A/N: Set in early s3. It's pretty self-explanatory. Reviews are love!
i love you more than songs can say
but I can't keep running after yesterday
why you wanna break my heart again?
why am i gonna let you try when
all we ever do is say goodbye
(all we ever do is say goodbye) john mayer
She is sitting on his fire escape, having traded her school skirt for denim cut-offs, and she's wearing that face that used to inspire the composition of entire poems in his head.
The sting of autumn is in the air, a hint of cold penetrating summer's constant humidity. He sighs, breathes it in, lets it seep into his lungs, and hesitates for a minute. There will probably always be a part of him that is just the slightest bit in love with her. And there will definitely always be another part of him that is irritated with that lovesick part.
Get over it, he tells himself sternly, but he sits down next to her anyway.
"You're not at Brown." It's stating the obvious, but it's also conversation.
Serena shakes her head. Her hair is hiding her face. "No. I'm not."
He sighs and moves a little closer to her, rests his hands on his legs. He's not going to touch her. "Why not?"
"Didn't feel right," she whispers. She turns to look at him and her eyes are wet, a stormy blue, like she's going to cry. "I can't…I can't decide what I want to do with my life when I don't even know…"
"What don't you know?" He feels a little like her therapist, with all these questions, but his heart is also doing something funny in his chest.
"Me." She says it on an exhale, like a confession, lets the wind pick it up and carry it away. "I don't know…me."
"And Brown wasn't the right place to figure it out."
A shake of her head, to the negative.
"So you figured, hey, may as well try Dan's fire escape?"
Serena laughs, curling in on herself: elbows on her thighs, face buried in her hands. "Yes, exactly that," she tells him, her voice muffled and small.
"And how's that working out for you?" he asks gently.
"I can't really be at home right now. It's just…" She lifts her face and swallows. "I was going to stay with Chuck, and I probably still could, but…"
His mouth feels dry; he thinks about getting up, inviting her in, pouring some lemonade, but he doesn't go through with it. "You can stay here, Serena."
She tilts her head back, looks at the stars. "Just for one night," she whispers, as though she's bargaining with the gods.
Dan answers her anyway, corrects her: "For as long as you need."
Her legs, dangling off the edge, kick out above the city streets. "Do you remember…" She trails off, and the air stills around them.
He's not going to ask. Not this time. This time, he doesn't want to know. The silence lingers, punctuated by a car alarm going off somewhere to the east.
She isn't looking at him when she picks up the thought again. "Do you remember when we first started dating?"
Dan breathes out, long and slow. Yes, he remembers. Of course he remembers. He remembers the day she asked him out (asked him to save her), their messy first date, their first kiss on the street; he remembers all of that as well as he remembers the first time he saw her, the first time she spoke to him, the time she drunkenly called him Dave. He remembers every milestone of their relationship, from the big ones like sex under the snow to the small ones (Serena hates pens with red ink) that aren't even milestones at all. Remembers it all as well as he remembers not to remember that she is monthsweeksdays away from being his stepsister.
She looks at him, dark blue eyes and a sweet little half-smile on a face that contradicts the sadness in every other bit of her body language, a face that sparks allusions to Helen of Troy in his mind. If there was ever a look that could launch one thousand ships, this is it, right here.
But Dan has no ships (never has, and it was what initially made him so uneasy about this relationship), he's only got an answer. "Yeah. Uh, yeah, I remember."
The tragedy in her eyes slips a bit as they brighten up. All she wanted was an answer. He forgets that sometimes, forgets that there was a time when he wasn't just enough, he was everything.
Her bare foot touches his and he's grateful that he's got sneakers on. "Do you remember what Gossip Girl posted? About us, after someone spotted us…"
Kissing. He dares her telepathically: say it.
But she doesn't.
Dan sighs, because he does remember but he's not about to be lame enough to admit it. He supposes that, without ever really knowing it, he and Serena were always battling to impress each other, to prove themselves. "Um…no, I don't," he chuckles.
"She said I had to watch out." Serena giggles in a way he's never heard from her before, mirthless and almost eerie. "Because it looked like you'd stolen my heart."
"Oh," he says faintly, clearing his throat.
They're quiet for a long time. He thinks about touching her (but he's not going to). He grinds his teeth and contemplates sending her to Chuck's, where maybe Blair could take care of her. He considers suggesting that they go inside.
Before he can make up his mind, Serena makes a strangled noise at the back of her throat. She is staring down, at her toes, or maybe at the city beneath them, but that doesn't stop him from seeing a tear roll down her cheek and drip off her chin, falling down, down, down.
"I think maybe…" Her voice is strained and it makes his chest tighten. "Maybe you forgot to give it back."
Dan swallows audibly. He's not going to touch her, he's not.
His hand ends up cupping her cheek gently, turning her head toward his, and he lets the air around them catch his confession, too. "Maybe I didn't want to."
He hopes for a wind, to carry the words away, but night is settling and everything around them is calm. So they sit there, the two of them, engulfed by a truth they've had difficulty facing for almost a year.
How much longer are they going to do this?
