I. Am. The. Worst. So sorry. This was going to be a 3 parter around Christmas, but I'm not a fast writer. I'm meticulous and busy to boot, so I apologize. Still, I hope readers enjoy some Christmas spirit all year round. 3
Blair ran away from her wedding. "Take me there" he heard for the second time and this time it happened. He took her to the beach in winter, and the Hamptons house was drafty and seemed larger. He was there, for whatever she needed, just as he promised. She had had nothing; her fearful premonition had come true. She had no child, no husband, no fairy tale, no grasp or hold on her life at all anymore. She'd lost everything, but most of all she'd lost sight of herself.
He didn't see it fit to say anything, he was just a rock. A center. A compass. And he was fine with that. He wanted to pick up her pieces and fix her but he knew she was only one who could do that, all he could do was be there.
Even when it killed him. Even when he stopped being able to sleep. Even when he had to watch her wasting away and beg her to stop punishing herself. Even when he thought he might spontaneously combust if he didn't say everything he wanted to say to her; that she was perfect and beautiful and strong and mesmerizing and strong and that he loved her. He'd held it in for so long, and in the months subsequent, they grew closer than ever before. It was excruciating. It was torture. It was addicting. He couldn't stop being around her even though it was chipping away at his battered soul.
They didn't speak much anymore. Well, they texted, e-mailed, watched movies on Netflix. Their correspondence was constant, but neither dared to dial a phone. She had left to intern in Milan for the fall semester and her absence had lifted this heavy weight from his chest and he felt like he could breathe properly again, though he didn't especially like the sensation. He felt rather light, and was afraid he might drift away and yearned to be grounded again.
Especially tonight. More than any other night. Dan wondered if he found a cement block to put on his chest if it might achieve the effect he was going for. Anything to stop the lightheadedness of the champagne and the carbonation inflating his shoes. It was only brunch.
"Dan," he heard and suddenly everything was closer, more crisp to his ears when it all seemed as if under water.
It was Serena. "Hmm?" he asked, having trouble placing himself. He was having a lot of difficulty with that lately.
"What do you say? You. Me. Nate. Eggnog at a bar before the annual gala?"
"Oh, lovely, they'll all be intoxicated before they even get to the party tonight," Lily drawled sarcastically from behind her newspaper and reading glasses.
"As long as you don't show up late and upset your mother," Rufus chimed in rather flatly.
Serena rolled her eyes. "Never!" she mock gasped and swatted at her mother's newspaper to tease her, to which Lily returned a bemused sidelong glance. "So?" Serena turned back to Dan.
"Uhh, sure. What time?" He had to blink his eyes about twelve times to get his vision sharp.
"Eight," she said. He didn't responded, but continued to twirl his fork on the tablecloth. Serena smiled and giggled slightly at his disorientation. "Okay, mister, no more champagne for you today, I know how foggy it makes you. Only a healthy dose of whiskey in your eggnog tonight."
Dan's lips curved up a bit. "Whiskey's a slap on the back, and champagne's heavy mist before the eyes," he mumbled to no one in particular.
"What?" Serena asked. She didn't get the reference.
"It's nothing," Dan said and pushed back his chair. "Listen, uh, I think I'm going to catch the matinee of It's A Wonderful Life so I'm gonna run, but I'll see everyone later."
"Okay but cheer up," Serena said, finally concerned for him. He brushed past her and her head swiveled to follow his swift exit toward the elevator. "Who knows maybe there'll be a Christmas miracle!" she called after him. Always the optimist.
Blair swore if she heard "I'll Be Home For Christmas" or "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" one more damn time she might just scream. Honestly there was only so much guilt a girl could take. She was coming home. Fine, there. But she didn't need it rubbed in her face.
What happened to the cheer? Melancholia and Christmas seemed to be the theme this year. On the other hand, she supposed she'd take it over Justin Beiber.
She let out a frustrated sigh as the fasten seatbelt sign finally clicked off. She pressed the service button on her side to request help with her hand luggage. First class was first class, but she'd be damned if she was going to un-callously yank her small Louis Vuitton duffel from the overhead compartment.
"Merry Christmas, by the way, Miss Waldorf," her overly friendly flight attendant offered when she was situated and ready to deplane. "Coming home to anyone special?" he asked.
Alarmed, she snapped her head back towards him. "No," she said, her brow furrowing before turning on her heel without returning the nicety.
"Blair!" Serena squealed when she entered the penthouse and hugged her. "What are you doing here? I thought you were going to spend Christmas with your Dad," she said.
