This was meant to be a fill to prompt but it became far too long for me to finish in the time allocated. The words were rain, ride, elevator, blackout, dress up, drunk. And my mind took me to an obvious place!
Very smutty as a warning. Please tell me if you enjoy, dear readers, as there may be more of this. There's a plot brewing in my mind but god only knows when I'll find the time to write it. And I know I should be concentrating on my other unfinished story but I'm waiting for a bit of inspiration (and discipline) to return for that.
Rain lashed the wall length windows that overlooked greater Manhattan, dimming the twinkling lights of the vast cityscape. The weather forecast had indicated storms, but Blair hadn't expected the second coming of the flood to decimate her first charity gala.
At least it matched her mood. The turnout had been abysmal. Blair felt her smile turn to a rictus as she tried to mingle with the small gathering, her laughter strained to even her own ears, her small talk banal and oversold.
The dress she had chosen was perfect for the role she was trying to play, a soft pink ruffled Marchesa designed to enhance and soften, though the truth be told, she only really felt comfortable in dark colours anymore. The boned bodice dug into her ribs, and though she had been well trained in the art of ignoring discomfort, all she wished to do was slide into her one pair of comfortable pyjamas and sequester herself in her penthouse. Turn the lights off and try to rediscover some kind of content through the eyes of Audrey.
But the compelling thought had to wait, at least until Blair had forced her charms on the select group she hosted. She held her glass to her lips, taking a sip as she looked speculatively around at the small crowd. It wasn't as select as she may have hoped. The only guests who held any influence, she already held in her pocket. The people she really wanted to impress had sent their most insincere apologies, using the most convenient weather as an excuse.
It was probably for the best that Chuck wasn't there, he was far better at alienation than ingratiation. Instead he traversed the globe, trying to shore up Bass industries while she was ensconced in the Upper East Side, waging a war of civility on her own. Even from the grave, Bart still managed to torment their existence and in the fallout after his death, investors and supporters both had left their sphere of acquaintance like rats from the proverbial ship. People had been looking at her out of the corners of their eyes for months and the speculation she saw there was enough to make her twitch. But she forced herself to smile and simper, swallowing the defensive words that just begged to be let loose.
Maintaining the facade made her achingly weary. Not because she wasn't used to pretence, but the lack of allies made her feel anchorless. It would have alleviated some tension to have a support, a solid shoulder at her back instead of a corner. But the only prop on hand was the abundant alcohol and Blair found herself drinking fast, gritting her teeth behind her frozen smile.
The one place that drew her was the empty spot by the unruly headed interloper at the bar. Everything about him was doubtful, the too long hair, the loose posture, the tapered fingers that traced the rim of his tumbler. But it made her feel almost relaxed to rest her eyes on him. Here at least was someone she didn't have to be obsequiously polite to.
"I don't know why you thought you might be welcome here." She hadn't meant to approach but her wilful feet had weaved a path across the floor to leave her standing awkwardly by his side.
"I'm very well, Waldorf, thank you for asking." Dan signalled the bar staff for another drink before raising his eyes to hers.
"I don't recall sending you an invitation."
"Serena asked me to come."
"And, of course, you do everything Serena says. Did neither of you notice the lack of the 'plus one' on her invite?"
"No, it didn't pass us by. But she's in LA and couldn't come. She's worried about you."
Blair looked to the ceiling. She'd had quite enough of concerned friends. "And that's why you've been sitting at the bar all night, without saying a word, although I concede you did me a favour by not mingling."
"And I said Serena is worried about you. Personally, I've got better things to think about."
She chewed at her lip. "So, your presence is more about the free liquor then?"
Dan raised his glass, swirling the dark liquid. "Apparently it's my only friend here."
"Come for Serena, stay for the booze?" Blair knew she should walk away, she was still angry at him, she was always angry at him. But the perverse enjoyment she always found in their engagement gave her the most pleasure she had found all evening.
"Come for the booze, stay for the booze." He gave a snort and downed the rest of the liquor, his hand a little unsteady as he placed the tumbler back on the bar
"You're drunk."
"As are you. You're slipping, Waldorf." She was tipsy, maybe swaying toward intoxication but she thought she had been hiding it well. His words just made her shoot him a withering look, before she belatedly left him to resume her role as the gracious hostess.
Blair felt Dan at her elbow again after the elevator had descended with the last of the guests. "Are you still here?"
"The storm's getting worse. I'm going to see you home."
"I don't..." Blair bit down on the words. She didn't have her usual driver and the idea of trying to hail a cab in this weather, in these shoes, was a vision of hell she wasn't quite prepared for. "I thought you never worried about me."
He smiled then, the dimple showing in his cheek as his teeth flashed. "I'm doing it for Serena."
It wasn't until the were in the elevator car that she let herself truly look at him. Dan's hair was perilously close to the line between alluring and absurd but the defined curve of his jaw was just as cutting as it had always been. She didn't drop her eyes when he looked up, willing him to look away before she had to. But he held her gaze intently, a budding smile playing at his lips. "I'm not a painting to peruse at your leisure, Waldorf."
