I'm not going back to New York
.
"You're forgiven," Blair tells him, after picking up his forty-fifth call. "For now."
"Good," sighs Dan in relief. "Now I can sleep."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that," she says. "There are some matters we need to discuss, starting with –"
"Blair," he says firmly, "This can wait until tomorrow."
She lets out an angry growl similar to a wounded cat's. "No, I'm tired of waiting! All I do is wait around; wait for Maggie to go to sleep, wait for Chuck, wait for Serena, wait for you – I can't anymore!"
"Stop acting like a spoiled child," snaps Dan, and immediately regrets it. "You can't… you can't just ask me to be your… cabana boy and expect me to be okay with it."
Blair is silent for a long time.
"I'm sorry," she finally says. "That's not what I…"
"I'm tired, Blair," he continues. "I spent two, sleepless days – as your friend – making amends for something I did wrong to you, and I deserved that and more, but you can't expect anything more from me."
"Dan…"
"I'll talk to you tomorrow," Dan tells her, and hangs up. His last thought before collapsing on his bed is how very well that conversation went.
.
Jenny, Rufus, and Lily leave the next day. Dan sees them off, hugging Jenny about fifty times until she finally pushes him clear across the room. He can't help it, though; this visit is the first time in years Dan's been able to be with his little sister without worrying for her. He would suggest she stay in California with him and CeCe, but he knows it's London that has done this for her.
Rufus and Lily can't seem to stop hugging him or Eric, either. One would think those two had adjusted to their empty nest by now, and yet the constant ache their parents feel at letting their children go is enduring.
It's something Dan doesn't exactly understand, and something CeCe finds hilarious, but that's what it is all the same.
As soon as the group of three leave the house, Eric grabs his things and starts putting them into the room next to Dan's.
.
"So…" Blair says awkwardly, her nose scrunching cutely on the computer screen.
"So, that whole emotional affair thing? That's not going to happen," Dan tells her. Before she can reply, he adds, "It's insane. And stupid. You can't just say 'emotional affair' and expect it to happen, and I'm done bending over backwards, making myself miserable for you. I love you, but no thanks."
Her whole face drops. "I knew you were going to say that," she says morosely. "Ever since yesterday."
Dan smiles at her reassuringly. "I know I said that being friends would be… difficult, at best, but it's never been easy for us, so we'll just see how it goes, alright?"
"I knew you were going to say that, too," Blair says, "So I drew up a contract –"
"Are you serious?"
"– that details the terms of our renewed friendship and –"
"You're serious," Dan says, amused and slightly horrified as Blair extracts several pages from beside her and holds them up to the camera, still talking.
"– wherein neither you nor I can refrain from speaking to the other more than five days out of anger –"
"Blair!" he finally cuts her off. She looks startled at the interruption.
"Humphrey, this is important," Blair complains.
Dan shakes his head in exasperation but laughs, something only Blair can make him do. "First of all, have you considered law school? But, uh, …okay, I get the point of your contract, but you do know that friendships don't work like that, right?"
"Yes, thank you, you patronizing ass," she says snidely. "I'd just rather not have you ignoring me for months on end again, if it's all the same to you."
"Oh, I've missed this," he grumbles, and he's only being partly facetious.
He's fairly certain that Blair's about to launch into a flurry of scathing diatribe when she looks to her right. Her entire face softens – no, her entire body softens, and she leans down to the floor (Dan can't see her for almost a minute). When she faces upright again, there's a baby in her arms.
Dan can't help it; he melts.
"Is that Maggie?" he asks, fully aware that there wouldn't be any other baby crawling around the Empire.
Mercifully, Blair ignores his lapse of intellect. "Maggie, this is your Uncle Dan," she coos, holding her daughter's small hands. "See Uncle Dan?"
Maggie is beautiful. On her head are wispy brown curls coming down to the nape of her neck, and her large chocolate eyes are wide and questioning. Her fat hand curls around Blair's tapered fingers, and like any baby on the Upper East Side, her clothes are impeccable. Dan feels a lump in his throat at the sight of her and Blair, and the smile on Blair's face.
Blair laughs as Maggie lets out an unintelligible gurgle. "He looks funny, doesn't he? Funny Uncle Dan."
He avoids snorting. "Hi, Maggie," Dan says, waving to the baby.
Her face becomes transfixed on his moving hand through the screen; she reaches forwards as if to touch him and seems confused when nothing connects.
"She's almost one," Blair says reverently. "It's gone by so quickly." Suddenly, she looks sad.
