A/N: I hope you like where this is headed. It's a bit shorter this time around as I've not had all that much time to write. But next time will be longer. Please review!
Dan checked his watch again. Time was crawling by with all the enthusiasm of a child going to the dentist. It had been almost two hours, and still nothing? It would be 1am soon, and as they made it closer to morning there'd be even less chance of someone finding them. It seemed absurd that in one of the most expensive, prestigious buildings in the whole of Manhattan - how could they have been stuck here
Chuck was glaring darkly at him, probably blaming him for, well, everything. If this was anybody's fault, it was Chuck's. His fault for complicating everything, throwing a Bass-spanner into the quiet perfection of his and Blair's afternoons together in fringe cinema over Winter Break, their lunches, brunches and movie nights since the semester began. Chuck had been in New Zealand, about as far away as it was possible for him to be. He had -perhaps foolishly - assumed that out of sight was out of mind. But what if Chuck had been right? What if, with all its turbulence and twisted lies, he and Blair were just too strong to be parted? What if he was an interlude, a minor complication on the epic road to Chuck and Blair.
It was funny how from the outside, they had always seemed so perfect for one another. Even from someone who didn't know either of them that well, it just made sense. They had seemed the same, two halves of a whole. But he knew Blair now. He realised now that she was not defined by her scheming, her talent for manipulation or her rabid ambition. A few times in the past, he had seen examples of her fierce loyalty, her unswavering love for her friends - usually directed at Serena, sometimes Chuck. But as they grew closer, and he began to imagine her feeling that strongly about him, he couldn't push the idea of him and Blair from his mind. She was the same prickly, sharp-witted, film noir anti-heroine. But this was tempered by the affectionate pokes at his ego, how funny she could be, how good-natured and how special she could make him feel just by turning and listening to what he was saying. With Blair, there was a definite inflation applied to social interactions. Everything meant more to here than it would to say, Serena. Each touch, glance and word was laden with meaning. It was kind of old-fashioned, like the worlds they enjoyed on screen. And it was addictive. Perhaps this was why Chuck was so dependant on her, so fiercely paranoid that anybody else could find this out. He was like a dragon guarding treasure when it came to Blair, and while it was romantic and all it wasn't all that healthy.
At the same time, he thought realistically about his own prospects with Blair. He knew that he was always in danger of putting those he cared about on a pedestal. And with Blair, that was easy as she took great pains to appear nothing less than perfect every single day. But was he being unfair? The same issues that had been a constantly niggling - and eventually damning - undercurrent in his relationship with Serena were threatening to appear once again. Had he really changed all that much from the Lonely Boy of Gossip Girl's blasts, way back when they were in high school? Had Blair changed enough to make this workable now? Did he even want either of them to change?
"What are you frowning about, Humphrey?" Chuck's words were slower and more deliberate, not slurred exactly, but you could tell he'd been drinking.
"Nothing." Dan said, brusquely. "Nothing."