Blair tried her best not to look a little lost. She would never admit to Serena that Milan was lonely and all she wanted to do was see her. "Nothing like Christmas in New York, right? I just couldn't help myself." Blair said casually and shrugged. She began to roam around the foyer, observing any changes made in the past several months. "Daddy wasn't happy with me, but I insisted." He hadn't cared. And she didn't.
"Well come on, hurry up and get ready!" Serena said.
"Why? Lily's gala doesn't start until nine."
"We're getting drinks."
Blair had assumed Serena decided to get drinks on the spot, a snap decision like she usually makes, in order to celebrate her best friend's return to the city. So when Blair entered the lounge behind Serena's amazon-like frame and she saw not only Nate, but Dan sitting at the bar, she froze.
"I thought it was just going to be the two of us," Blair said haughtily.
Serena politely pushed her way through the crowd. "No, B, Nate and I made plans earlier. Come on, isn't it great we can all be together?" Serena said as she kept moving towards the boys. "Hey, why don't we have a table?" she asked.
"It's waiting for us, we just didn't want to sit down alone yet. Two dudes, you know?" Nate explained.
"It's happened to us before," Dan added, but before he could go on Nate raised his eyes passed Serena's shoulder.
"—Blair!" he called out in surprise and lifted himself out of his seat to embrace her in an affectionate hug. "Oh my God why didn't you tell us you were gonna be in town?"
"Oh you know my flair for the dramatics," Blair said with a warm smile. Serena giggled as Nate wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her close next to him.
She noticed Dan took a while to turn around. When he did, she said, "Hello, Humphrey."
It felt like he was searching her with deep, unrecognizable eyes. He cleared his throat. "Hi," he said with a clipped voice.
Her smile grew tight. "Hi," she said again.
"Well," Nate said. "Should we sit?"
Serena and Nate monopolized the conversation, but for once Blair didn't mind. After answering uninspired questions about Milan and her family and internship, the two started telling giggly stories about childhood Christmases, and Blair easily cut in when she felt she hadn't been properly represented or if they'd missed a minor detail.
She laughed easily, feeling warm from her drink and the Christmas melodies that softly vibrated through the bar from its very own grand piano. And yet she had been stuck sitting next to Dan, who remained quiet through the reminiscing phase, as he quite understandably had nothing to contribute. He smiled when it was necessary, but was spending an awful lot of time staring back at his own caramel reflection that his hot whiskey offered him.
"Come now, we're boring sir Daniel himself, king of all things self-righteous. I'll bet he volunteered at soup kitchens every Christmas since he was six," Blair said, mocking him and yet earnestly trying to draw him back into the conversation. He looked so forlorn and she didn't like it impeding on her happy time.
"No please continue," he said. "Tell me, was your favorite Christmas the year you got an entire closet of Dior or an entire closet of Givenchy, I forget," he said with a little more bark to his usually playful bite.
"Actually one time Eleanor got Marc Jacobs to hand make clothes for our Barbies," Serena said with an innocent smile.
"Don't remind me," Nate groaned. "They made me play with them, it was torture."
"Actually, I think last year was one of my best Christmases," Blair said and suddenly all three of them grew quiet and their faces grim. "What?"
"Uhh, no offense Blair but…" Nate began but trailed off.
She blinked, growing annoyed. She could feel the temper within her heating her skin and boiling in her stomach, but she fought it off. Tonight would be lovely. And that's that.
"…Wasn't last year one of the worst years' of your life?" Dan finished for him.
"Well yes, but it shouldn't negate the fact that Louis is an excellent gift giver," she said with added pep. "He did get me a Tiffany tiara."
"That you ended up returning," Serena said pointedly.
Blair shot her a dirty look. She did not like feeling attacked. "Okay well I still have a 10th edition of Les Miserables in my personal library. Hardly a collector's item, but a favorite gift nonetheless."
Blair felt Dan's eyes on her, and she allowed her own to dart over to him for a quick second. He just looked at her with that indiscernible look he'd had earlier. She feared she'd made a mistake. In saying that, in coming here, in coming home at all.
She couldn't read him at all. She supposed it was only fitting since it had taken her so long to realize he was in love with her and now she couldn't tell at all.
Perhaps she had misjudged his mental acuity. Did he not understand the transference of what she was trying to tell him in code? She wanted to shake him.
"I'm just saying," she began, pasting on a smile. "Despite everything, I had a good Christmas last year. Maybe it stands out in comparison to everything else," she tapered off quietly. She had been playing with her hands in her lap and nervously placed her right hand on the velvet of the booth exposed between her and Dan, inviting some sort of silent validation that he knew what she was trying to say.