"Are you okay?" he asks worriedly. "Is it… are you having a relapse? With your…"
"With my depression?" she shakes her head. "No, I'm still taking my meds, and Dr. Truman and I still meet every other week. It's just…"
"What?" prompts Dan when she falls silent.
Blair shakes her head. "Nothing. I just wish you were here, that's all."
.
Dan begins writing his new novel, the romantic comedy one. This one is different; he's collaborating. Usually Dan shuts himself away in a room and gets deeply personal. But now he's sitting in the middle of the entertainment room where CeCe, Eric, Ernest, and occasionally some of CeCe's bridge game friends spend their evenings.
Most of the dialogue for his female protagonist Moira comes from, oddly, Eric, although CeCe's scathing remarks are slid in when they're on the mild side. He's saving her best lines for the semi-drunk mother of the bride – mostly since the character is completely modeled after her.
Kevin, the male protagonist, is a little trickier. Dan purposely avoids dialogue he himself would use, but he'd rather not take Ernest's usually borderline sexist suggestions, and CeCe's friend Marvin is actually very unfunny when he's not stoned.
It's a fun production, though. Writing like this feels organic and playful which is exactly what he needs after penning such a dark story.
There's one memorable night where CeCe convinced Eric to try a mix of whiskey and gin and the both of them got completely smashed, and Dan just sat in the corner shouting out prompts and recording their increasingly ridiculous replies. CeCe's classism slurs paled in comparison to Eric's gay jokes – Dan hadn't realized just how filthy-minded his little brother could be when drunk off his ass. Dan laughed so hard that night that tears rolled down his face and his stomach hurt for hours after.
He suspects a lot of the verve and humor will fade once Eric returns to Sarah Lawrence in a month.
.
There's no doubt about it – Dan is an independently wealthy man. Meghan tells him his initial return from Rumors will be nearly a million, factoring in the rate of decay and distribution among the cast and crew. Combine that with the royalties he still receives from Inside, and Dan can safely consider himself a millionaire.
CeCe finds no end of amusement in this. "You're such new money," she tells him wickedly. "Your father married into money. You're noveau rich."
"You're just mad you can't call me poor anymore," Dan fires back.
"Darling, compared to me you're a street urchin."
.
"Did you read it?" Dan asks nervously over the phone.
"Yes, Humphrey," sighs Blair. "I managed to find the time, which you should consider no less than a miracle since Maggie has a cold and can't sleep. I've been awake for thirty-six hours now."
"Thank you," he says, hearing the exhaustion in her voice and instantly feeling contrite. "Why didn't you just have your maids help you out? You have a nanny for her, right?"
"No, actually," she answers irritably. "I decided when I had Maggie that I didn't want her growing up with maids and au pairs for parents like Chuck and I did. I want her to have two parents who love her, not paid employees. I love Dorota but that's not what I want for my daughter."
It's a surprisingly middle-class side of Blair that Dan's never been introduced to before, and he finds he likes it. Except…
"So, you and Chuck, playing house?" he tries to laugh off the sudden pain in his stomach. "For some reason I can't imagine Chuck changing diapers. He can barely pick up Monkey's crap during a walk."
"I can't imagine it either," says Blair, "Considering he has yet to change one."
Dan is stunned silent. "He… what?" is what finally comes out of his mouth.
"Chuck isn't home very often."
The anger in him at this revelation is startling. Much as he hates to think about Chuck and Blair together, he hates the thought of Chuck abandoning her and Maggie even more. "Wait, so where is he when all this is happening? Maggie's cold, and your depression, and –"
"Bejing, Paris, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Buenos Aires…" she lists off, with disinterest lacing her words. "He spends more time abroad than here, really. And when he is here, it's mostly board meetings and site visitations."
"Blair, that's not okay," Dan says. He wishes he could say more, but the very thought of an absent parent kills him inside. When his mother left to pursue her art, it was probably the worst abandonment Dan had faced in that year. He lost Serena (though he didn't know her then), he lost Vanessa, and his mother essentially said she was more important than her children and husband.
The idea that Chuck could do something like that, especially since Dan knows how much Bart messed with his son's sense of self, is sickening. And to leave Blair, whom he fought so hard to win for so long… just how ungrateful is Chuck, anyway?
"I know it's not, Dan," Blair sighs. "The reason he doesn't come home very often is because whenever he has a spare moment I try to get him to marriage counseling. We went twice, he decided it wasn't worth the effort and took off to London for a hotelier's conference."
"Why is this the first I'm hearing of it?" he demands.
"Because I don't want to think about how awful my marriage is when I'm with you."
