in the end, beautiful things break.
x
fabric swooshes against her ankles, bare feet sliding across the marble floor. his bow-tie is crooked, fingers marked with spilled ink. he wants to write about heartbreak and how gold turns silver over time. he wants to wax poetry about blonde girls with long, tan legs and dresses spun of silk but no words spring to mind. he has a book of poems about her at home, stuffed in a shoe-box from when he was sixteen and the world still meant something to him.
dance with me, she sings. too much gin and tonic in her blood stream. her smile is light and teasing, her eyes the ocean's blue. her fingers brush his covered shoulder, his stubble cheek, his lips. she leans in close, her breathe hot against his skin. "i'll tell you a secret." she teases, wrapping her fingers around his hand, pulling him towards the centre of the floor.
serena spins back out, her hand still enclosed over his. her dress is white, billowing out around her. it is not a wedding dress. but they're at a wedding; distant cousins of serena's, he was dragged along as her plus-one, despite their casual no-strings-attached relationship. they fuck, he writes, she dangles other men in front of him hoping to cause any sort of reaction. on sunday's they have blueberry pancakes and talk about painting their appartment.
"you still love her." the dance floor is empty and serena is drunk and dan pretends not to know who the who is; but he knows. he sees brunette hair and brown eyes and the ghost of a girl who never loved him. he sees his heart bleeding and his knuckles white and misery thrumming through his veins. he sees unconnected dots on a map, pamphlets on rome and stocking-covered feet thrown in his lap.
"who?" he asks, twirling serena around the empty stage. he plays dumb. he drags the game on longer. serena raises an eyebrow, purses her lips and looks ten years older, ten years wiser. he pictures her at sea, with a furnished house full of blue walls and a boy holding a bottle of something strong. he sees her working with children, telling them stories and teaching them how to build castles out of play-dough and their imagination. he sees her at twenty-eight, overdose in her apartment.
"blair." she says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. he supposes it is.
x
her lips are red and there are pearls at her throat and a toddler grabbing her hand, tightly. blair looks uncomfortable and he remembers long talks about how much she doesn't like children; their sticky-fingers and demanding enquiries. drunkenly, telling him she wanted an abortion so bad. how wanting one but not getting one was how the miscarriage resulted, her head in his lap, her tears drenching his shirt. his hand rubbing her back, telling her that it wasn't her fault. it wasn't her fault. it wasn't her fault. blair smiling, a fractured smile that doesn't reach her eyes, before she left the room and shut the door behind her.
she looks panicked and it's four in the morning and he's in his boxers. he has a girl in his bed that's not serena because she left him six months ago with a bag slung over her shoulder and a desire to see the world, carter baizen on her hip. her fingers caressing his cheek, departing one last kiss on his lips before leaving. i'll miss you buried in the back of her throat, words she couldn't say aloud.
blair pushes her way inside, henry following after. he's wide-eyed and looks too much like his father. he likes trains and picture books about monkeys and wants to be a zoo-keeper. dan knows this because he used to cling to serena more than he clung to blair, fights erupting between the two of them in their tiny apartment about it. you're stealing from him blair would accuse, her voice raised, and dan would cover henry's ears before grinning at him and suggesting they watch cartoons. bonding over colouring in books and elephants.
he doesn't ask what she's doing here, because conversation runs dry between them now, an awkward pretense. he just lets her inside. he wonders if blair knows serena is gone; that she left the city long ago, if they're on speaking terms at all. sometimes they go months without talking. sometimes blair turns up out-of-the-blue and asks bitterly if serena is still around or if she finally woke up and realised she deserved better.
wordlessly, he watches her push henry towards the spare room. her eyes trailing over her son that's half-her, half-chuck. she twirls her engagement ring, wedding band around on her finger over and over again.
"he cheated on me." she says, finally. eyes meeting his. "he told me straight after it happened. drunk and in tears and promising it wouldn't happen again." her throat is thick. he thinks she might start to cry. "i forgave him." blair laughs, shaking her head. "because i'm stupid and i want henry to be happy but..." blair trails off.
"he did it again?" dan asks, prompting her for the unfinished lines.
blair shakes her head, "no."
why are you here, then hangs unspoken in the air between them.
x
in paris the city breathes air into blair and knocks it out of her all the same. henry is in the city with chuck and serena is lying naked outstretched on her bed. hair mused, like a halo around her head. blair feels her heart pounding against her rib-cage. unsung tales buried underneath layers of skin. serena smirks lazily, happily, just-been-fucked happily and motions for her to come closer.
blair hesitates, remembers being fifteen and nervous. shy. jittery. lips against her best friend's and fingers splayed against her thigh, whimpering underneath fairy lights strung across her bed. her heart still full of romantic notions and ideals, not yet shattered by real worlds cruel twists of fate. her heart still on her sleeve and her body newly explored by hands she's entrusted since she was young, hands that have healed her back to health and tugged her off to adventures and now, brought her to the brink of ecstasy and brought her to a whole new land.
but. that was back then, when she wrote off each encounter as practice, because it wasn't real if it was between her and serena. wasn't real if it was with a girl. lessons taught to her by strict conservative parents who hid her father's secret out of shame and homophobia, passing those same ideals onto their questioning daughter who stuffed down all her feelings and ate her way through pain.
it feels real now. her rings heavy on her hand and her skin inked with words written about her. blood pumping through her and her head dizzy, spinning. on cloud fucking nine. serena beckons her closer and their lips touch and angels sing and it feels like coming home.
x
dan finds her at a charity function, his tie falling off and his lips red from where he's been biting them. serena is in venice with carter and blair has filed for divorce papers and dan wants to wrap his fingers in the tendrils of her curls and kiss her until neither of them can breathe. he wants to lose himself in the feeling. he wants to tell her how much he's missed her and the open wound that has been left in his chest, wide and gaping and bleeding.
he asks how she's doing and offers her another flute of champagne. blair tells him about his new book, what she hates, what she likes, what she tolerated. her smile widens and he asks her out to coffee for tomorrow, her hand slipping in his as they go onto the dance floor. he spins her around and holds her close, her head nestled in between the crevice of his shoulder and head.
she whispers secrets against his shirt and he feels chuck eyes burning holes into his skin. he wants to call serena and tell her she was right but he knows about paris and the nights they spent together; wrapped up in each other and he wonders if it would be inappropriate if serena's still hung up on blair. he doesn't know if she is, but assumes she is, because how could anyone not be hung up on blair; she's a hurricane that wraps herself around people and leaves them broken in her wake. a blazing path of destruction, too powerful for her own good. not that it's her fault. people are weak and expect too much from others and fall too easily. dan did.
x
blair kisses him like the world is ending and he has the life knocked out of him.
he runs his fingers along her spine, down her shoulder, trailing goosebumps. his mouth pressed against her chest, the slope of her breasts, her belly-button. he tells her he loves her in latin, whispering it against her skin. she is silent. he is loud.
it feels like time has stopped and the past few years have been a bad dream.
x
serena sees them five years later, when she comes back from rome with carter. they have a two-year-old daughter and tans from their impromptu trip in hawaii before they came home. she kisses them both in a storage-room, too much tongue, and tells them she knew this would happen. that she's happy for them. that they better thank her in their wedding vows. laughing as she flies out of the room.
dan looks at blair and starts writing his next book in his head.