Blair closed her mouth against the drunken giggle that threatened to escape, twisting her lips into a scowl instead as she looked to the elevator display. The speed the floors ticked down seemed painfully slow and she clenched her fingers in her skirt, counting the numbers one by one. She leant back against the mirrored walls, the glass cooling her flushed skin, closing her eyes to the slightly swimming room.
Everything came to a halt so abruptly she lost her footing, almost tumbling in a graceless mess at Dan's feet, but he grabbed her arms and held her steady. "The elevator stopped."
"I know you're the master of the obvious statement but really wouldn't it better saving your breath to call 911?"
He let go of her arms and fumbled for his phone, making a rueful face as he looked at the screen. "There's no cell coverage."
Blair withdrew her own phone from her purse, ignoring the no service signal. A sickeningly friendly voice on the line told her to 'please try again later'. After thrusting the useless device back into her bag, she jabbed one perfectly manicured fingernail into Dan's chest. "This is your fault."
He looked down at the finger still pressing against his shirt before meeting her eyes. "I don't see how. You're the one who threw a party during a hurricane."
"If you hadn't insisted I come with you. I'd still be safely upstairs and you'd be stuck here alone."
"And then you could have rung the emergency department to rescue me?"
"Hardly. I would have just taken the stairs."
Dan chuckled but, before he could reply, the lights flickered for a moment and died, plunging the close space into blackness. It was too dark for Blair to see even her hands before her face, though she stared uselessly at them, trying to control her growing sense of alarm.
"Don't panic, Blair." She felt resentful that he could read her thoughts so immediately. "There's bound to be an emergency generator. Just wait a moment."
He placed his hand on her arm and they both waited breathlessly for the light to come on or the elevator to move, but it stayed silent and dark. It was only the warm pressure of Dan's fingers against her skin that stopped her mind from exploring how it was exactly like she had always imagined a tomb to be. She grappled in her purse once more, withdrawing her phone to illuminate the room with a dim glow. "Nothing's happening."
"Give it time." He let go of her arm and slid down the wall, tugging at her skirt from the floor. "You should sit down."
"And you should stop mishandling my Marchesa."
"Have it your way." His tone became conversational as the light from her phone blinked off and the room turned to black once more. "You know, I read the other day that you're meant to lie on the floor if you're in a plummeting elevator. Apparently your body absorbs the shock better."
If Blair didn't feel so dizzy she would have kicked him, but the combination of her six inch heels and the number of martinis singing in her blood made her sink down beside him instead. The sleeve of his jacket just brushed against her bare skin and she let herself lean in closer, pressing against his arm in an effort to ground herself. "Was it really necessary to share that thought?"
Dan's voice sounded close by her ear. "No, it wasn't. It was just the only way I could think of getting you to sit down. This is kind of scary." He nudged her with his elbow. "I can start another disagreement to distract you, if you like. You can pick the topic."
"You're already using up too much air."
"Ah...now, there's a another thought. I'll tell you what, you worry about the oxygen and I'll think about the falling elevator."
"Shut up, Humphrey." She tried to make her reply cutting but the smile that quivered on her lips softened the words. It was almost fortunate he couldn't see her face. He took her at her word, staying silent, though she heard the catch of his breath as he swallowed his laugh.
The dark made it difficult to keep a sense of time. Blair was sure they had been sitting there for an hour but when she checked her phone again, not even fifteen minutes had passed. The dim light showed Dan had shut his eyes, his head pressed back against the wall, legs sprawled before him. Shadows played across his sharp cheekbones, deepening in the hollow of his eyes and the curve of his lips.
She tightened her fingers around her phone to switch it off, preferring the dark pressing against her, rather than the exposed reality of her situation. Focussing instead on the soft intake of Dan's breath beside her, Blair could feel the cocktails she had drunk blunting her thoughts, deconstructing them until they were just responses, no rationalisation at all. Sex had always been her preferred method of subduing her demons and Chuck's prolonged absence had left her with little release but her fingers. She felt a familiar warm pressure begin between her thighs and creep up her loins, the familiar maleness of the body leaning beside her unavoidable. In the warm closeness of the space, she could almost smell her arousal and she pressed her knees together in an attempt to control it.
It was the little sigh that Dan gave that led to her undoing, a sound of resignation that echoed through her, making her succumb to impulse. She couldn't stop herself from sliding her hands across to grasp his shirt, tugging his chest to hers so she could feel the warm musk of his breath against her face.
It was uncanny how his lips met her own, so precisely, even though she was blind to his movement. They were eager, his tongue dipping against her lips and tracing her teeth. She gripped his hair to pull his face closer to hers, tilting her head to welcome his mouth more fully and sinking against him.
Dan shifted onto his knees, fumbling at her skirt to find her thighs, pulling at them so she would straddle his. Her hands started working by touch and memory alone. Jacket, tie, shirt, belt, fly. Pushing them over his shoulders and down his hips so she could feel the warm heat of his skin against hers. He had a more difficult time of it, she was still fully clothed, only a little mussed from his clumsy handling as he searched the bodice of her dress for the fastening. He had no hope of finding it, such feminine intricacies were beyond his reckoning.