Dan tries not to let himself feel too happy at that. "So, what? He doesn't think you're worth the effort? You two are always going on about how your …love is forever, and destiny and stuff like that. I just don't get it."
"The thing about eternal love," Blair remarks ruefully, "Is that you don't need to work for it because it's always there. Why fix something that never changes?"
"You don't think that," he says.
"No, I don't," she agrees.
They sit in silence for a long time, together despite the vast distance. Dan never tires of talking with Blair and the way it satisfies him, but this is wonderful too. He can hear her soft breathing, the sounds of her when she isn't putting up a front. She's at her gentlest this way. After a while, Dan hears faint crying through the receiver.
"Maggie?" he breathes, loath to disturb the moment.
"Yeah; I have to get her medicine."
Dan feels his chest tighten. "How sick is she?" he asks, surprised at how much he cares for this small child he's never met face-to-face.
Maybe it's because he relates to her familial situation now, and it occurs to Dan that Blair is, for all intents and purposes, a single parent in the way his father was after Allison Humphrey went to Hudson. It's been years since Dan hated Chuck, not since what happened with Jenny has this hatred run through him like a fever.
He won't say anything to Blair about it, though. She doesn't need to deal with his feelings toward Chuck right now.
"It was really bad last night," she tells him. "I was about to take her to the hospital, but I called my mom and she told me Maggie should be fine. And I think she's getting better; this time she slept for nearly two hours which is an improvement."
"I remember the first time Milo got sick; it was terrifying," Dan says, recalling the panic he felt when his two-month-old son (or so he'd presumed then) ran a fever of over a hundred.
"She's my whole world; I don't know what I'd do if I lost her," admits Blair. He hears her shift the phone away but still catches the "Hey, beautiful," she says to Maggie.
"I know what you mean."
A few minutes pass before Blair returns to the phone. "She's going back to sleep," she whispers.
"Good," Dan breathes. He thinks for a while about returning the conversation to Chuck, but finds he doesn't want to think about Blair's ailing marriage either. "What did you think of the book?" he asks instead.
"It was… beautiful," she says, and Dan knows she was about to claim she hated it just to play with him. "You wrote it for me, didn't you?"
"Yeah… yeah, I guess I did."
"Was Henry you or Chuck? I couldn't tell."
Dan grins. "I couldn't tell, either. I'm not sure he's anyone I know."
"Jessica is me, isn't she," Blair says, and it's clearly not a question. "I liked her."
"I knew you would."
"What are you going to call it?"
"No idea," Dan admits. "I was hoping you'd tell me."
Blair hesitates, and he hears her even breath falter for a moment. "There's a line from Love's Labors Lost; one of Armando's soliloquys." She clears her throat. "'Love is a familiar; love is a devil: there is no evil angel but love.' I kept thinking of it during the darkest parts of Henry and Jessica's relationship."
He turns over the quote in his mind. "There Is No Evil Angel," Dan ponders aloud. "It's ambiguous. I think… I think I like it."
.
Dan pitches the title to Meghan, and, after explaining the quote behind it, she's more than ecstatic.
They send out the first draft to Alessandra, who promised to get the novel to her favorite editor at Simon & Schuster. Dan feels oddly relaxed at the thought of submitting his new book, even though the intense scrutiny it will receive should be sending him into spasms of terror.
But, since his harshest critic has already read and enjoyed it, Dan isn't really worried.
The Hollywood movie was nice but he's finally getting back to his roots, and it's a relief.
.
Marcia comes over to pick up the rest of her things, the clothes in drawers and earrings that Meghan didn't get. Dan lets her into his room under the full weight of his guilt.
"I thought you were better than a voicemail breakup," she says icily, throwing everything inside a small duffel bag with unnecessary force.
"I thought I was, too," Dan admits. "I just… I thought we were already over."
"And you immediately went back to worshipping Blair," Marcia snaps.
Dan sighs. "I don't… it's not like that."
"Oh no? The woman is married. She'll never even give you the time of day unless she needs something from you." Marcia shakes her head at him, something like pity in her eyes. "You're addicted to someone who will never feel the same way as you do, Dan. I might not like you very much right now, but I don't want that for you."
"She loves me," he says quietly. "That's why I… we… she told me and I…"
"Did she ask you for something at the time?" Marcia probes, not unkindly, and walks out of his life.
He can't help but to wonder that same thing, try as he might to forget it.
.