Nothing.
An excruciating silence fell upon the table.
"Well, should we go?" Nate finally said.
Truth is, Dan was paralyzed by the sight of her.
She was like this strange apparition before him, having appeared without warning or explanation or context, and he was having trouble believing the reality before him when she had come to exist solely on the LED screens of his phone and computer.
They talked incessantly that way, they really hadn't lost touch at all, but for some reason he found he had nothing to say. Or rather, he didn't know what to say.
Even when he clutched her on the dance floor at the gala and felt the real, tangible, flesh beneath his hands, he swayed along with her with quiet dissonance hidden deep within him. He had learned and mastered the art of restraint when it came to Blair Waldorf.
His arms were stiff, his steps wooden and clunky, and their timing to the piano arrangement of Vince Guaraldi music was just as inconsistent as the melody itself, but the thought didn't help him any. Blair remained just as silent as he, which unsettled him more than anything. She provided no insults or quips to get them back into the ease of their awkwardly undefined relationship; she just kept looking at him.
It was stifling.
"I've…got to…go," he managed to choke out as he stifled and made for a wholly unglamorous exit to the courtyard outside.
When the cold, dry air hit him, he inhaled as much as he could.
"What is wrong with you, Humphrey?" he heard from behind him. He half smiled to himself. Thank God, he thought, her annoyed voice. He'd never been so happy to hear it in his entire life.
"Nothing," he said and turned around. "What's wrong with you?"
"Oh no you don't," she said and crossed her arms. It was freezing out and she had run after him in just her cocktail dress. "Don't even try to turn this around on me. You're acting strange."
"This is how I act, I'm acting normal," he said.
"I know you Dan and no…you're not," she said and it was softer than normal.
Dan grew annoyed. The nerve of her; waltzing in to town with her earnest tone of voice and her stubbornness and her stupid, yet nice smelling hair.
"Then how should I act?" he said with an exasperated sigh.
Her eyes were wide and glassy like they often were, but also rather doe-y and a little afraid.
She was ruining Christmas.
"Is there…" she began and trailed off. She shivered and held her bare arms with her hands, gulped and diverted her gaze. "Are you…seeing someone?"
"No," he said instantly. "I was…but not anymore."
"Oh...okay," she said softly. The air was crisp but thick and cold and the courtyard silent. "Why?" she asked finally.
Dan didn't think it was possible, but this Christmas was turning out to be more utterly confusing than the last. There she stood, freezing in front of him after so many months and asking him why he wasn't dating some unknown girl anymore. She needed his coat. His shoes were stuck on the frozen ground. She needed an answer. What could he offer? Because she wasn't you? Because she wasn't you and I love you? Because…
"I guess she was kind of…ordinary," he said with a shrug, his hands in his pockets.
Suddenly a smile erupted from her. He was confused. When did the atmosphere change? She began to laugh. His brow furrowed.
"Wow, Humphrey, can you go on record with that? Dan Humphrey, the anti Upper East Sider finds regular girls boring."
"Hey," he said. "I did not say that." She kept giggling and he frowned, but finally was able to take a step forward. He pouted even as he whipped his coat off and swung it around her, covering her shoulders with it.
"Did she wear North Face fleeces and Uggs and drink beer on the weekends?" Blair continued to chide.
"Blair—"
"Oh!" she piped in with a high-pitched voice. "Does she watch Two and a Half Men?"
Dan was about to sling an arm around her and lead her back into the gala when he caught a whiff of something. Ah, it all made sense now. Leave it to Blair to be a covert drunk.
"I knew it." He didn't know. "You're drunk." Her eyes widened.
"What? No I'm not!" she scoffed.
"You hide it well, just like the lady you are," he said with a bit of playful sarcasm.
"I am a lady, thank you very much," she said and leaned forward and looked up at him coyly. "Which is why I shouldn't have to ask you to kiss me," she added with a sly whisper.
Dan was stunned. But her eyes were fluttering and her face so close. He gulped and stroked her hair with his right hand, running a thumb along her jaw and cupping her chin to tilt it up to his. Her eyes fluttered closed and it was as if time stopped in that silent, wintery tableau.
But he couldn't do it. He dropped his hand and stepped back. When he recoiled her face instantly took on the look of extreme disappointment and distaste she often wore. He opened his lips to explain but decided he'd better not.
"Goodnight Blair," he said and brushed passed her.
Some Christmas.
