It Must Be Felt With the Heart
IsabelleB.
Chapter 2: Rufus Humphrey & His Love Without Truth
The Only One Able To Give This Girl A Story and A Heart
The Rufus Humphrey Chapter, in all its brilliance, utters deplorable truths:
"…a story with no answer. Here, we find Rufus Humphrey in a struggle for acceptance. And what man wouldn't struggle when his only role is to perform the job of stay-at home husband. What's more shameful is his resignation to the thought that he has no other option. How can a man who, at one point, was the only financial provider to one family believe that his only position in another should be the digressed title of homemaker or even worse as gossiper…. As he wastes away in the Van der Woodsen suite, he bares witness to the most tragic of unnamed victims: a 95-pound, doe-eyed, bon mots tossing, label-whoring package of girly evil. Viewing her half-monster and half-human, his father, Dr. Frankenstein, is the only one able to give this girl a story and a heart. He believes as truly spendthrift scientists believe, that there is usually something beneath the surface with people like that that make them act like they do. And girls like that are challenging, he says, and usually worth it. But I, as examiner and judge, truly wonder how many men have said that before they have sincerely regretted it…."
Despite all his good intentions, Rufus Humphrey had produced and raised not one, but two ogres on the Upper East Side -
More Deceptive Than An Obvious Fact
When Jenny Humphrey comes knocking on his hotel door, he isn't surprised. Rufus was upset before, but he imagines, he must be livid now. An excerpt from his new book is to be released each week through the New Yorker, and this week, it's all about Rufus Humphrey.
Despite having already told his family and friends that his new book is about them, they don't seem to grasp his book is an affront. The magazine has started with his least offensive material, if you could call a chapter about a househusband such.
In his Rufus Humphrey chapter, the only redeeming portion is about his Father's love of those who he shouldn't. Nothing's more tragic than the detailed account of Rufus's chase of Lily; more beautiful than his encouraging words to his son; and more profound than the love he displays for his only daughter. Every other paragraph is about his role as ineffectual father to his two Brooklynite brutes, his impediment as a one-hit wonder and the lost of his entire manhood to a soft-spoken blonde.
Still, that's not why not he thinks Jenny is here.
"How could you pick her over him?" She screeches at him – the distain that lets him know that she's talking about Blair.
He sighs. "I didn't pick her over anyone. Truthfully, we're not even together."
"That's right," she scoffs back at him. "She hasn't chosen you either –"
She breaks eye contact with him to take a look around his hotel suite. Custom made sheets, twenty-four hour room service, a view of Central Park, and a price tag he can barely afford. She doesn't have to do much to quietly pick him apart. She can discern that everything, including his hotel selection is related to the needs of her sworn enemy, and bothers her to no end. As she sits on the edge of his leather-finished couch, with the same disenchanted look he gets from his father, she tells him what he wants to know least: she's disappointed in him.
Not just disappointed but confused.
"It should be you in the Ostroff Center," she tells him, but all he can tell her with untruthful resignation is that she's overacting.
"Am I?" she questions. "Because the Dan Humphrey I know would never accept someone like Blair Waldorf. And he would never hurt Dad like that either."
Dan Humphrey would never – could he describe in words how frustrating that statement was? An entire life lived by the things he wouldn't do. When had that gotten him anywhere? He wasn't Yale, he wasn't with Serena, he wasn't anything, and yet, that statement was suppose to hold him true to his convictions. No - maybe Dan Humphrey wouldn't. But for better or worse, he just wanted to say what he was thinking from now on. He loves his dad, there's no question about that, but maybe he needed to be to more honest about how he felt. It's just -
"It's just, what? Easier for you to hurt your friends and family instead of hurting her? From what I hear, you'll her hurt plenty." She finishes, standing up from the couch and passing him without so much as a kind word or touch. She's ice, just like her former Constance Billard mentor when she's about to say something deplorably cruel. He braces himself knowing she'll aim to hurt him with her next words.
Instead, she sighs - out of frustration, out of hurt, he's not sure but what he does know that her next words are coming out of love. As she heads to the door to leave, she tells him an obvious fact:
"Despite whatever you have to say about me or Nate or Serena or Chuck," she starts, "there will always be a story related to Blair. And despite your highly biased hand, it was Blair who was usually the villain in each of our stories."