Dan decides to go completely California and signs himself and Eric up for surfing lessons. He takes to it better than he'd thought, oddly enjoying the feel of the cold Pacific in the morning. Dan isn't particularly good at it yet, but their instructor Joshua (a walking surfer stereotype with blonde hair, bronze skin, and waxed chest) says he's getting the hang of it.
On the other hand, Eric's first time out had the slim boy clinging to his board, arms and legs wrapped tightly around the plastic, his face completely white. He'd lasted only an hour in the shallow waters before swimming for the beach faster than Dan or Josh could blink, and when Dan drove them back to CeCe's Eric had threatened bodily harm should Dan ever insist he surf again.
Now that surfing is in his repertoire, Dan's pretty sure all he needs to do is start wearing hemp jewelry and blast reggae from any and all speakers at his disposal, and he'll be a true blue Californian.
(He's not going gluten free, though.)
.
In probably the most awkward conversation of his life, Dan calls Meghan and Marcia's brother, James Muirs.
He remembers James from Thanksgiving last year, how the man made everyone at the table collapse into fits of undignified giggles. It's the sort of humor Dan wants for the Kevin character, the wry wit and charm and playful openness.
The only problem is, he recently dumped James' sister.
"I know I'm the last person you'd be willing to help out…" Dan says hesitantly after proposing his idea.
"Let me get this straight; you want to pay me to hang out with you and make you laugh?" interrupts James.
"Basically," he concedes.
"Well… can I punch you first?" James asks. "I feel like I should punch you. Marcia will probably punch me after, but I mean, brotherly duty. You know how it is."
Dan tries not to snort; this is very serious, after all. "I do," he agrees. "I've punched a guy in the name of brotherly duty a few times myself. Just, uh, not the nose."
"You have yourself a deal, Dan Humphrey."
.
"How could you?" Dan gasps, feigning outrage. "She's only one!"
"No daughter of mine will wear anything less," Blair returns with a hint of a smile. To Maggie, she says, "You look beautiful, don't you baby?"
Maggie giggles, the tiara wobbling dangerously on her head.
"You know, every time we do this she's bigger," he says. "She's growing so fast."
"She's already trying to walk," says Blair proudly. "Our doctor says she's a fast learner; she started crawling around at seven months old. I think she's about to start talking. Call me sentimental, but I can't wait for the moment when she calls me mommy."
Dan grins at the one-year-old. "If she's anything like her mommy, I think she'll be calling you 'mother' instead."
"Oh, haha," she returns good-naturedly. "I'll bet you good money on it; I understand you have that now."
"Not the way CeCe tells it."
Blair laughs, and then her smile fades as she checks her watch.
He feels a hard pang in his chest. "Chuck?" he asks.
"He should have been here two hours ago," she sighs. "I'm glad negotiations are going well for him in St. Petersburg, but I need him to be here."
"Well, you've got me as back-up," says Dan, and he can't quite reel in the bitterness he feels at being Blair's second choice. Marcia's words come back to him, haunting him, dancing around him like taunts and torments. He tries to push them away.
Blair frowns at his tone. "Dan, it's Maggie's birthday," she says sternly. "I want her to have both parents in her photo album on this day."
"I know," he grumbles.
"And I need Chuck here," she continues, "Because my father is only in town for three days and he's acting as my lawyer. If Chuck isn't back by the time my father leaves I'll be forced to find another attorney. Do you know how hard it is to find a good lawyer in this city?"
"Judging from the many Law & Order type shows set in New York, not very," Dan replies automatically, and then pauses. "Wait, why do you need a lawyer?"
Blair looks at him like he's an idiot. "Absent spouse, failed marriage counseling… surely you didn't think I'd subject Maggie to this for the rest of her life."
"You're filing for divorce?" it's not that Dan never thought she'd leave Chuck, it's just that… he never let himself believe it.
"Remember, I told you; I want to be the one to save me," she says, and Dan wants to reach through the screen and touch her face, run his fingers through her hair… he wants to hug her and jump around laughing. What he wants to celebrate is not the thought of them together, that's still unlikely, but this feels like the Blair he fell in love with.
"Blair, that's… that's…" he can't find the words.
She looks less thrilled than he, but smiles nonetheless. "It's time," she agrees. "I want to wait until tomorrow; I won't ruin today."
"But you're going to?"
"I'm going to," Blair confirms, her arms squeezing Maggie closer to her chest.
.
Ernest Hetford dies unexpectedly in his sleep at the age of seventy-nine as the summer comes to a close.
