Elephants Never Forget
Expensive Imagination
(A/N: For some reason pulling dan and blair apart gives me more inspiration? I don't know, but this is here so hey.)
In ten years she'll have a bob. Short, dark hair that swings just above her shoulders, straight and smooth and tucked neatly behind her left ear as she adjusts the bags in her arms.
He'll see her, but won't say anything.
He doesn't really talk to anyone in New York anymore, apart from his dad.
Why would he? He alienated himself with that book of his long ago.
It's not a sequel to Inside, but people take it as one, guessing which characters he's talking about from his first book; who these 'fictional' people are in the real world; and what they did to Dan to make his book so angry and bitter and fucking scary.
It's not a best seller, but it's critically acclaimed. They call it chilling and dark and compare it to a Bret Easton Ellis novel.
None of it makes him happy.
None of it.
In ten years she'll be divorced.
"I'll always love Chuck," She'll shrug to Serena one day. "But I'm too tired for passion and only passion. It hurts too much. You need more than love, S." She'll tell her friend, taking another large drink from her champagne glass.
Serena just adjusts her wedding dress nervously.
She sees Dan again, literally minutes before Serena gets married.
S went out for some air, and Blair wanders out to find her, when she sees them.
They're standing across from each other, tall and beautiful; stiff and awkward.
He reaches out an arm, his hand open as he hands her a thin piece of paper wrapped in ribbon.
She takes it, Blair watching from behind one of the church's elegant front pillars. They won't be able to see her, she's sure.
They're too busy focussed on each other, anyway. Always were, she thinks snidely.
Serena takes the offering he's holding, pulling the bottom of the bow and unravelling the paper. It's old and lined and crinkled everywhere.
But even Blair knows what that is.
It's my story, She sees Serena mouth.
...I just... Dan stops, trying to find his words. He looks up at her earnestly. This is how I see you, Serena. Not like the person I painted in my books, ok? You're a beautiful girl- a beautiful woman- and I hope you're really happy with Josh.
Serena doesn't say anything, but Blair knows what a crying girl looks like from any angle.
Thank-you, she tells him, grasping his hand one last time, before she turns back, heading in Blair's direction.
Dan's looking at her, looking at Blair, and their eyes meet once before she turns away, hurrying to catch up to the bride.
Dan Humphrey means nothing to her now.
Serena's wedding goes off without a hitch.
Lily cries and Rufus holds her hand, S looking radiant; godlike; in love as she says 'I do,' Josh slipping a ring on her finger with a steady hand and a goofy grin.
And Blair? Blair feels her hands shaking, her throat closing up as her life starts to pale in comparison to Serena's.
Because hasn't that always been the way.
They're both outcasts.
Dan in the obvious ways, socially snubbed from the Upper East Side, and not barred from certain events and parties, but certainly not invited either.
Whereas Blair, Blair's just alone. All alone in a big penthouse with no friends and no family- not anyone who needs her or whom she needs, anyway.
Outcasts in a city that's only so big.
He's been living all over the place for so long now that it's weird to be back in the city.
But it's good, too. Comforting.
It's cold here, with people and buildings everywhere, and really, it's just one big block of streets, a man-made mess, but to him...
To him it feels real, it feels familiar. It feels like home.
More so than palm trees and beaches, anyway.
He gets another place back in Brooklyn, and the Upper West Side is as high scale as he will dare to go.
No more Upper East Side for him. Because what's the point? He said goodbye to that life a long time ago.
...Didn't he?
Maybe she's a self-sabotager.
Maybe she just wants to see someone as alone as her.
Maybe she's curious after all of these years, a little bit nostaligic, too, over the fact that they're the ones left, still wandering, still waiting.
And maybe, just maybe, she missed him a little bit.
But then again maybe it was just coincidence that she finds Dan again.
When she says finds, she doesn't really mean 'finds'.
It's not as if she goes actively looking for him or anything, scouring the streets for a Humphrey sighting.
No.
Definitely not.
She just...
There's this really nice cafe near Columbia that she used to go to all the time between study breaks. It's in Morningside Heights and they have macaroons at a ridiculously low price and coffee that actually tastes like coffee and not the crap that they serve at her work.
(She'd send her assistant out to get it for her, but then her assistant would know about the place, and-no.)
And it's then, when she's walking up the street to her cafe, that she sees him.
She stops, the clicking of her heels pausing. He hasn't seen her yet, posed on the other side of the street, a thick jacket coating his arms, a little bit of scruff masking his chin. He's wearing worn jeans, but nice suede shoes, and there's no beanie, just an expensive looking scarf that she's sure was a gift- he would hardly know the difference between that and something from Wal-Mart- and-
And he's looking at her.
They're staring, standing in the middle of their respective streets, just... Staring.
And then she does it.
She leans.
All it takes for him to come over is her gesture, the bare heeled leg moving out towards him, mouth opening with intent that doesn't follow through.
He does it for her, crossing the street, and then he's there, in front of her, dark eyes a little more crinkled than what she was used to, hair cropped short and close. These are good changes, though, not bad.
