All right, the majority of commenter have convinced me to stick with chronology. I just finished up the Kiss Scene in Empire of the Son and boy is it a doozee. I hope you guys like waiting!

Previously in Chapter 6 – Blair discovered that Dan also works at W. Fireworks and words are exchanged.

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Dan was pleased. He had just scored a little coup with Jeremiah Harris, who was his mentor/famous writer buddy. Although Jeremiah Harris wasn't the kind of mentor who taught the Platonic discourses, Jeremiah loved to belly up to an open bar, especially one sponsored by a magazine like W. Mr. Harris liked bright young things at a party like this.

"I did a little Humphrey smooth talking and Jeremiah Harris said that he'd be delighted to come. " Dan said airily. He knew that Blair was going to furious that he landed Jeremiah. "So I'm just going to add his name to the list real quick." Dan had deliberately chosen the computer in front of Blair so that he could watch her glower at him.

"Oh, well you can put him under Lorrie Moore, my author, he'll be most comfortable there." She wasn't going to be outshone by a Humphrey. The thought was incomprehensible.

"I don't think so," Dan focused on the computer screen before turning back to her tense face. "Before Jeremiah Harris wrote novels, he wrote film reviews for Vanity Fair and he had a wine column in Bon Appetite." He smiled at her. "Stefano also knows him from the Times."

"So?" She was a little more than annoyed now. "Lorrie Moore was a 2010 Finalist for the Pen/Faulkner award."

"True. Maybe she is a better get." He grinned at her again before landing the final blow. "Oh, but did I mention that Jeremiah is also on the board of admission at Williams where Stefano's niece is applying to college?"

She opened her mouth to say something but found that sharp words had died in her mouth. Before she could find a rebuttal, Dan gave her a triumphant look and made his dramatic exit. 'Oh buddy,' Blair thought, 'buckle up because this is going to be a bumpy night.'

"Speaking of fights, I'm at full on war with Humphrey." Blair had just made it downstairs and was dragging a cartful of magazines to the W van.

"B, I know you like to turn everything into a contest, but surely Dan isn't your biggest competition at W."

"All the other girls are variations on a theme, and that theme is slightly lesser version of me." Blair stopped for a moment to make her point. "But, Dan is a writer, and he makes delicious coffee and never mind that he's not a completely horrible looking straight guy," she thought about what she was saying. Dan was a little more than "not-completely-horrible" looking, but she didn't feel like clarifying the issue to herself. "—Working at a fashion magazine He's got the whole office buzzing."

"Sounds like someone's feeling a little threatened." Serena was a little surprised. It seems lately that her best friend had taken a shine to her ex—something she never expected to happen. She still remembered Blair's comment about how some men "stay good" in regards to Dan and wondered what had changed about the dynamic between the former Queen B and her most hated Brooklynite.

"Not for long. My author will make his author look like a monkey with a type writer." Blair tapped her hand across her chin, "or maybe an invisible monkey with a type writer."

"B, I can hear scheming in your voice. You cannot sabotage him."

"I'm not going to treat him better than all my other enemies just because you sporadically love him." Blair threw up her hands. Now that Dan threatened her position, he was fair game. Enemies had to be weakened and Blair always knew the tenderest parts to kick.

"He's not your enemy. Earn the spot light on your own merits, you'll feel better."

"I'll call you later." Blair was annoyed. On some level, what Serena was saying actually made sense. Now if only her best friend were so reasonable about the convicted felon in her heart. "Let Ben go?"

"Let Dan be."

Blair was hanging up her phone when she felt a gentle thud of a paper bag.

"Oh picking up a late lunch for Epperly?" She could smell the sandwich that Dan was holding out to her. Was it her favorite gruyere, arugula, prosciutto Panini? She was so hungry. There was almost no time during the internship for her to step outside the virtual fences of Condé Nast. She half-way considered kicking Dan in the shin and running off with the sandwich—a repeat performance of the stapler incident—she would effectively sabotage Dan's attempt to brownnose Epperly and she wouldn't feel faint anymore.

"No, it's actually for you." In addition to outdoing Blair at all of her internship tasks, he also noticed that it was the late afternoon and she barely had time to drink water, let alone consume a meal. He saw her surprised look. "Don't worry, it isn't poisoned I wouldn't want to win due to my rival's starvation." Blair was looking at his face with grave uncertainty. He almost chuckled at her paranoia. "And I figured you were too much of a food snob to deign to eat at the commissary." Dan's phone immediately went off with two beeps. "And Epperly needs me to alphabetize." He smiled a little at her confusion and stepped away. "Duty calls."

Blair watched Dan's departing back and gripped onto the sandwich tightly. She was holding the guest list for the W party tonight in her other hand. Her eyes immediately scanned down to one Jeremiah Harris with full phone contact. Maybe Serena was right. She didn't need to cut out Dan's Achilles tendon just to get ahead. Surely, her author, Lorrie Moore, was just as good of a fit for the magazine as Jeremiah. She would let Epperly make that decision. With an uncharacteristic spirit of charity, Blair decided not to sabotage and threw away the list in the trash. She was a little shocked at herself.

An hour ticked by at the W party, Dan was checking his cell phone once every two minutes now, and Jeremiah Harris was nowhere to be found. As the minutes ticked by, he was equal parts triumphant that he had preemptively struck against Blair and disappointed that she had reverted back to her old ways again. But now, he had no ground to stand on because he did the very thing that he knew Blair Waldorf would do to stay ahead. He knew that he couldn't trust Blair, not as far as he could throw her, and now the missing Jeremiah just proved that his paranoia was well founded. Their prisoner's dilemma would only work if they both sabotaged each other. He decided to find Blair.

"Lorrie is a bit late, but she'll be here any minute." He found her nervously flicking through her Blackberry. She looked at him, resigned, "well, I hope Jeremiah bought his A game."