Serena's voice echoes in his ears. Just for one night.
"That's not fair," she says, and she's shaking.
"Serena…" His thumb moves softly over her cheek, collecting tears.
"What am I supposed to do?" It's a demand, and a rough one, but her voice is fragile. "How am I supposed to get anything right if I don't even have…"
He tucks her hair behind her ear, knuckles skimming her skin. "What don't you have?"
She looks like she's going to break. "Anything," she mutters, and even her cynicism has a weary note to it.
He's got an arm wrapped around her before he can really let himself think about whether or not it's a good idea, pulling her close to his side. Friends can do this, he's sure. Serena falls into him a little, head against his shoulder. He turns his head in her hair and lets himself breathe her in, the smell of her shampoo and perfume.
"What was the point of it? This summer?"
Serena sighs. It catches twice in her throat. "I don't want to talk about it."
He laughs, actually laughs, and kisses her head before he remembers that he's not supposed to. "But that's why you're here," he says, and for once it's not a question.
"No…" She shakes her head, an awkward move because of how she's pressed against him.
"What were you looking for? What didn't you find?"
"I wanted to figure it out. To figure me out, to…"
"To what?" he asks, ultra-quietly.
"I just want to get things right." She tilts her head to look up at him, earnest and trusting. "Like you do. You do it all the time."
He scoffs. "Serena, do you remember last year at all? That was hardly an example of me getting things right."
It's a tug-of-war, this thing they do; his pull for her to be just a bit better, to be good, to be his, and her push for him to be a little worse, to be hers. It shouldn't be this hard to meet in the middle, to call a stalemate.
"I just worry," she whispers. "I can't remember, sometimes…when things were simple or happy or – "
Dan kisses her then, loses the game, lets her tempt him and tug him until he tumbles over the line and right into her. He used to want this so badly it hurt.
And from the way she's kissing back, maybe she ached for it just as much.
Maybe they both still do.
He pulls away from her (he is responsible) and she's blinking at him with hazy blue eyes that remind him of red bed sheets. It takes extreme effort for him to focus on anything but her lips.
She pushes away, fingertips on her mouth, and she laughs – the laugh he's always loved, her four-year-old laugh that can light up a room, light up the whole city, light up his whole world. "Um," she says, and takes a break to laugh some more. She's taking short little breaths; he can see them in the movement of her chest. "Thank you," she murmurs, "for the reminder."
He manages to chuckle a bit. "If you had your heart back," he begins cautiously, "what would that change?"
Would it fix you?
"I don't know, Dan." She bites her lip. "I don't really know anything at all, but…that's not what I wanted, this summer, in Europe." Their eyes lock and she shrugs a little. "Thank you for keeping it safe."
"Any time," he says honestly, and feels like his father's son, every time.
Serena shivers and he reaches for her again automatically. She huddles into his hold, her head tucked beneath his chin, not speaking.
He doesn't want to let go (it's like déjà vu, he wouldn't even if she asked him to) but he knows now (just like he did then) that he has to, that it's time, and that right now he is the one who was to sever ties because she took the first step by showing up in this very spot.
"So," he says teasingly, like this is nothing monumental, an old song and dance, "if I gave it back to you, would you promise to take care of it, to keep it safe for yourself?"
She cuddles closer. Her lips are touching his neck. "Do I have a choice?"
Dan doesn't reply, because he should say no, but if he lets himself speak, like always, the answer will be yes.
Serena wants an answer, though. "Dan?" she asks when he's silent for too long.
He groans a little. "Don't make me answer that."
Her head lifts up and it hurts to look her in the eye like this, to have all of their history caught in between them.
She's practically in his lap now and he can't resist touching her cheek again, tentatively, reminiscent of the seconds before their very first kiss. "I always thought you were right," he tells her sadly.
Serena smiles even as tears flood her eyes, and she kisses him this time. Last first kiss, for them, he thinks. It's familiar and foreign all at once, comfort after such a long time. She tastes like home and heartbreak all wrapped up into one perfectly imperfect girl, and that is what makes it so hard to let go, and so hard not to.
"I'm cold," she murmurs against his mouth. Moments and kisses later, it's, "I'm tired."
His smile is small but certain as she breaks the kiss and wipes her lip gloss off his mouth. She's playing coy with him, like this isn't a story that's already written.
"Do you want me to tell you that you can sleep in my bed? Do you want me to say I'll keep your warm?"
She smiles back but it doesn't reach her eyes. She shakes her head and kisses him again lightly. "I want you to…"
"To what?" He doesn't want to feel like this, nervous, and he hopes that she can't tell.
Her lips are on his jaw, his neck, and her fingers are nimbly undoing the buttons on his plaid shirt, trailing down slowly. "Dan," she sighs, and he can hear that she's smiling. "Stop asking questions."
His hand slips beneath her shirt. "Start answering them."
She kisses him again (most likely to shut him up), tongues battling this time, and he's suddenly acutely aware of the fact that they're making out on his fire escape, and she's got all of the buttons on his shirt undone.
"Come inside," he says, mouth on her jaw, then her neck.
