"Some people get bit from the inside/When they talk it's cold and sour/And no, there's nothing they can do now/They've had their way too many times"-The Faint, "Let the Poison Spill From Your Throat"
Blair sits cross-legged in Dan's bed, looking down at the phone that she holds in the palm of her hand.
The photo is of a crowded dance floor. In the foreground, a shirtless, smiling Nate is floating in the air, mid-jump. His eyes are closed, his hair is sweaty, and he is swinging his arms over his head; they blur like angel's wings. Behind him, Serena has her arm slung over Chuck's shoulders; her eyeliner is smudged; she is laughing an open-mouthed laugh that shows all of her teeth. He is saying something to her; his mouth is against her ear. He is turned away from the camera, and his face is half-obscured by Serena's wild hair, but somehow Blair knows he is smiling in that wicked way of his.
Spotted, the blast reads. Chuck Bass at Fat Black Pussycat with Nate Archibald and Serena van der Woodsen. My, my, don't they look ecstatic, B? I was expecting to see C with a lady on each arm just to spite you, but knowing that he's rolling with your eX-best friend Might Do More Actual damage.
Blair's eyes float over the picture in a way that suggests she has looked at it many times before. Her eyes skip over the three figures in its center, touching down here, there, moving from face to face, and finally settling on the thin sliver of space between the body of her ex-lover and the body of her ex-best friend. The place where Serena's gown puckers inward, where Chuck's hand is cupping her side.
"What are you looking at?"
Startled, she looks up at Dan, who is standing by the bedroom door. He leans forward and plants his hand against the frame.
"Nothing," she says, as she turns the phone off and tosses it across the bed. "Shoes."
Dan tilts his head to one side like a bird.
"Uh…so, was it shoes, or nothing?" he asks with equal parts judgment and disbelief.
When Blair doesn't reply, he continues, "Or was it that Gossip Girl blast from last weekend, again?"
Blair opens her mouth, searching for words. But, none forthcoming, she settles for a guilty sort of sigh.
"Blair, you do realize that Chuck and Serena only did this to get your attention," Dan says with absolute confidence. "To make you feel like you're missing out on some…" (he pauses for a moment to exhale) "…amazing—"
"I don't," Blair insists. "Why would I want to take illegal drugs and writhe around with a bunch of sweaty strangers on a dance floor?"
She pauses, and sweetens her tone. "I have you," she says, looking up at him with warmth in her brown eyes.
Dan smiles, but his eyes look as though they're made of glass.
"I wanted to ask if you wanted some orange juice," he says.
"No thanks, water is fine," she says.
Dan leaves the room, and she sighs as she watches him go. She is so lucky to have such a sweet boyfriend, she thinks to herself. She thinks it as loudly as possible, so that the words will sink down from her brain into her body and become genuine emotion, and for a moment she does feel something stirring inside of her, something that almost resembles happiness. But this ephemeral feeling only lasts until she realizes that Dan will probably fetch her water from the tap, at which point a mixture of disgust and disdain bubbles up from someplace deep inside of her, some neglected, cobwebbed corner of her soul.
She shoves the feeling back into the place from which it came.
Note to self, she says to herself with determination that borders on mania. I will stop lying to Dan. New and improved Blair Waldorf does not lie. Does not manipulate. Does not scheme. New Blair Waldorf does not have to do those things, because new Blair Waldorf simply is and is loved.
Almost immediately a faint voice rises from that neglected, cobwebbed corner of her soul.
But but but, it says in response. It's so hard not to lie when he asks her if she minds the flannel sheets on his bed or the stench of Rufus's chili permeating the loft or the rust-colored water that comes out of the bathroom faucet for a few seconds after you turn it on. Or the hipsters in his creative writing seminar, who camp out at Zuccotti Park and hold up signs about the wicked 1% and throw parties in cramped apartments where everyone drinks PBR and white girls with dreadlocks complain about the gentrification in their neighborhoods with no sense of irony whatsoever. And it's so hard not to nudge him under the table when he picks up the wrong fork at brunch with her mother, or repress the impulse to roll her eyes at him when he looks at her with muted disapproval whenever she makes a cutting comment about a society girl walking past in last season's wedges, or when he changes the subject when she brings up the article she's just read about the global fashion market in Vogue—
"Breakfast is served!" Dan declares, and sets a wooden tray down in her lap.