"He's not here yet." Dan was looking for any signs of guilt on Blair's face. "Any reason you think he might be late?"

"The guy is a famous recluse. He might not show up at all." Blair was already stressed that Lorie Moore had somehow stopped answering all of her emails and voicemails. And now Dan was moaning about his author? She just hoped that this disaster didn't send Epperly over the top. "It's your fault for picking him."

"Oh my fault? You've gotta be kidding me." Dan couldn't believe it. She just admitted, not entirely outright, that she had somehow stopped Jeremiah from coming to the party. "We said, no sabotage."

"What are you talking about?" She frowned.

As Jeremiah Harris rounded the corner, he clapped Dan on the back. The realization that Dan had just sabotaged her when she had decided that their friendship might be worth something just hit her like a ton of bricks. Dan looked back at her, shocked that she hadn't betrayed him after all. This was Blair Waldorf. How he didn't have a Louboutin heel in his back was astonishing. As Jeremiah was leading him away to the bar, Dan started to feel a cold knot of guilt.

"OMG." Blair shot a death glare at a passing cater waiter. "I was just poke axed by a poor person." Blair thought about waiting to confront of Humphrey over this latest indignation, but a white hot fury swept through her. She kicked herself mentally. How could she trust someone from Brooklyn? They were probably all raised by three-card-monty hustler on their way to the top of the social ladder, and it was precisely what Humphrey was doing. Using Lilly's connections to secure himself a high-falutin internship and then being so devious about bumping her out of the competition. She was gripping her blackberry so hard that she thought it might crack. When she spotted him at the other side of the party, Blair stalked over.

"You Williamsburg weasel! I can't believe you stabbed me in the back!"

"I only did it because I thought you did the same to me." To Dan's credit, he did looked incredibly pained when she started J'acussing him like he was part of the Dreyfus affair.

"Hillary Clinton is one of my role models!" She was furious now. Not only did Humphrey admit to being the turncoat, he did it because he thought her incapable of honor. When she thought of how accurate she was when she called him a Benedict Arnold, she was even angrier that she had been right all along. "I do not break treaties, you ass!" Her eyes were blazing now. "But, I do secure borders, so I'm going to go tell Epperly what you did right now."

"No, look, Blair, wait, we can figure something out." He gripped her elbow with both of her arms and let himself be dragged as she spotted Epperly

"Let go of me you classless cling on!"

At this moment, she thought of nothing more satisfying than slapping Dan's face. Her hand shot out and pushed his head back. He was still holding on her elbow when they both lost balance. Blair landed on top of Dan and if she wasn't struggling to smack his face again, she would have noticed how gently he was holding her so that he would break her fall. She was busy trying to suffocate her worst enemy when she saw a flash of Italian couture that could only be Stefano Tonchi.

For a second, the two enemies stopped struggling and Blair landed next to Dan. From her most undignified vantage point, she saw Stefano Tonchi step over their supine bodies. They were both beyond embarrassed and Blair knew that this was partially her fault. She had over reacted again.

Now that she had nothing left to lose, Blair couldn't help one final slap at her former friend.

Epperly fired both of them within second of seeing Stefano Tonchi stepping over their ridiculous slapping fight on the floor. Dan looked over at Blair guilty. He did feel terrible. As it turns out, Blair Waldorf was his friend. She didn't sabotage him even though she had the chance, and now he had plunged a knife deep into her back just as they were beginning to understand each other. She was silent on their way over to the W. offices to pick up their things. She had a firm set to her jaw and her eyes only locked on him when she looked like she had murderous intentions.

"Come on, it was just an internship, I'm sure you can have your mother call and get you a new one in a second." Blair was an upper east sider. Dan was sure that her fashion designer mother could use her solid connections for another job.

"My mother didn't get me W." Blair still wasn't looking at him. She began shoveling papers into her purse. "She's a designer, she can't call in favors from a fashion magazine."

"Well, you don't get jobs like this without a connection." He was puzzled now. The only way he could get within 10 foot of an internship was through Lilly. How did Blair manage this without family connections?

"Well I did. I practically stalked Stefano. Spent the night in his lobby waiting to meet him. And after the police escorted me out for the third time, I faxed a letter to every machine in the building." She hadn't told anyone, except Dorota, about how badly she wanted the internship. Her secrecy was the only way she had to make sure that no one knew if her efforts failed. She was so proud of herself when the internship offer came in. She, Blair Waldorf, had secured an insanely difficult internship without the benefits of being Eleanor Waldorf's daughter. She was proving to her mother that she could rise in the fashion world on her own.

"That's like 200 fax machines."
"Three hundred thirty two." Blair was more than familiar with the number of fax numbers she punched last week.

Dan's eyes widened. He really fucked up. He thought that the internship was just another power move Blair made and he thought that he was just trying stay one step ahead of her game so that he wouldn't get pushed out. He had no idea that this job was her dream and he had single-handedly destroyed that dream. "Wow, Blair, I'm so sorry. I didn't know any of this."

"What, the fact that you were willfully ignorant is supposed to make me feel better? You wanted an internship." She was barely keeping her livid tone in check. Blair gestured around the internship closet sadly. "I wanted this one."

He frowned. "So why didn't you just sabotage me? You had every opportunity."
Blair looked wounded for a second. "I guess I must have some undiagnosed brain injury because I stupidly thought that this fake friendship might be real."

Dan looked at her agape—did she actually say that their friendship was real? The guilt that he felt when he figured out Blair hadn't stopped Jeremiah was now ten folds stronger. He had to fix it. Because Blair said that they were friends and he knew that they were. Dan Humphrey was not the kind of person that stepped on people on his way to the top. He had to make things right. He called Epperly right away.

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