But she didn't reckon on Dan's wiles, and before she could assist him, his fingers had traced up the encouraging path of her garter belt, lifting her full skirts around her hips. She heard the gentle give of the seams as his other hand tugged the strapless bodice down, his mouth searching for the peak of her exposed nipple above the soft froth of chiffon and tulle pooling at her waist.
It was so dark Blair could almost feel the ghost of her sleeping mask against her face and the single thing that existed was her fantasy. It was the only time she let herself remember exactly how soft Dan's skin could be and how consuming his mouth. When he sank back against the wall, the pressure of his palms on her thighs pulling her with him, she settled over his hips. Already his erect length slid through the sodden lace between her legs and she tried to reach under her skirts to guide him closer, but always another layer of net met her searching hands. How he blindly navigated the ruffled layers, she couldn't know. When his fingers dipped under the lace edge of her underwear, she tugged at the delicate fabric, feeling it tear under her frustrated grip. And when they slid further, she felt it give entirely, trapping her hands in the mess of silk. It felt so illicit that she let out a groan, grinding down to trap his fingers in place between them, the slick pressure sparking a thrill of sensation through her.
Every rasp of his tongue lit a path up her neck. It was all limbs and heat and confusion, the shudder of his breath against her shoulder, his lips moving with words that only her loins understood. So sensitised by the absence of light that the swirl of his fingerprints almost felt as though they were branding her flesh.
His moist fingers cupped her ass as she pushed her hands against his chest, giving up her wrestle with the impediment of her skirts and just moving with the roll of his hips. The intake of his breath grew erratic as he pressed up convulsively, sliding through the wet cleft between her thighs again. It was a reckless kind of wantonness that made her shift, angling him closer and they both gave a gasp as he slipped inside her, so wet that he could thrust in to the hilt.
The absence of sight drew out all Blair's other senses and she clutched at his bare shoulders, hardly recognising the low moan that escaped from her lips. She leant forward, finding his mouth once more, feeling the full length of his torso pressed to her. His searching lips never left hers for long, always winding back in a torturous path that left her floundering.
The change of pace was inevitable. Fingers seeking blindly for the swift pucker of skin, the sharp exhale of breath. Blair couldn't control her growing shudder at the perfect rhythm of their hips, hoping Dan was too caught up in his own response to wonder at hers. She could't stop it, she couldn't want to. The agonising little peaks that made her body keep demanding and the warm slide of his body against hers that answered over and over again. She wanted to draw it out, the slow sweet throb that hovered in her belly. But even as she focused on it, it drew her in, the bucking of his hips beneath her taking her closer with every beat.
The elevator gave a jolt, leaving her feeling momentarily weightless, Dan's hips lifting with her, and the shock of adrenalin was enough to send her over. She bit her tongue, tasting blood, trying to stop the cry of release breaking from her, unprepared for the lights flickering on and his wide brown eyes catching hers. The habitual guardedness he always looked at her with now was gone, replaced by something altogether softer. But it was only before she blinked, blinded by the brightness and the still resounding pleasure that pulsed through her, and when she could focus again his eyes were closed.
Each swiftly descending number on the elevator display fell away like her own stomach. She peeled herself from his chest and stood up, trying to tug the ruin of her dress up to cover her bared breasts, feeling vulnerable under glare of the lights. Her efforts did little, all she could do was cover the damage with her coat, hiding the gaping bodice from sight, trying to tuck up the torn underskirt that dropped to the floor in uneven layers.
If Dan was as loathe to look at her as she was to him, she couldn't bring herself to find out. She could only throw glances at his swift movements as he pulled at his trousers, his fingers running through his curls so they stood in comic disarray. His discomposure at odds with the sheer abandon that had characterised him only minutes before.
He had just managed to tuck in his shirt tails when the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors opened to reveal the deserted lobby. But he didn't speak, just gathering his coat from where it lay discarded on the floor and placing his hand on her lower back to guide her through.
It was only when they had passed the curious doorman and stood under the awning that shielded them from the easing rain, that Dan looked at her, an unreadable tilt to his dark brow. "The storm's mostly passed."
She was so stunned by his trite comment that the words she had held on her tongue for the past minutes came loose, even though she had never intended to speak them aloud. Never intended to refer to what had just passed between them at all if possible. "So, was that for Serena too?"
He turned away to the street, a disarming twist to his lips. "No. That was for you."
Before she could ask him what he meant he had ducked into the rain, waving furiously at a passing cab. It pulled up to the kerb, sending a wash of water onto the sidewalk, drowning his shoes.
Something snagged in Blair's chest as he beckoned her over. He was already drenched, the persistent rain running in rivulets over his face. But he gave her an untroubled smile, holding out his hand toward her. It took hers in a strong grip, almost a handshake, except that he held it for too long. It was only when she felt a cold trickle of water down her neck that she broke the spell, ducking her head and sliding into the the back seat of the cab.
Dan's fingers touched his head in a half salute before he closed the door. "Well met, Waldorf. It was nice to do battle with you again."