Previously in Chapter 11 – Blair falls asleep at Dan's place.
Thanks to .com/tagged/dair for the transcripts.
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Blair was having a great morning. She stepped into her closet and picked out a nude Jill Stuart shirt to complement the very preppy pencil skirt she was already wearing. Her outfit was a study in contrasts and she felt a little funny that she was so gleeful about the "field trip" she finally agreed to after some much cajoling by Dan. Maybe it was because a few nights ago, she had fallen asleep against his shoulder after a particularly grueling day. When she woke up in the sunny loft, she felt refreshed and at ease—something was changing inside her and her instincts told her that it was a good thing. During the night, his arms had fallen against her body, and now he held her in a loose embrace. She smiled up at sleepy Dan, who was still semi-asleep; he stretched out his nicely muscled arms and briefly hugged her unconsciously. Before he could rub his eyes open, Blair quickly stepped away from the couch.
"I'm going for a coffee run!" She called out as she ran towards the door. She had to get out of there, all the intimacy of waking up with Dan Humphrey in the morning had thrown her for a loop. It was still winter in New York—the crisp cold air cleared her lungs as soon as she inhaled a deep breath. She spotted a rather charming café, by Brooklyn standards, and ordered two venti lattes with extra shots.
She slowed her pace as she approached DUMBO again. Sometimes, she forgot how beautiful Manhattan was from Brooklyn. As a denizen of the UES, she rarely ever saw the island from the outside, and today, in dazzling sunlight, the Brooklyn Bridge stretched powerfully over the river, connecting the two places that were so important to her in the last two years. She remembered telling Chuck about how she didn't even know how to get to Brooklyn before Serena met Dan. Years later, she knew the route to Brooklyn well and it was her saving grace on the her night of so many failures. Coffee was her inadequate gesture of thanks.
"Waldorf. You ran out of here like a bat out of hell. I didn't think my morning breath was that bad." He was rubbing his hair dry, a towel around his shoulders. He smelled like fresh soap and Hugo Boss aftershave.
"You know what I'm like without caffeine." She handed a cup to him and tried to ignore how nicely he filled out his t-shirt. In the handsome boy department, Blair had to admit that Dan was playing a close second to the first love of her life, Nate. While Nate Archibald had the aristocratic good looks of someone who never had to work very hard, Dan's handsomeness was completely different. The planes of his face were sharp, his curly hair had been cut in an almost James Dean way, but his deeply alert eyes and slightly pouty lower lip was what made him ridiculously attractive. But even more charmingly, Dan was completely unaware of her blatantly checking him out as he dried his hair. He grabbed the cup from her.
"And for that, I am grateful I still have my head." He took a sip. "Blair. How are you feeling?"
Blair felt a rush of warmth and let herself relax into the feeling. It was good to be friends with Dan Humphrey, he was loyal and truthful, and after a day of chasing her around, doing her bidding and listening to her almost fall apart, Dan was still waiting for her answer.
"Ugh. As much as I hate to admit it. I did take on too much. A full time job, Columbia and turning you into a drug mule?" She shook her head. "I dunno what I was thinking."
"—probably that you could outsource anything." Dan looked at her face. She looked so much better than when she arrived last night. The circles under her eyes had faded and a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Now that you have all this free time, how about you come with me to that Joseph Beuys exhibit at Moma on Saturday morning?"
"Humphrey! If I didn't know better, I'd say you tried to get me fired from W, again, so that you had someone to go with you to Beuys. "
"What can I say, I'm a devious guy." He shrugged at her mock indignation.
"Maybe." She started thumbing through her blackberry.
"Maybe what?"
"Maybe to Saturday."
"Just say yes Blair. I did go to the Morgan for you." He was grinning at her now.
"Please! And you enjoyed every second of me proving how wrong you were about Degas. That was for your edification. I don't know how much I can learn from you about Beuys."
"Trust me, I just want to return the favor. Besides, we can go get some Joe's Shanghai soup dumplings afterwards." He stepped a little closer to her, almost as if he was restraining himself from caressing her. Her breath hitched a beat and she quickly stepped away.
"How about I say a noncommittal yes and I will let you know on the day of?" She did love Joe's Shanghai. The soup dumplings were about the only thing she liked. It was so like Dan to appeal to her weaknesses. She looked at the freshly scrubbed friend of hers and smiled enigmatically. "I have to run! Real life means I actually have to attend my own classes now. I'll let you know on Saturday."