Serena laughs silkily, her throat vibrating beneath his lips. "Thought you'd never ask."
He watches her climb through the window, the easy sway of her hips and the way she flops onto his bed, making herself comfortable atop his un-tucked sheets and a couple of his discarded sweaters. He joins her, unable to help a small grin as he lies next to her, one of his hands drifting over her hip.
She throws her head back this time, light laughter and blonde hair spilling onto his pillows. "You're the same," she murmurs, touching his face as if she's trying to reacquaint herself with the feel of him, "but different."
"And you're not making any sense." He unties the knot at the back of her neck, the one that holds up her halter top. "Like always." Dan shakes his head a little as she lies back fully, her body halfway underneath his. "You are the most confusing person I know."
Her hands push his shirt off his shoulders, down his arms, and toss it somewhere to the side. Serena's smile is sweet and lazy, just like her kiss is when she arches up into him and her mouth finds his. "You wouldn't want me any other way."
He doesn't miss the shadow that flits through her eyes, the acknowledgement that it might be a lie. That was part of it, after all, wasn't it? The reasons they broken up (again and again), because they weren't always the way one another wanted.
Dan hesitates for a second. "You shouldn't be any other way," he tells her honestly. "Then you wouldn't be you. Maybe that's what you have to do. Don't pretend or try to be…" He shrugs. "Be you."
"And what if no one likes me?"
He almost laughs, and yet his throat feels tight, because her eyes are shining with vulnerability at the same time that she's confidently unbuttoning and unzipping his jeans, and it's just so Serena that it almost hurts.
She turns her face away, looking at his wall, the same poster that's been up there since they were sixteen and they, the two of them together, felt like they'd never end. "You didn't," she whispers. "You didn't and you loved me before you even met me."
They're only eighteen, but high school and their relationship feel so very far away, eons away, even. And yet here she is, crying in his bed, and here he is, wishing this wasn't what it is (goodbye). "I was…fifteen, when I met you," he says quietly, because it makes his breathing a little rougher, thinking about growing up and moving away and letting go. "It was kind of impossible not to love you."
Serena sniffs, tears painting a picture on her cheeks, interwoven pathways. "You don't make any sense," she says angrily, stubbornly, a frown tugging her lips downward. She pushes his jeans down his legs roughly. "That doesn't answer –"
He chuckles low in his throat and god, she's beautiful and ridiculous and her skin smells so sweet, and he doesn't know how he ever could've gone his whole life only wondering what it would be like to be with this girl. He had to know. He's glad he does.
Her hands drift over his back, pulling him closer to her. "It's not funny…"
"Shh." He kisses her languidly, insistently, waits until her body loses its tension and she is relaxed underneath him. Amidst kisses, he tells her, "You look…just like…a poem, right now." He pulls back to look her in the eye, to smile at her. "Just like you did the night I met you."
She giggles, her arms now wrapped lazily around his neck, legs shifting to let him move between them. "You are such a dork,Dan Humphrey."
"You fell for this dork," he reminds her, mock-insulted. He reaches between them to undo the button on her denim shorts and for some reason that reminds him that it's different, this time, a button and a short metal zipper instead of the slim little zipper with the plastic tab tucked invisibly into the side of her Constance Billard seersucker skirt.
It sounds like she feels it, too, when she whispers back, "And this dork caught me." She lifts her hips to let him slide her shorts and underwear off, pushes at his boxers in turn. "You know when you asked me before…" She's shaking. "When you asked what I wanted you to do?"
It gets caught in between them, bare limbs and desperate kisses, the familiar rhythm of their bodies, a breathless love me trapped between his lips and hers (as if he'd ever had any intention of doing anything else).
x
Dan wakes up around midnight, rolling over onto cold sheets. She isn't there, and he was never so naïve to expect her to be, though he'd hoped, for just a second. He sighs. His pillow smells like coconut and sandalwood, so he gets up and strips his bed, refusing to dream of her.
He smokes a cigarette out on his fire escape, a casual habit that he picked up only after meeting Serena (just as addictive, just as toxically sweet) and stuck to because it seemed like an authentic part of his image as a writer.
A taxi drives by on the street below, honking, and he wonders if she's in it. A plane leaves a trail overhead, winding through the stars, and he wonders if she's on it.
He sighs, and coughs into the sleeve of his previously-discarded plaid shirt.
It smells like her, too, the scent infused into the fabric.; he feels particularly empty all of a sudden, two-times lighter.
With another sigh, he glares at plane, and even the taxi, for good measure. He should have laid down the rules more precisely. When he'd given Serena her heart back, he'd forgotten to mention that she wasn't supposed to take his along.
Even if, maybe, it was attached.
x
Dan knows this story like he was the one who wrote it. And in a sense, has was.
It's beautiful, he won't deny that, won't even be so humble as to pretend to. It is like an ancient, epic poem - god knows Serena van der Woodsen's eighteen years of life could constitute one.
The problem, of course, being that he has yet to figure out the ending.
He lights another cigarette, still sitting on his fire escape, still in a shirt that smells like sandalwood.
(Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.)