Blair looks down at the plate. Blinks.
"You made me…" She nudges one with a fork to confirm. "Potatoes." She enunciates the word with a desperate attempt at gaiety.
"The house special. Home fries à la Humphrey." He stabs one with her fork and lifts it to her mouth. Looking unsure, Blair opens her mouth and accepts the morsel. Chews it tentatively.
Dan raises an eyebrow, expectant.
"Mmm. So good," Blair says with a tight-lipped smile that doesn't reach her eyes.
Fuck! she thinks in a fit of self-anger. I will stop lying to Dan.
Tomorrow, she modifies. After all, she's already fucked up twice, and it's not even noon yet. Since today is already ruined, she may as well give herself a pass.
Tomorrow is another day.
"Sooooo…" Dan says with his lips pursed into a circle, crossing the room to his closet. "For tonight, I was thinking this tie, with this shirt." He holds them up over her chest. "Whaddya think?"
Blair smiles and blinks. "I think you'll look great, sweetie," she lies through her teeth.
While Dan is returning the hanger to the closet, she sneaks a double handful of home fries into his pillowcase.
#
"Hey," Chuck says with a note of surprise in his voice.
Serena has suddenly appeared in the mirror behind him, framed by the door to his bedroom. She is wearing an evening gown in mint silk; it has tiny, delicate pleats at the waist and an asymmetrical hem that shows off her legs in the front.
He stands still at the mirror for a few seconds, his gaze panning over her reflected image, before his fingers once again begin to move at his neck, knotting the strip of amethyst fabric into a bow.
"Nice dress," he finally says, finishing the tie.
"What do you think of the shoes?" she asks, with a hint of worry in her tone, and walks over towards him, the hem of her gown fluttering around her ankles.
Chuck turns around. His eyes dart down to her feet, which are strapped into a glittery pair of Jimmy Choo platform pumps.
He smirks. "They suit you," he says.
"So you don't mind them?"
"Why would I?"
"They're four and half inch heels, Chuck."
"So?" He's starting to get confused.
She edges forward to stand next to him. "I'm taller than you," she mutters, proving it by her proximity. Their eyes meet in the mirror, Chuck's three inches lower than Serena's.
"I don't care," he says to her reflection.
It's true. He doesn't.
"A lot of guys don't like that," she explains. "Standing next to a girl who's towering over them…."
She trails off, and Chuck knows exactly whom she means by 'a lot of guys.'
He shrugs. "You're my emergency date," he says with a hint of dark humor. "You can wear whatever shoes you want. I also happen to like them," he adds truthfully. The shoes are decadent, over-the-top. They are something Blair Waldorf would never wear.
The old Blair Waldorf, anyway.
"So…" she says, and sits on the edge of the bed. "Are you going to tell me what happened with the Chanel model or not?"
Chuck tightens his jaw.
A few days ago, he had let it slip that he was going on a second date with a Chanel model, and after Serena had raised her eyebrows and oooed at him and pressed him for details, he had told her a little bit more about Carissa. About the thick dark hair that she wears long, down past the center of her back. About the Mississippi accent that lengthens her vowels after she has a couple of drinks. About her ambitions beyond modeling. Buy her grandmother a house. Get off the reservation. Go to college. All of which endeared her to him a lot more than the usual type of girl he picks up at bars.
Now he wishes that he hadn't mentioned her at all.
"Not much to tell, really," he says to Serena. He sounds unconvincing, even to himself.
Serena rolls her bracelet between her thumb and forefinger. "I thought you liked her," she says, and flicks her eyes up at him expectantly.
Chuck looks at her and sighs. It's not the kind of thing he would normally tell Serena. It's not the kind of thing he would normally tell anyone, because it's the kind of thing that shines a spotlight directly into the loneliest part of his soul.
But something about the way she's looking up at him, without a trace of guile in her eyes, makes him feel safe. So he does.
Last night he had taken Carissa to dinner, then to drinks, then to the penthouse and to his bed, and she had been underneath him, her breasts moving up and down with the force of his thrusts, her ankles on either side of his neck, moaning, and he had reached out and grabbed onto the railing of the bedpost to pound into her more quickly, and after a few seconds her eyes had rolled back into her head and she'd said in a helpless whisper-sigh, "God I love you," and a split-second later her eyes had snapped open and she'd looked up at him with a startled, self-deprecating laugh, and said "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that," and laughed again, obviously not wanting him to freak out, obviously expecting him to be amused too, to be pleased that he's provoked such an over-the-top sentiment from the girl he's currently fucking—
I love you. I'm sorry, I didn't mean that.
