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Eric is the next to see it. He's always been perceptive, perhaps because he's spent so much of his life as a spectator to the antics of the more forceful personalities surrounding him –his mother, his sister, even his step-sister.
At any rate, it becomes apparent to him one night after his break-up with Elliot. He decides to take a page out of his big sister's book of life lessons for once, and goes to a bar to get very, very drunk.
And that is where Dan and Blair find him three hours later.
It seems his family (in its most extended version, at that) have been frantic about him. They have divided the city up and set out in search parties to look for him. Nate and Chuck are sent to scour all the underground nightclubs; Serena and Lily (the incident bringing them together for the first time in weeks) to visit all his childhood haunts and favourite places; while Rufus takes the task of remaining at home in case he shows up. So Dan and Blair get the job of searching the local bars.
Eric is relieved that they are the ones to find him. Lily and Serena always carry around such an excess of feelings, and right now he is too tired and fed up and overwhelmed to deal with anyone's emotions but his own. Chuck and Nate might have been just about bearable, but probably would have tried too hard to cheer him up, the way you do with kid brothers, and Eric wants the right to stay depressed.
Somehow Dan and Blair just get this. Maybe because they have felt that way before too.
"I'm not ready to go back," he tells them straight off. And they just turn and give each other a look that seems to encompass a whole conversation. Then Blair sits down beside him and Dan calls for the barkeep to bring them another three drinks.
So they drink. Then they drink some more. And instead of giving him well-meaning but unsolicited advice, they simply commiserate with him.
Eric starts to feel better.
Blair teaches them some of her 'intellectual' drinking games (first one to run out of names of twentieth-century American playwrights, eighteenth-century French philosophers, 1940s film stars etc. has to take a shot). Then when the liquor has gone to their heads to such an extent they can't even say the word phil-os...phil-ili...phililiososophy...Dan makes them play 'I never'. It scandalously transpires that Dan has not never seen the movie Clueless, that Eric has not never worn flannel and that Blair has not never danced to a Britney Spears song.
As a threesome, they click. But as Eric watches them tease each other, Dan making sarcastic comments about Blair's girlhood Mickey Mouse club obsession and Blair returning the favour by punching him in the arm, he realises that, even more so, Dan and Blair click as a couple.
Blair doesn't just look happy, she looks relaxed, a strangely un-Blair-like state that he doesn't know if he's ever seen her in. In the past, even when she's been happy, it's had a certain manic quality, as if she was afraid if she didn't hold on to the feeling tightly enough it would slip away. But there's a carefree quality about her tonight, with her chestnut curls falling in wild abandon, the heightened colour suffusing her cheeks, the genuine smile spread across her face. She's even wearing jeans.
Meanwhile, Dan's looking less crumpled than usual. It's partly the clothes (has Blair been helping him shop), but also some more intangible quality within. He seems energized. Looking back, Eric thinks that the overwhelming emotion Dan has projected in the past has been weariness, as if he was constantly worn out by whirlwind Serena and by feeling out of place amongst the shenanigans of the Upper East Side. But as he sits by Blair, looking into her sparkling eyes as she recounts an anecdote about the first time Serena and Chuck got her drunk, Dan seems completely at ease. As though he's finally found the comfortable spot he'd been looking for all these years.
"Thanks guys," Eric says out of the blue, overwhelmed with gratitude by their simple acceptance of his mood and disinclination to talk about the break-up. "I really appreciate the way you haven't tried to force me into a deep and meaningful discussion I'm not ready for yet. And held back on offering any guiding wisdom."
Blair snorts. "Well, I think anyone who has dated Vanessa Abrams and Georgina Sparks is automatically disqualified from dispensing relationship advice for all perpetuity, anyway."
"And I'm pretty sure the same ruling applies on anyone who's dated Chuck Bass," Dan quips back, softening the statement with a smile that Blair easily returns.
"Rather than talk it out, I say we take Ellen's advice and dance it out," Blair declares, forcefully grabbing a hand of each boy and dragging them onto the dance floor.
They both groan, though Eric really doesn't mind.
Somehow he doesn't think that Dan really minds either, judging from the goofy smile he gets on his face as Blair begins swaying rhythmically to the music.