"Goddammit," Dan mumbled and he fumbled out of bed. Seriously, the one and only person who should be knocking on his door at two on Christmas morning should be Santa fucking Claus.
He swung the heavy loft door open, rubbing his eyes.
…or Blair fucking Waldorf.
"Hi," she said is a meek voice.
The thing was, those months in between her running away from Louis and getting on the plane to Milan were strange ones. Strange in ways that stretched the boundaries of friendship. They were best friends, and having previously had a best friend of the female persuasion, he wasn't sure if intertwining hands during movies or carefully unzipping her dress and putting her to bed after he scooped her up from the bathroom floor in tears qualified. But then again, nothing about Blair was ordinary, and nothing about them had ever been normal.
Still, he, Serena and Nate nursed her back to physical and mental health but it was his name on her therapist's emergency contact list and it was his house she ran to when things got hard. His loft was her sanctuary and once she was well enough to go back out on the town, he was her first and only drunk dial and he was her first choice for daytime excursions. It wasn't all bad of course. He loved when she laughed, and she often did with him. He loved her mind, which she still exercised at any moment she could. They had had fun together, peas in a pod and all that.
They drank too much sake at dinner one night and encouraged by the warmth of alcohol and good company, when they met Nate and Serena at a vintage movie themed lounge later, their inhibitions had been dashed. Her head often rested on his shoulder, her legs casually yet daintily thrown over his knees. She teasingly slapped at his chest when they bickered and he obliged when she asked for the olives in her gin martini to be fed to her.
Nate and Serena, still refusing to date each other, were more sober than they, both in blood alcohol level and in spirit. Upon their attractive yet confused looks and subsequent judging eyes, Dan and Blair had gotten offended and left. If no one understood them, then so be it, they'd live that way reclusively until who knows when and refuse to care. At least that's how he felt in that moment, but he couldn't help but remember Nate and Serena's knowing looks when he'd turn over in bed and find a sleeping Blair next to him and his heart would twist in on itself at the thought of how close she was and yet how much of her he didn't have and had no right to ask for.
When she told him she was going to Milan he felt betrayed. She hadn't even mentioned it to him, and she mentioned everything to him. She had already contemplated it and decided by the time she told him. He nodded curtly and said, "I think that'd be a good idea," and carefully pushed back his chair—they were having breakfast at her penthouse—and walked out.
He stayed away for the last weeks before her departure. He needed to wean himself off of her. He stayed inside, grew some scruff and took to writing and sulking. The day before she was scheduled to leave she knocked on his door.
"I just wanted to say goodbye," she said. "Before I left."
He opened the door wider for her to enter but she didn't move.
"Okay," he said and nothing further.
The silence hung too long, but they both waited. Finally, she smiled tightly and nodded in resignation before turning away.
She was walking down the hallway and after months and months and even years, he couldn't take it. She was leaving the country so he might as well.
"Blair," he called out and she turned.
"Yeah?"
"You know I love you, right?" he said.
She let out a slight sob through a finally cracked smile and wiped her tears from her face and nodded.
"I'm really sorry," she said.
She needn't say more. He understood. They'd had the conversation about her needing to rebuild herself enough times for him to understand what she meant to say.
"Will you wait?" she asked. "I mean, would you wait? For me to be ready?"
"I'll try," he said. "I can't wait forever."
"No, of course not," she said. Pragmatism.
And she left.
"Hi," he said back.
Again the silence hung.
"I don't really know where to begin," she said. "So just bear with me, okay?"
He nodded in quiet acquiescence.
She looked down and pulled out her phone, fooled around with the keys for a little bit and finally set it upon the radiator in the hallway.
A melody to a song began to play. "It's not our usual fare, but it's still a classic," she said as a disclaimer. After a second, a clip from Mariah Carey's famous Christmas classic began to play.
I don't want a lot for Christmas
There's just one thing I need
Dan's eyes immediately locked with hers. His were inquisitive, hers unsure.
I just want you for my own
More than you could ever know
She smiled at him, somewhat sadly and her eyes welled. He was aghast, he was sure his mouth was hanging open. Was this really it? Was this really the moment? He thought it would never come.
Make my wish come true
All I want for Christmas is...
You
The song tapered off and he mentally cursed himself. He should have kissed her on the last beat, but years of inaction and restraint had rendered him rather stalled in matters of Blair Waldorf. He just stood there, refusing to break eye contact. Her eyes began to well.
"The truth is…I came back for you," she began and a tear fell and tumbled down her cheek. "But I know…I know that it's been so long and that it wasn't fair of me to…and I'm probably too late, or so it seems…" she trailed off, before gaining her composure back.