—but it hadn't been funny to him, not funny at all. In fact, he'd felt sick.
"Because of Blair," Serena says after he finishes. She phrases it like a question, but it isn't one.
Chuck doesn't say anything.
"Chuck, she did love you," Serena says with equal parts concern and reprimand. "You have to believe that."
"I'm sure she thought she did," Chuck says after a moment of hesitation, and looks at the floor.
The left corner of Serena's mouth quirks downward. It is plain she wants to argue with him, wants to tell him that he's wrong—no, more than that, she wants to believe that he's wrong. But she can find neither the words nor the emotional reserve to defend the girl who's broken both their hearts.
"So you're not seeing Carissa anymore?" she asks.
"I just…" He sighs. "I couldn't." He pauses. "I couldn't even look at her, after that. I told her, 'it's not you, it's me,' but I don't think she believed me."
Now it's Serena's turn not to say anything.
"What about you?" he offers hopefully, wanting to shift the attention away from himself. "You seeing anyone?"
Serena's face contracts.
"I…" Her hand flutters in the air as if she's shooing away an insect. "I can't. I just feel like…I'm not…"
"Safe," he finishes her sentence, knowing exactly what she means.
After you've given another person everything you have—more than you could afford to lose—self-preservation becomes your top priority.
Happiness, an afterthought.
#
"Look, all I'm saying is that you could show a little bit more effort—" Dan is saying to Blair in a plaintive voice as they edge past several party guests and round the corner of the upstairs corridor.
"Oh, of course you would think it's my fault," Blair says, rolling her eyes. "Did you ever consider that integrating you into my conversations is pretty difficult considering that you wrote a scathing social satire of everyone at this party? God!" She tosses the rest of her vodka tonic down her throat. "Did you even see the way Allegra looked at me?" she continues bitterly. "There's no way I'm getting a front-row seat at the show in Paris this year. I might as well as move to the outer boroughs and be done with it."
Lately Blair Waldorf has been noticing that the majority of the sentiments that come from her mouth are only half sincere. She does want to go to Paris, not only because she wants to see the summer fashion shows but because she wants to see her picture in the tabloids—a picture with a caption that doesn't compare her behavior over the past year to Britney Spears' circa 2007. But she's also expecting Dan to take the cue, to playfully tell her that he would love it if she moved to Brooklyn, because he doesn't want to impress anyone at this party with his literary stylings, he only wants her, she's all he needs, and she'll always be special to him, always be perfect, no matter what she does or what other people say about her.
But Dan doesn't say any of these things—or anything at all. He has come to an abrupt halt at the railing of the balcony and is looking down at the first floor with a shocked expression on his face, and Blair edges forward, wanting to know what could possibly be more interesting to him than her.
Chuck and Serena are posing together at the entrance for the party photographer. Her arm is slung over his shoulder; his hand is at her waist. The flashbulb lights up their faces—once, twice—looking happy and at ease. The photographer thanks them and moves away, but Chuck frowns and stops Serena from pulling away from him with the hand he holds at her waist.
For a second, he peers intently at her face. Then he licks the tip of his thumb, and touches it down on her cheekbone. While he performs this operation, Serena stands still without flinching or blinking, and when he draws his hand back and presents the pad of his thumb to her (a fleck of glitter on its tip), she laughs, and the musical sound echoes through the lobby and up the stairs to the balcony where Blair stands watching, feeling as though a poisonous dart has struck her in the heart.
"Unbelievable," Dan says.
"I don't care that they're here," Blair says a little too forcefully.
"Yes, you do," Dan says.
"Not as much as you do," she bites back, feeling angry that Dan isn't already leading her away from the place where they just witnessed such an unforced gesture of intimacy between their ex-lovers, comforting her, telling that they can go back to the loft where she'll be safeguarded from the life that was once hers.
"I care because I care about you," Dan says, but the words ring hollow in her ears, because he's not even looking at her anymore. His eyes are fixed on the floor below, and when he walks down the stairs his spine is rigid with affronted masculinity.
Blair grits her teeth and stalks off to get another drink.