Blair shook her head a little. That morning could have been so awkward, but instead she felt a burden had been taken off her shoulders. She had landed on her feet, even if it was in Brooklyn. Now, this morning, all she had to focus on was getting through breakfast with Serena and then meeting Dan. She got a text from him that said, "Pick you up at 10?" She wrote back to tell him that she needed to finish breakfast with Serena. Blair decided to start on a juice cleanse yesterday; Dorota was instructed only to give her water and leafy-green juices for breakfast. After she watched Chuck ring the bell at NYSE, she gave some bland advice to Serena about how she should march to Brooklyn and speak with Ben after their night of post-jail coitus. Serena remarked to her best friend that she seemed happier than ever. Blair smiled to herself.
Dorota noticed her new-found sense of calm. Maybe because of her background in eastern Europe, Dorota was always prepared for the worst and now she was convinced that her Miss Blair had joined a cult since she seemed so "off" lately. Blair brushed off her maid/mother figure's speculations. Today was going to be a good day and nothing would ruin her mood. After she dispatched Dorota to get her dry cleaning, she quickly typed into her blackberry "Coast is clear, come over" to her secret friend.
Dan was lazily stretched out on her bed fifteen minutes later. Girls, he thought. Always packing for the day in Manhattan as if it was a mountaineer expedition. She walked around the room, picking up her phone, her notebooks, her camera, and her makeup. She glanced at the man stretched out in her bed and was struck by how comfortable he seemed. Maybe it was because they had spent so much time together planning their Cornwall expedition in her room, but now he was concentrating on his article, running his eyes intently over each word. She didn't admit to herself that she liked to watch him read, he always seemed so absorbed.
"I can't believe I let you talk me into the Joseph Beuys exhibit after all."
"There's a great article on him in here; you should read it." He flipped up the magazine at her so she could see the cover and gave her a crooked smile. She resisted the look on his face, like a boy who just found the coolest view of the lion cages. Dan was handling their friendship with ease, it didn't seem to occur to him what other people could misconstrue. Yes, they weren't at Constance/St. Jude's anymore. She didn't have a legion of whispering-behind-the-fan followers as she did in high school, but it still didn't mean that they were home free.
Blair frowned. Going out in public with Humphrey was always difficult. She hadn't really defined their relationship to herself, and being in the context of other brought up too many complications she wasn't ready to examine. All she wanted to do was see this exhibit with Dan, engage in some heavy-hitting intellectual foreplay, and stuff her face with soup dumplings out of the sight of anyone else except for Dan, who would probably wipe her face jokingly after she bites into all too messy dumpling. Right now, she wanted to keep what they had secret, like a private island. "We should go over field trip procedures again."
"Oh, joy." He returned to his magazine.
"Ok, I arrive first, survey the location in case there's anyone I know, and scout out an exit strategy. You arrive at least 15 minutes later." She waved her hand in front of him so that he would pay attention. "Plausible deniability: we just ran into each other."
"You're really big on plausible deniability; has anyone ever told you that?" Dan looked at her. Not displeased, but not terribly happy either. He was trying to push her reluctance to been seen with him to the back of his mind. He wasn't keen on the idea of keeping each other a secret, but he was also smart enough to know when Blair wasn't going to veer from a set course for navigation. Whenever she had the plan whirring in her head, it was incredibly difficult to convince her otherwise.
"Do you want to explain to someone why we went somewhere together?" She wrinkled her forehead. Surely, Dan understood her concerns. Maybe it wasn't as a big deal to him?
From the hallway of her room, she heard Dorota's voice approaching her door. Blair's eyes widened and she grabbed Humphrey's arm and started dragging him to the shared bathroom that connected her room to Serena's.
"Is this really necessary?" He said to a door that was already closing on his face. He barely had time to grab his jacket on his exile to Serena's room, but he heard most of Blair's argument with Dorota. He sighed and glumly sat on Serena's bed. He would have to wait until both Blair and Dorota left before he could make his stealth exit. Dan ran rubbed the back of his neck, he was really annoyed by this new turn of events. Blair hiding him like he was some sort of shameful secret. Would anyone really be even shocked by their being together at all? They'd known each other for years. They were best friends with each other's exes, they had schemed together, they had been to an uncountable number of social events together, and yet here she was, pushing him out of her sight because she was afraid of what her maid thought? He really needed the wisdom of perspective right now. He found the cell phone in his pocket and dialed Rufus.
Dan was relieved to see his father. Lately, it seemed like Rufus had disappeared into the background of Lilly's life. God knows that Rufus loved Lilly more than life, but it had to be incapacitating to have no real function in that sprawling penthouse. He didn't even know what his father was doing with his days now that he sold Bedford Avenue Gallery. Dan hoped that his father was at least working on his writing or his music, something while his billionaire wife was trying to rescue Bass Industries.