"But…I had to. Just in case…if I'm not too late…If you'll still have me…" she said softly and looked down at her hands, wringing nervously together.
"God, of course," he finally said and swept forward, snaking his arm around her waist and pulling her flush against him, her toes barely touching the ground. His mouth crashed into hers and her lips instantly parted, forgoing any niceties and deepening the kiss to allow for the countless months they spent not doing this very thing.
He tightened his grip on her and spun them around and into the loft, swinging the door shut behind him.
He parted from her lips to unbutton her coat, which he did rather sloppily as he trailed kisses along her jaw and neck. Finally he folded the heavy thing back and pulled it down her arms.
"I've missed you," he said into the nape of her neck and she gasped.
"So much," she breathed.
She pulled his t-shirt up and over his head so that he was just in his boxers and then she pulled back. He was terrified of losing her, of the thought that she had come to him as an apparition in a very sensory dream, and he almost panicked at the loss of contact. He opened his mouth in protest, but a slender finger touched his lips and hers puckered and exhaled a slight but sexy "shh".
Her finger began to descend, her manicured nail hooking over his bottom lip gently before trailing down to his chest, where she traced the outline of his chest down to his abs. His breath hitched in his throat as she studied him before gently applying pressure to his stomach with her palm so that he began to step backwards towards his bedroom.
She was sultry and feminine and incredibly in control. Her eyes were smoldering and he didn't dare break with her intent gaze, even when the back of his knees hit the top of his mattress. He sat down and simply looked up at her in awe.
Blair took a step back and tucked her hair behind her ear, bashful for a brief moment before she reached behind her and began to slowly unzip her dress. Once the soft buzz of the metal stopped, she carefully peeled the sleeves off of her shoulders and let the dress fall and pool at her feet.
Dan gulped as he took in the sight of her. His eyes were ravenous and feasted upon her black laced demi bra that pushed her breasts just up enough to appear larger than they were and create ample orbs where her chest rose and caved in sync with her breath. Her stomach was flat and toned, and he followed the soft line from her rib cage to her navel and below, where a matching pair of panties sat snuggly underneath a slim garter and its clips to her cheer stockings. She still wore her heels.
Dan was suddenly fifteen again but instead of Gillian Anderson standing before him it was Blair Waldorf as the woman of his dreams and this was no fantasy.
She slinked towards him with a few steps and lay her hands on his shoulders as he immediately wrapped his arms around her, exploring her back and her perfectly curved ass. He began to trail his lips over her stomach and up to the underwire of her bra as he unclasped the back expertly. Blair straddled herself across his lap and it was at that precise moment that he'd had enough. He absolutely could not take it anymore.
So he gripped her tightly and spun them around, so that she lay plush against the pillows of his bed and he hovered above her, nestled in between her gorgeous legs. He thought for a second about languorously unclipping her stockings and pulling them down her legs teasingly, but as he looked down upon her he felt a pulling in his chest. Would this be the first and the last time he had her? Would he wake up from this dream cold and alone on Christmas morning? He ached and ached and thought he might burst and die before he could go any further. So in one fell swoop he tugged at the tiny string of her panties and ripped them off.
It was as if the gun had just signaled the start of a horse race. Everything was feverish and oh so wonderfully sloppy after that. Blair angrily tugged at his boxers and he balanced himself on one hand as he helped her get them down and shimmied them off, all while hungrily attacking her with a deep kiss, tongues dueling.
Just as he positioned himself at her entrance, though, he broke from their kiss, and she whimpered slightly. Dan looked down on her, flushed cheeks and swollen lips, and cupped the side of her face gently, locked eyes, then, pushed himself all the way in to her core.
Her head rolled back as she arched into him and a gasp hitched in the back of her throat. He stayed absolutely still until her eyes locked once more with his and he slowly began to roll his hips. Every thrust was long and slow and they remained silent for minutes, slowly letting their bodies move in tune with each other. After several minutes, they found their rhythm and picked up speed.
Dan buried his face in the crook of her neck and kissed her there as he emitted low rumbles into her neck. He could feel them vibrating off of her electric skin as she moaned louder and louder with each thrust until—
"Dan," she emitted in a gasping moan.
Upon hearing his name for the first time in such a state he instantly lifted his head up and looked at her wide eyed. Did she want to stop? He wanted to say "yeah?" but the words wouldn't come out. She looked up at him in earnest, and he grew terrified as his movements slowed to a stop.
"I love you," she whispered.
That was it, he thought. No Christmas will ever live up to this one. Ever again.