Downstairs, Serena tells Chuck she'll have white wine, and as he walks away to the bar, she feels a light touch on her shoulder and turns around with a smile on her face.
When she sees Dan standing there, her smile immediately crumbles, falls away.
"What are you doing here?" he says in a short voice.
"I—I'm with Chuck," she says, gesturing over her shoulder, "he's friends with Allegra. He—"
"You just can't help yourself, can you?" Dan says to her in his most spiteful tone. "First there was that Gossip Girl blast, and now you show up here with him." His eyes pan over her body, as if he's looking for evidence. "Well, what should Blair and I expect next, Serena? A Van der Bass sex tape?"
Serena flinches as though he's just struck her. At that moment she appears utterly defenseless, like a gentle creature being pushed out of its cage into an alien habitat.
"Just because you're unhappy doesn't mean you have to spoil things for people who are," Dan is saying, and she realizes that she can't listen to this anymore, won't listen to it, won't take any more of this poison from the boy who once claimed he would love her forever, and so she turns and flees, darting past Chuck who is returning with two drinks in his hands.
Chuck looks at Serena's face as she passes him by and then looks at Dan and his eyes flash fire.
"Hey," he says with a threatening edge to his voice. He quickly sets the drinks aside on a hallway table and walks over to Dan. "You stay away from her," he orders in a low growl, his finger an inch from Dan's throat.
"This is low, Chuck, even for you," Dan seethes.
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"Oh, gee, I wonder," Dan pretends to pontificate. "You coming here tonight. Bringing Serena of all people. You just can't leave Blair alone, can you?"
"I didn't even know Blair was going to be here tonight," Chuck says, disgusted.
"Of course you knew," Dan cries. "Why else would you bringher?" He gestures towards the hallway through which Serena fled.
"Because she's my friend," Chuck immediately replies, by this point offended on multiple levels.
Dan scoffs. "You can't be seri—friend? Really?"
"Yes, Humphrey. Friend. A relationship founded upon mutual respect, affection and trust. No wonder you're so fucking confused. You have no idea what the word even means."
Dan shakes his head. "You know what, Chuck? You don't get to tell me anything. You hear me? Anything. You know nothing about friendship, or love, or…any of it. Because if there's any kind of…emotional autism anywhere on the spectrum, you have it."
Chuck looks at Dan for a moment, his eyes a-gleam, his mouth slightly open. It's as if there are simply too many words to say and he has to figure out a way to say them all at once.
"Have you ever heard the story of the shitty island, Humphrey?" he finally asks in a brisk voice.
"Um." Dan is caught off-guard. He blinks; wonders if this is a trick question. "No?"
"I came across it in a novel I was reading a couple of months ago," Chuck says. "Murakami. It was brilliant. Completely original. You really should give it a read sometime; it might inspire you to write something other than a thinly veiled roman à clef. Anyways."
He clears his throat. "Somewhere far, far away, there's a shitty island. An island without a name. An island not even worth giving a name. It's covered with shitty palm trees, and on the shitty palm trees are coconuts that give off a shitty smell. And shitty monkeys live in the trees, and they eat these shitty coconuts all day long. And then they shit the foulest shit imaginable, and it falls on the ground in little shitty mounds, and the shit fertilizes the palm trees, and then they get even shittier. It's an endless cycle.
"And as I was standing here looking at you, I suddenly remembered the story of the shitty island. Because there's a certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of putrefaction, that goes on sustaining itself in a sort of…self-perpetuating process. And once it passes a certain point, nothing can stop it.
"Are you catching my drift yet, Humphrey?" Chuck continues, his voice growing sharper. "You weren't always this way. I mean, you were always kind of shitty, because you were always a self-righteous prick who thought he was better than everyone else. But over the past few years, as far as you're concerned, it's just been one never-ending cycle of shittiness, hasn't it? And yet you somehow still manage to convince yourself that you're the good guy here. And it fucking baffles me."
"Okay, now," Dan interrupts with a forced laugh. "This is where I get to ask what the hell you're talking about. Because I—I am the good guy here. I've been taking care of Blair all this time, and—"
"No, you're not," Chuck interrupts him. "You treat everyone like shit. Even friends, even family, even people who used to be important to you. Only you could write a novel trashing every single person you know and then wonder how anyone could think you're not the nice little 'Lonely Boy' from Brooklyn anymore."
Dan is opening his mouth, but Chuck cuts him off.
