "I thought you looked like forever."
"Okay." She practically whispers. He stands up, his hand on the doorknob. But he can't make himself turn it. He's trying so hard to make his hand move but he just cannot do it. What was wrong with him?
"Serena, I don't know how to make you feel better." He says, leaning his forehead against the door, hand still gripping the knob. He closes his eyes and he can see some of the happiest times in his life flash before his eyes. They are all with her. But it's too late for them.
"I know that you're supposed to move on from your first love. Believe me Dan, I have tried really hard. But you're you. And I'm me." She trails off, and it's all he needs to finally open the door. Her back is to him, and she's sitting down and hugging her knees. She turns to look at him. He extends a hand and helps to stand up.
She's beautiful. She's beautiful and he wants her to be the girl he fell in love with. Her eyes are red and her lower lip is trembling. Her hands are shaking.
"Serena, just tell me to go sleep on the couch."
Her brow puckers. She shakes her head. "Why?"
His eyes rake her lacey nightgown clad body, so he closes them.
"Oh." She understands. "Okay, Dan. Go to sleep."
"But you're upset."
"I've been upset for about a year now. You're choosing now to care?" She sounds annoyed so he opens his eyes and concentrates on her face, which is also very pretty and doesn't make the situation any easier. They're both upset and they're both lonely. But if something happened that night, would it be just out of loneliness?
He decides to test his theory. Before she can realize was he's doing, or try to talk him out of it, he quickly pulls her in by the waist and kisses her. The kiss lasts for a few seconds, and he's relieved when she kisses him back. It feels really nice and familiar, in the best way possible. But it's tainted by the atmosphere of the night.
"Why did you do that?" She doesn't look angry, just confused.
"A kiss always means something right? We could have easily slept together, because we're both feeling bad about ourselves and about each other. And we could have decided that it meant nothing. But a kiss always means something." He doesn't know if his logic will make sense to her, he doesn't even know if it all makes sense to him right now. His vision is clouded with both lust and sadness, and all of a sudden she's become his tragic love story all over again. And he wants her in more ways than one.
She reaches both of hands up, places them evenly on his chest, and gently pushes him back. His hands drop immediately from her waist. She doesn't want this.
"I'm sorry." He says.
She nods her head, half smiling. "Me too."