It was a different time and place. They hadn't known one another since they were kids, since they were only teenagers trapped in the vapid, shallow pool that teenagers find themselves in. No, they were analysts, critics, dictators of taste and opinion. They were adults, meeting for the first time.
She sat reading some nonfiction work by some author whom she may or may not remember. He was such a writer, struggling to make himself memorable to the intellectuals like her. She sat alone, but it wasn't a lonely sort of alone. No, it was a comfortable solitude that only women like her can make. She didn't need a man, and she didn't need him.
And that only made him want her more.
She was the type of woman whose opinion mattered because she would give it honestly and freely, even if she wasn't asked. The kind who could match him word for word, parry for parry, and never leave him wanting more because she was more. She was the embodiment of more.
Tugging the collar of his gray jacket, he walked to her table and offered her the hint of a smile, which she ignored. "Is this seat taken?"
"It isn't, but I suppose the answer to that question wasn't really what you wanted to know," she remarked simply, boredly glancing up at him before returning her gaze to the literature in her grasp to run her hand down the front cover.
"You're right," he pointed out with a smirk that quirked up the corner of his mouth. "Paris is lovely this time of year, and what better way to spend a day than finding a like mind?"
Her eyebrows raised slightly as if something he'd said finally attracted some sliver of her attention, but she didn't bother looking over at him as he settled himself in the empty chair across from her. Setting the book gently on the tabletop, she slowly raised her gaze to focus on him, drinking him in with her intent eyes. "And you are?" she asked, a hint of petulance and impatience in her tone.
"Dan Humphrey," he offered, extending his hand toward her. Her brown eyes glanced toward his hand before looking back in to his face as she slowly extended her hand to his. She shook in that way that proper women do, a mixture between a handshake and offering her hand for him to kiss it in that antiquated way.
"Blair Waldorf," she replied simply, releasing him when the appropriate amount of touching had been reached.
"What's a young lady such as yourself doing reading alone in Paris in the summertime?" he asked, perhaps with too much of a hint of accusation unintentionally tinting his voice.
Her eyebrows rose in sincere interest now, but a sharp, discerning interest and not a humorous one. "Do I look like I need companionship, Mr. Humphrey? Because I do not," she retorted firmly, assured of herself. The reaction made him smile instantly.
"I didn't mean to allude that you did-"
"Ah, but you did, didn't you?" she cut him off, leaning forward slightly in her chair and lifting her leg to cross her legs at the knee. "Does every woman you meet require a man to make her time worth spending?" She smiled a sweet, yet sardonic smile at him that made him chuckle and shake his head gently.
"Not at all. I admire a woman who is not conformed by the men in her life. Now, you see to be a strong, independent woman capable of making something of herself without a man to take that away from her," he pointed out, shrugging his shoulders slightly.
Drawing herself up as if his answer pleased her, Blair straightened her skirt over her hips before glancing back up at him. Something in her eyes bespoke of her willingness to believe him but her unfortunate lack of confidence in his words. Her pride would never openly admit this, however. He could only read it, knowing she would deny the existence of any self-esteeem issues she may have. She would make a marvelous muse for a novel.
"Perhaps I'm married," she conjectured, raising her chin and drawing her shoulders up along with her eyebrows as the shadow of a smile teased at the corners of her perfectly high quality lips.
"Oh, is that so?"
"Oh yes!" she exclaimed breathily, leaning forward over her knees and twining her fingers together on the table top as her dark eyes looked across at him. "I'm married to a rich billionaire who owns most of some city such as New York, and while it isn't the happiest marriage in the world, the sex is wonderful and we have the obligatory family: son to carry on the family name included."
"Ah, I see. The perfect life that everyone dreams about, with none of the passion," he added, lowering his head and peering at her out of the tops of his eyes as an amused smile crossed his lips.
Her jaw dropped open as she scoffed gently in feigned offense. "Who says there is no passion?" she asked, her eyebrows raising once more as she turned her head and pointed her nose haughtily in the air. "There is plenty of passion: roleplaying and world travel and scheming."
"Yes, but is there love?" he asked, resting his forearms comfortably across the table, watching her with his interested eyes, clearly intrigued by her.
The question seemed to catch her off guard, and she looked at him for the first time since this game had begun. The hint of some unspoken emotion flashed over her dark gaze, but it was gone before he could hope to interpret it.