"The only exception is Blair," he concedes, "but you treat her like a child, which is hardly any better. I saw that photo of you parading her around the Met in a fluffy pink dress and that plastic crown on her head. She looked like a six-year-old playing dress-up. The ink wasn't even dry on her divorce papers yet. It was pathetic.
"So don't try to tell me you've been taking care of her," he continues. "What you've done is take a grown women and turn her into a little girl who depends on you for everything. I bet you cut up her steak for her when you two go out to eat. And you indulge her, because you like it. You like her needing you. You wouldn't have it any other way.
"So, no, you're not the good guy, Humphrey," Chuck reiterates in a tired voice, as if he's exhausted with this entire situation, as if he can't believe that he even needs to say these things out loud. "You're manipulative, and petty, and selfish, and codependent. And what's more, you're judgmental, and self-righteous, and when anyone doesn't live up to the ridiculous standards you set for them, you're downright cruel. You're just a shitty human being. And somewhere deep inside of you, in some dark corner of your soul where you still possess an ounce of self-awareness, you know it." He steps backwards and begins to walk away. "You have to," he says over his shoulder, and walks off down the corridor after Serena.
For a moment or two, Dan stands there, paralyzed, feeling a nauseous sensation in his stomach. As though he's falling at a terrific speed, as though the ground has opened up beneath him, as though he's being swallowed down, down, into a horrible black pit.
#
When Chuck moves from room to room upstairs, looking for Serena, and sees Blair standing there in the hallway before him, he suddenly feels furious—and for once, he allows himself to feel furious, because he is sick to death of the alternative, which is feeling not-good-enough.
And now that he's finally furious, it is suddenly beyond him to speak, because he just cannot believe that Blair chose someone with such ridiculous fucking hair over him, and so he just looks at her and lets out a coarse disbelieving laugh, a scornful laugh like a cough, and walks down the hall so quickly that she feels a breeze against her skin as he passes her by.
And at that moment Chuck spots Serena stepping out of the guest bathroom at the end of the hallway, her face still puffy from crying, and he walks up to her, takes her by the hand and leads her away.
Serena turns back for a half-second to glance at Blair, but Blair's the one who stiffens as if she's turned into a pillar of salt.
"Can you believe them?" Dan says, walking up behind her, holding a single shot of bourbon that was a quadruple five minutes earlier. "Showing up here together?"
Blair is still staring after Chuck and Serena. She takes a moment to clear her throat.
"You know what, I don't even care if they're sleeping together," she says, and feels disgusted to the point of nausea by the words that she's just spoken.
"Me neither," Dan says into the bottom of his glass of bourbon. "I mean, they probably aren't," he quickly adds, not wanting to upset her. "Considering their track records, if it was going to happen, it would have happened already."
A strange light appears in Blair's eyes, and along with it, the knowledge that she possesses the ability to punish Dan Humphrey for having failed her earlier.
"Well, they did have that thing in high school for like five minutes," she says in a nonchalant way, "but that was obviously some cosmic aberration."
Dan nods, and then does a quick double take at her. "Wait, what?"
"You know. That secretive little fling they had sophomore year."
Dan blinks. "That was…never on Gossip Girl," he chokes out.
"Like I said." Blair shrugs. "It was secret."
She looks up at Dan. "You mean Serena never told you?" she asks him, all wide eyes and innocence.
She is already looking away from him by the time he opens his mouth. "Huh," she says in an offhanded way, and takes a sip of her vodka tonic. "I wonder why."
#
"I am so sorry," Chuck is saying to Serena, and she is answering in a soft voice, "No, Chuck. It wasn't your fault. You didn't know they'd be there."
They are sitting in the back of his limo. They left the party almost ten minutes ago, but Serena can still feel the anger rolling off of Chuck's body in waves. He blows through his lips; he wipes his hands on his thighs.
"Thank you for defending me," Serena says after a short pause, hoping to find a way to defuse Chuck's temper.
"I didn't defend you so much as tell Humphrey what a colossal prick he is," Chuck says with consummate annoyance.
"He really pissed you off, huh?"
"I'm not angry at him," he says with a scoff. "I'd have to care about him to be angry at him."
Serena looks at him, realizing what he means, and whom he's angry at.
"I hate her, Serena," he says in a grim voice, and shakes his head several times. "I love her, and I hate her. And I wish I didn't feel anything at all. I wish I were just…blank."