The death comes as a shock to Dan, who, despite observing the moments of frailty from the man, had never considered that he might actually die. He'd begun to regard Ernest in the same light as he did CeCe, as an immortal vestige of an older era. The autopsy concludes he passed away from cellular deterioration – old age.
Dan finds himself drifting towards CeCe at every possible moment as if to reassure himself that she won't leave him.
She certainly doesn't need moral support; it appears that CeCe has reached the age where death neither terrifies nor saddens her.
"I suspect I wore him out," she jokes over what should have been a subdued dinner. "Men that age aren't accustomed to using their equipment so often." Eric makes a face at this, but Dan's already heard enough about her sex life to desensitize him. There's very little she can say to shock him by this point.
"Maybe you should go for a middle-aged man next," he says.
"An excellent suggestion, Daniel," CeCe agrees. "Now, shall we raise our glasses to a wonderful man who lived a good life?"
.
The rough draft of There Is No Evil Angel returns, proofread and scribbled over.
Dan takes it into his room and pours over every red-marked word and circled sentence. He's never done this before; Inside was barely touched since it was initially an anonymous contribution, and the process of editing a script is much more in-the-moment. It feels like a blow to his pride, except Dan knows (forces himself to acknowledge) that the critique makes him a better writer.
After he's gone through everything with a fine-toothed comb, Dan leans back and considers what advice he'll take and what he'll disagree with. He'll have to set up a conference call with Meghan and his editor, whom he's had yet to meet but Alessandra sings praises about.
He wants to make this story as authentic as possible, and that means his humility must come out of hibernation.
.
The first night Dan spends with James is much more fun than he'd expected.
James greets him with a polite, even friendly handshake, warns him the punch is coming, and afterwards hands Dan the icepack in his car brought specifically for this moment. James then takes him out bowling with a few of his friends, all of whom share that same dry repartee.
When James finds out that Dan has not once been bowling, all of them make it their mission to teach him.
Of course, it's a little hard to throw the ball down the alley when you're clutching your stomach, laughing. Matt and Kyle, the two more rambunctious young men, begin pantomiming Dan's predicament, shouting out catcalls and well-meant insults. Eventually Wesley (Wes, as he insists Dan call him, never Wesley unless you want a shiner to match the purple on your chin) takes pity on him and drafts Dan into his and James' team.
Afterwards they go to Kyle's favorite bar. It's the kind of bar Dan used to go into before he could drink legally, not the posh places he's steadily grown accustomed to.
Dan tries to write down everything that he finds hilarious at first, but he's laughing too hard, and having too much fun, and there are so many funny things flying around that eventually he sets his iPhone to record the conversations and just lets himself enjoy the moment.
.
The funeral for Ernest is somber despite the brilliantly sunny day. CeCe hosts the reception in her mansion, graceful and somber, and surprisingly even sober.
Marcia attends, to Dan's muted surprise. "I liked him," she says when he approaches her about it. "He was kind to me."
"He was," Dan agrees awkwardly. Being around Marcia is no longer easy or comfortable.
.
Eric leaves, and he does so regretfully. The appeal of California captured another Rhodes over these last two summers, as it turns out. Dan suggests that Eric transfer to UCLA for the spring semester, not that he expects his brother will actually move to this side of the country.
The house is quieter without Ernest or Eric, at times melancholy in its silence, and at other times peaceful.
It seems as if everyone who had filtered into CeCe and Dan's lives here in Montecito have slipped away, leaving just them and a house full of empty rooms.
.
Dan's in the kitchen, drinking coffee and reading the LA Times lazily. It's Saturday, and therefore the movie reviews for the week have already come out, and the book reviews don't arrive until Sunday's paper. The most he finds are sports statistics and he's never been terribly invested in any one team.
There's a knock at the front door, urgent and impatient, if a knock can be such things.
He ignores it at first, expecting one of the maids to get it (Dan is completely used to maids, something he can't quite get used to), but it occurs to him belatedly that the maids have the weekends off. CeCe is upstairs sleeping off the copious amounts of wine she took in from her trip to Napa the day before. It's just him.
Dan sighs when the knock repeats, stretching and wishing he wasn't in a plain t-shirt and pajama pants. Hardly presentable, but he goes to the door anyway.
When he opens it, his jaw drops.
"Well, don't just stand there, grab a suitcase," demands Blair.
.
TBC
.
This chapter was brought to you by: "The Streets" by Avalanche City and "Ständchen" by Franz Schubert. I recommend looking up both songs because they are awesome. Not sure when the next chapter will happen since the next couple of weeks are going to be pretty busy for me – I got a job promotion, y'all! – but I promise I won't take too long ^_^