Even though Dan and his father had a very solid relationship, this dynamic of his clandestine Blair-lationship (hah) made it hard to talk to Rufus. He told his father that he couldn't give any real details, but he needed advice anyways.
"You ever hung out with someone but not be able to tell anyone?"
"You mean, uh, hang out, hang out, or… hang out, hang out?" His father was doing a pale imitation of a television cool dad.
"God, this was a bad idea." Dan didn't think that the first conclusion that his father would jump to was that he was sleeping with someone secretly. But he could see how his question could be construed as such.
"What? That was vague! Well, for what it's worth, when Lily and I started hanging out again, neither of us wanted anyone else to know." Rufus looked at his son. Dan did look like he was troubled by something, but he didn't seem entirely unhappy, just confused. He knew that his son had a fraught history with Serena, but maybe now he was finally letting go of his first love. "But friendship can be a… an excuse, a cover when there's something more you don't want to admit, or you're too scared to explore." He wanted to encourage Dan towards something that was a little more substantial than his step-daughter, Serena, who seemed too wrapped up in her Lifetime Television "I'm in Love with Convict" romance.
"No… no, no, I mean there's, there's no way. I mean, even the thought of that is…"
"Scary."
"No, I mean, we're not even friends! I swear! We're not— Listen, why don't we, why don't we just turn this coffee into a lunch?" What was his father saying? Was his friendship with Blair really a cover for something else? What the hell was that something else? He was friends with a girl who was also best friends with his ex. That was it, right? There was no way that their romantic wires could ever cross together. They were so different. She had her haute-bourgeois elitism and he had his working class reverse snobbism. But he knew that was putting things too simplistically. Blair was much more than the sum parts of her snobbery. She had gumption, intelligence, and undying loyalty to her friends—in the same way that old-fashioned people might say that she operated her own moral compass. Blair was also, much much more romantic than Serena. He couldn't miss how her face lit up every time Holly rushed out of the cab to grab Cat.
"I thought you said you only had an hour before you had to be somewhere?"
"I did, but now I don't." Meeting Blair right now would just confirm what his dad had been implying. He felt a little guilty about standing her up, but with the way that he was unceremoniously dumped this morning, he couldn't be even sure that she would make their drop point on time. Right now, lunch with Rufus was probably better than standing outside of Moma alone, waiting for a Waldorf.
As soon as they stepped outside onto Park Avenue, Blair breathed a sigh of relief. Dorota had been easily misdirected and now that she was accompanying her maid on the way to the dry cleaner, at least she was headed in the right direction towards Moma. Dorota, though, appeared to be taking in the scenery and plodded silently next to her. Blair frowned, at this pace, there was no way she was going to make it to the museum ahead of Humphrey. When she snapped at Dorota to pick up the pace, her maid finally exploded. Dorota whipped Dan Humphrey's New York magazine out of her apron with a magician's flourish.
"Just what are you implying?" Blair pulled her composure together. She couldn't believe that she was having this conversation.
"Your new secrecy," Dorota quickly gained confidence as she listed off the evidence. "—calmness with Mr. Chuck, supporting Miss Serena's new boyfriend, and last week I find Nova documentary in your Netflix queue!"
"What are you doing in my queue?" Blair tried for misdirection again.
"You and Lonely Boy are having affair!"
"We are not!" Dorota's words hit Blair like a ton of bricks. She felt a sick twist to her stomach. This was exactly how everyone around them would react to the news of their relationship. This was exactly why she didn't want to tell anyone else. "We have gone to a few things together. It started over the holidays; it's no big deal!"
"No big deal? We have to tell Miss Serena!"
"We will do no such thing!" Blair quickly backtracked. Telling Serena would mean a multitude of things that would either strain her relationship with her best friend or cause a rift with Dan—neither of which Blair was interested in. "I am not friends with Dan Humphrey, and to prove it I will happily skip the Beuys exhibit and leave him hanging." She scrambled for a new activity. "I would rather shop, anyhow! So come on, let's go, first stop Chloé!"
Blair was putting Dorota through the gauntlet of Madison Avenue. Dorota could barely been seen behind boxes from Chloé, Joseph, Cesare Paciotti, Prada, and Sonia Rykiel as Blair went from store to store like it was supermarket sweeps. One of the many advantages of living on the Upper East Side was the trove of shopping and just when she was relishing Dorota's punishment for making her miss her Humphrey date, she spotted his familiar grey wool coat, stepping out of Caravaggio. She quickly sent Dorota to Café Bouloud before turning around to face the fly in her ointment. Humphrey was nowhere near midtown, where he was suppose to be!