He stays quiet as Jenny leaves because he didn't need her telling him any more truths.
He knows who Blair Waldorf is, and still finds that there's nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact. Even a villain needs a story. And like the French existentialists before him, he prefers to moniker her - his antihero.
She Didn't Have to Say the Words
He's the Labrador.
"Why are you with me?" he asks her the next time he sees her.
She tries not to look so resentful as she rolled closer to him in his crimson Yves Delorme bedding. "It's certainly not for your tactfulness," she jokes, but he's being serious.
"Humphrey," she pleads with him, not understanding why he has to ruin a good moment; but after enduring two separate arguments with both Rufus and Jenny, he can't help but think she's acting as senseless as he is. If she were smarter, she'd be running a kingdom with a Prince. She was always good at that: bawling orders, dominating territories, negotiating war (if there ever was a contradiction). Or the other hand, he thought quickly, if she was nostalgic, there was always a Golden boy to reclaim. Manhattan always needed Vanderbilt types and what better couple to continue the legacy than a Waldorf and a Archibald. While it felt like a decade ago, he was sure Nathaniel knew how to slide back into that role and put back on that happy but dissatisfied face. Or more challenging, he considered as he eyed her La Perla underwear laying on the edge of the bed - she could be in the arms of a Dark Knight. He was available and always more than willing. And of course, he loved her.
But instead, she was here with him.
"Forget it," he finishes, despite knowing that there's more to it than that. What he's really saying was that he knows that he'll fail in comparison. That there's really no point in mentioning his attributes when he was being likened to a Prince, a Golden Boy and a Dark Knight.
It is what he thinks.
It is what he always thought.
"Dan - " she starts again.
Maybe he really is the toad.
He pulls her in for a short kiss on the forehead before turning to lay on his side. "Just forget it."
He thinks she'll let it go.
The Labrador.
Her devoted secret who had been by her side for the past two weeks; the person giving her no ultimatums and no required changes.
In fact, if anyone had changed, it is him. He was smiling a little bit more, hurting a little bit less. Despite his family dilemmas, he was in a better mood than he had been in in a couple of months. Still, he was also breaking a whole lot more. "Forget it."
But for the first time he sees her pained expression at his self-loathing.
As they both lay on their sides, she gently touches his cheek. Aiming for her favorite spot, her hand travels to the back of his neck, and she wraps her fingers around the curls of his hair. "Its not like I haven't tried to understand it, " she starts. "I want to – "
And of course he waits - knowing how hard it was for her to open up. He'd wait forever honestly. Because in the future, if anyone asks him why he risked it all for her, he'd tell them it was because she was human. Unlike Serena and Vanessa, who he can't help but judge for their imperfections, he finds nothing more beautiful than a flawed Blair Waldorf. Unguarded and even more multifaceted, he can't believe the amount of kindness he finds even in her most unforgivable acts.
When she explains what she's thinking, his heart stalls.
"Despite the mob of doting admirers," she whispers, "sometimes Serena was in short supply of a good listener. She used to tell me these stories about you. About how you'd write her a new life and make her feel different. I used to scoff at her, tell her, she deserved a guy who could buy her jewelry and chocolates, but secretly I always wondered what that felt like. I always knew someone would write a story about me. I just never thought that person would be by my side to hear it – to help me live it and sometimes, make things better. I know it's weird but - don't envy Serena anymore."
Just like that - it's like the first time he told her about his mother, just like the time he comforted her at Dorota's wedding, and just like every other time he has fallen in love with her. Every time she opens to him, he can't help but want to be there with her.
And maybe someone else would need more, maybe that wouldn't be enough. But to him, those few words said it all.
She didn't have to say the words.
Because in his next chapter, he had plenty of words for the both of them.
AN: I promise to get the next Chapter out faster but you can help by leaving a review!
Chapter 3: Jenny Humphrey Turned Out Like All the Other Girls At Constance
"It's a brave new world, but Jenny Humphrey is still stuck in the old one. Sadly, she's another mass production, stuck in a caste system she had no choosing of. And while the people of her caste make up the majority of human society, she, like everyone else, moans about the lack of supremacy it provides. Instead, she yearns for the recognition of those who don't even know she exists..."