He looks... He looks like he's finally grown up. And she must look that way too, and that's what makes her ask.
"Coffee?"
He doesn't say no.
It starts off with small talk as they sit, Blair taking what can only be described as delicate bites from a macaroon, Dan polishing off a plate of French fries. ("No one makes fries like they do here in New York, all right? I've been deprived.")
He's been travelling a lot. India, Asia, all over Europe...
"Found what you were looking for?" She asks him- because that's what those trips sound like, what she'd be doing if she went to all of those places: trying to find herself.
He quirks a self-deprecating, sad little smile at her. "Not really."
And finally, finally, honesty. He's being honest with her, something that no one in her life seems to be.
Everyone else is just so fucking happy all of the time, reaching for their goals, or content with what they have, living life with ease.
Hearing that Dan Humphrey's confused too, doesn't, for once, make her feel like she's been lumped in with the loser, that she's lost control again.
No, instead it makes her feel secure. Reassured. Less alone.
She reaches for her drink with a steady hand, a sort of smile working its way onto her lips.
Her and Dan Humphrey. Who would have thought?
A quasi routine is formed.
I'm bored, let's get lunch.
All you did Monday was complain about how many pages you had to write this week. Shouldn't you be doing that?
I'll buy.
I'll come to your office.
I'll venture out to the Upper East Side.
I'll go to a tea house with you.
I'll buy your assistant coffee.
I'll give her a signed copy of my book.
I'll give you an interview.
Meet me downstairs.
And Humphrey: you're the last person that my magazine would want to interview.
It carries on like this, the two of them meeting up for lunch and coffee and the occasional brunch- "Pre-business breakfast, Dan?" "Go 'way my agent got me drunk last night." "...We can go to a diner if you want. You can have that black coffee you like... Maybe some bacon and disgusting greasy food if-" "Be here in ten."- for quite a while.
And it's nice. Blair has a best friend again (not that she'd tell Dan that), and they can watch movies and banter off of each other and, well, she has someone to spend her time with, really.
It's all working out nicely.
And then they go to Rufus and Lily's Christmas dinner.
"Don't go, then."
"I can't not," he whinges to her over the phone like the 30 year old that he is. "I haven't been with my dad at Christmas for a good five years now, Blair. And now that I'm back in the city... I can't exactly just skip out on him again."
"Well you can, but-"
"Oh shut up," He groans as he fights off a Christmas tree branch in a department store.
"What are you even doing wherever you are, Humphrey? It sounds like you're beating up small children or something."
"Yes, Blair," He drawls sardonically, "That's exactly what I'm doing. Beating up children. Merry Christmas to all and an arrest warrant for me."
"It's possible. Who knows what you've been doing all these years off in strange, third-world countries."
"London isn't a third world-"
"Might as well be by some of the girls that I met-"
"You're so wanky sometimes-"
"Being born in Essex doesn't excuse you from having manners, my god."
Dan just stops, bursting into laughter, a few other shoppers turning to stare.
"Oh my god, you're ridiculous," he says with warmth, dodging another display of christmas wrapping boxes and wandering into a section that seems to be dominated by ceramic elephants.
Lily likes ceramic elephants, doesn't she?
"No one likes ceramic elephants," she tells him through the phone line.
"Which probably means that my mother likes them, so that's her done," He says half jokingly and half really not as he picks up a miniature white animal.
It's quite cute, actually.
Blair might like it, he thinks. (He doesn't say that one out loud, though.)
Blair sighs. "I have to go, a meeting to get to blah, blah, blah, not that you'd understand, you're practically unemployed."
"As always, thank-you for that."
"You're welcome." She says, and she's about to hang up the phone, he can tell, but-
"Wait!" He says, and it's loud enough so that he gets a fresh set of people turning around to stare at him.
"...Yes, Dan?" She asks him amusedly.
"I... What are you doing Christmas day, Waldorf?" He asks her.
"Going to Paris," she tells him, "As you well know."
His throat closes up and he swallows, hoping the fear- no, not fear, that would be stupid- is swallowed up too.
"Do you want to not?"
Miraculously, she agrees.
Maybe he sounds desperate, or maybe she's been having Christmas in Paris for so long now, but maybe, just maybe, this is what they really want; Christmas together in New York City but were both too afraid to ask.
"It's going to be really great." Dan tells her earnestly.
Well, sort of earnestly. It is Christmas after all. The whole white, New York snowy December thing he drooled over back in high school has kind of lost its novelty now.
But even so, he can't help feeling just a little bit... excited. The spring in his step more pronounced, his smile more genuine as the days wear on and Blair stays by his side.
Yeah, no, he thinks. This year, this year, Christmas is going to be good.
Late at night on December the twenty-fifth he'll walk along an Upper East Side street cursing to himself about Blair freaking Waldorf.
"Merry fucking Christmas," he snorts to no one, grabbing the package he'd wrapped up in his jacket for her and hurling it into the street.
And he doesn't hear it, but a little ceramic elephant cracks into pieces.
But that's later. First there's Christmas dinner. (And Chuck, a separation and a pregnancy to announce.)
(...Later.)
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