"Excuse me, why aren't you at MOMA, meeting me?" Her voice rang out.
"I decided to grab lunch with my dad instead." Dan was a little surprised running into her. He had made it a point to avoid her today, after that bizarre morning. "Why aren't you at MOMA meeting me?"
"I'm standing you up!"
"Ah, well, apparently great minds think alike." He chuckled and took a sip of the coffee in his hand.
"But I had a good reason." She was just on the verge of real anger.
" And I would love to hear that reason, but my dad is going to be out any second, and I haven't scouted an exit strategy for you, so…" He pressed his lips together in an expression of mild annoyance.
Blair had not expected this morning to come back to bite her on the behind so quickly. Maybe she was being paranoid by kicking him out of her room when Dorota showed up, but he had no idea what was being implicated here!
"We are not done here." Her eyes darted to the door to make sure that Rufus hadn't spotted them. Then she raised her chin defiantly to glare at him.
"Yeah, we are." He asserted with a nod. But Dan wasn't really sure what they were "done" with. If Blair was mad that he had stood her up, there was no real room for argument since she coincidentally was doing the same thing. Even with the bizarre morning, they were still on an even keel. As he watched her walk away, he felt a slight pang in his chest. Something bad had just happened and he didn't feel quite good about his decision to stand her up anymore—even if she was doing the same to him. She looked disappointed and confused. Which to be fair, were the same emotions that he was experiencing right now too. He decided to head home to Brooklyn. It was just too easy to run into drama on the Upper East side.
He was finishing up a new outline for a story he was writing when he heard her knock at the door. He always recognized her greeting, sharp and succinctly. As he opened the door, she gave him a cold look before almost running into him. Her chin was set defiantly as she spun around to speak. Dan didn't really feel like getting into an argument right now. He had a lot on his mind.
"Did you come all the way to Brooklyn just to yell at me? Because that's really not necessary."
"Yes it is." Blair took off her gloves. Sometimes, as she was getting ready to speak, she reminded Dan of a prizefighter. "Dorota saw your New York Magazine and accused us of having an affair! That's why I stood you up." She had to make him understand the gravity of the situation. Dan, as smart as he could be about people, was being incredibly obtuse about her.
"You mean, because we were sneaking around, she assumed we were… covering something up." Dan closed the door and pondered this. Dorota and Rufus were probably the two people closest to them outside of Serena and Nate. If they were suspicious, who else would be?
"Can you believe it?"
"Well, only because my dad basically told me the same thing. Look, if anyone else finds out about this—"
"They'll jump to the same conclusion! God, I knew you'd be my social death, Humphrey, I just knew it!"
"No, you know what?" He knew that Blair was just having a moment. It came back to the same argument he was having with himself this morning in Serena's bedroom. Why would it matter if anyone else found out? It was the secrecy that was making the relationship a bigger deal than it was. "It's gonna be fine. We can make it fine. All we have to do is tell everyone we've been hanging out. It's not going to be a big deal unless we keep making it a big deal."
"Right, which it totally isn't." She paced a little around the kitchen of the loft. She had to give Dan credit; he always managed to look at things from a ground level, without too much crazy flair or drama. But she didn't trust that her relationship with Humphrey would be so easily accepted. She had grown up on the Upper East Side, one could do anything as long as one knew how to set the bar. "You know, we should soften the ground, put out an anonymous post on Gossip Girl that some big secret is going to come out at Chuck's party. That way everyone will assume that some earth-shattering huge scandal is imminent, like—"
"You getting traded for a hotel." He teased. After Blair had told him the entire story a few weeks ago, he didn't know exactly how to react to the whole package. It seemed so medieval, Chuck trading his woman for property. Blair, the amazingly resilient person that she was, was slowly moving beyond the horrendousness, and a few nights ago, she made a hilarious joke about Jack Bass, serfs, and triangular trade. He hadn't stopped laughing for minutes.
"Or you raising Georgina's baby by a Russian mobster." That last comment grated on her nerves. "We'll have successfully managed expectations, and by the time our friendship is announced, it'll seem like nothing at all." She started typing the message to Gossip Girl.
"So we tell everyone tonight, agreed?" Dan was actually excited. Now, all the crazy secrecy and junk could go away. He could just be himself and hopefully, Blair would continue to be the way that she was around him, snarky, hilarious but without the paranoia.
"Agreed." Blair finished typing and gave Dan a hard look. "Oh, and… only I get to joke about the hotel. Still too soon."
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Ah oui, ze next chapter is the kiss. Get your Sebastian the crab on and get Humphrey ready to kiss the girl. Please review. Muchas gracias.