"What is love in the face of all that?" she asked, watching him intently with her hawklike gaze.
He smiled knowingly, cocking his head slightly to the side. "What is mere happiness in the face of such... passion?" he asked.
"Precisely," she concluded, as if that answered it all.
"I don't believe that's passion at all," he commented, sitting back in his chair, pulling his elbows up along his sides and resting his arms over the arms of the seat.
"Is that so?" she asked, more intrigued than she cared to let on. Her body language gave her away as her foot bobbed slightly and her shoulders turned to face him. "So you don't believe my perfect married life, with my perfect wealthy husband and my perfect highbred son, is passionate? Why is that, Mr. Humphrey?"
"Because I don't believe you're the type of woman to settle for an archetype when she could forge her own destiny," he pointed out plainly.
Her eyes briefly danced over his face, and that flash of emotion returned but was once again so fleeting that he had no hope of discerning its true meaning. Her dominant exterior was quite clearly a facade for something deeper, something much more interesting than the over-privileged, highborn bearing she showed.
"A woman who needs no man to define her, that is what you are, and everything you described is a woman defined by the men in her life," he added, drawing her attention to him as he sat forward again. "You're familiar with the role expected of a woman, but you're unwilling to fulfill it. It would leave you empty and bitter, unhappy and resentful, but it's the only thing you know."
"What do you know about me, Mr. Humphrey? I don't believe you know me at all," she pointed out, gentler than even she had expected.
"Perhaps I know you better than you think, Miss Waldorf," he countered softly.
A strange, mutual tension spread between them, not an unpleasant thing but a taut, thick thing. It was a malleable mesh suddenly linking them inexplicably. They stared at one another for a moment, that electricity sizzling silently through the moody afternoon sunlight between them.
"Are you a psychiatrist or something? You instantly know who I am because you recognize the brand of my shoes and the designer of my jewelry? You don't see a tan line on my ring finger so you know I'm not married, and by the way I read Thoreau all alone, you assume I am a single, independent woman with no need of companionship."
"You said as much yourself, I do believe, and no, I am not a psychiatrist. I am a writer."
"A very classic profession, albeit a socially unaccepted one except in the plebian circles of the lower class."
"Says the woman who reads Thoreau all alone with no need of companionship," he noted, returning her banter in kind. "Tell me, Miss Waldorf, do you define the world around you by what your society expects out of you or because you honestly believe what you see to be true?"
Her dark eyes flickered to his, and the hint of a smile ghosted across the corner of her mouth. "And what society would you believe that to be, Mr. Humphrey?"
"Considering the references you made to New York and money, in addition to the brand of your shoes and the designer of your jewelry, I would believe you belong to old money of the American variety. Therefore, it's still new money as far as the rest of the world is concerned, but what does the rest of the world matter anyway? It's not New York, am I right?" he offered with an amused smirk. Holding up a finger before she could add any comments, he continued. "Yet here you are, in the heart of Paris because you love it and would choose to be no where else this time of year, by yourself, so something within you hungers to be accepted by those ideals outside of your sphere of understanding."
"Like passion," she stated softly, her eyes flashing intently as she looked into his gaze. He smiled proudly, and her own amused smirk mirrored his.
"Like passion," he confirmed.
There was a pause, another empty space filled by the flickering electricity between them, the shared energy of two great minds finding a compatible counter. It was the greatest sort of sexual tension, the intellectual attraction that sparks a fire between one's ears and one's legs simultaneously.
"You want to know passion, don't you?" he asked gently, his voice thicker than he intended, husky.
Her lips parted slightly and her fingers absently ran up the spine of the book on the table as she watched him with her dark eyes. "I want to know passion... real passion." Her voice was tremulous as if it was about to break from the effort of containing that building tension within her.
He smiled slightly, his eyes never leaving hers. "You will know real passion, Blair Waldorf."
"Will I?" she asked, her eyebrows twitching slightly upward.
"If you have the right guide to show you," he noted with a tilt of his head and a shift of the bag draped over his shoulder.
"The right man, you mean?" she asked, playing back on the banter between them once more. "And are you that man, Dan Humphrey?"
"I'm willing to be if you're willing to learn," he noted thickly, his scholarly look replaced by a hotter, desirous look that scorched her in the pit of her stomach so she squeezed her thighs together subconsciously.
"I am a very good pupil, Mr. Humphrey."