He stops speaking and pinches the space between his eyes with his left hand, and she reaches over and takes him by the right. Intertwines her fingers with his. But he doesn't move, or open his eyes.
"Things'll get better, Chuck," she says in a low voice.
Chuck laughs and takes his hand off his face. "I hope to God you're right," he says to the space in front of him. "Because I don't think I can take much more of this."
In answer, she takes him into her arms. After a moment's hesitation, he places a hand on the small of her back.
"Well, you're safe with me," she murmurs to him, and lays her head on his shoulder.
It happens all of a sudden. She can't pinpoint exactly what it is. Maybe it's the slight motion of his hand rubbing against the silk on her back. The smell of his cologne. Or the heat of the skin of his neck against her ear. Or the combination of the three, plus a million other unspoken things.
But out of nowhere there's this electricity flickering back and forth between them. She is suddenly, painfully conscious of all the ways in which their bodies are touching. Of the shallowness of her breathing and his breathing, and the catch in her chest as her heart thumps against her sternum.
She sets her hand at Chuck's shoulder and begins to pull her body away, and her cheek grazes alongside his; she can feel the slightest trace of his stubble against her skin. His mouth is a centimeter from hers when she pauses for a moment, her head swimming with ambivalence, and in that moment, he leans forward and kisses her—a slow, deliberate, mostly close-mouthed kiss.
Their lips part with a soft sound like a question mark. It lingers in the air between them, and Serena is opening her mouth to answer when he sets his hand at the back of her neck and kisses her again.
This is not the way he kissed her on the dance floor last week. That was a celebratory sort of kiss. A kiss from someone who has just found out wonderful news. Like the end of a war, or the birth of a child.
This is a ripe, unabashedly sexual kiss. Their mouths move instinctually, urgently, in a pattern familiar to them both.
She closes her eyes and loses herself in their mutual motion, already feeling the surge of endorphins in her brain, remembering with a start how unbelievably good it feels to be wanted like this, it's been so, so long—and he reaches down and crooks her legs over his lap and pulls her more tightly against him, grabbing her hips with both hands, and she hears herself make a low, dangerous noise in the back of her throat, an approving noise, an aroused noise, and as soon as she does she suddenly realizes where this is going, starts to think about the consequences, and panic washes over her.
She sets her hand at his collarbone and gently, firmly pushes him away.
"Chuck-I-don't-think-this-is-a-good-idea," she says out loud in a rush.
Chuck stares at her for one standstill moment, then turns his head slightly and clears his throat.
"You're right," he admits, pushing her legs off of his lap and disengaging his body from hers. "I'm sorry. I….don't know what I was thinking."
"It's okay," Serena says, barely hearing the words over the commotion of her heart in her chest. Chuck is already edging away from her to the other side of the seat. "You're really mixed up right now. I am too."
Chuck runs his hand over his face. He stares at the floor, obviously mortified, and Serena curses herself for letting things happen in the way that they just did, during a time when she needs him so desperately that his name appears on her phone nine times out of ten as soon as she presses the "call" button.
Feeling wretched and confused, she turns away from him, looks out of the window. Silence falls over the limo. Neither of them speak or look at each other.
After a few moments, she surreptitiously lifts her hand to her lips, prods them gently with her fingers.
His kiss is still burning her mouth.
A/N: Some of you might have noticed that I added the "Friendship" category to this story. That's because this story is about Chuck and Serena's friendship. After weeks of ambivalence, I decided that I just couldn't see a romance developing between them. I hate to be all spoileriffic here, but I don't want people to flee the story in droves because they don't like C/S as a couple, and I don't want to disappoint the people who do.
You may then be asking, "well, TB, what this hell just happened in this chapter, then?" I think that Chuck and Serena's relationship has suddenly become very intimate, and they're confused about their feelings for each other. They'll have the chance to talk about it in a later chapter. In the next chapter, I'm going to show their relationship in high school. Like Blair says, they did have a sort of fling "for like five minutes." It was very casual, but they ended up having a big falling out as a result, and I wanted to write an imaginary version of their history as friends in order to set up their interaction in the pilot.
Also, I would like to mention that writing Blair and Dan as a couple is actually really fun if you do it with the intention of showing how they bring out the absolute worst in each other.
Thanks for Maribells for betaing, and thanks to everyone for reading! Please review! xoxo, TB