He sees her for the first time.
It's a chance meeting, the universe working in strange ways to bring them together, and he glances up from his coffee and his laptop to see her standing at the counter, ordering. As he stares at her figure, not sure if he's dreaming, he feels like he's falling, spinning into infinity, unable to find the ground. Dan grips the table, feels the hard edge against the palm of his hand, and the cold, hardness brings him back to earth.
Blair.
She hasn't seen him and for a moment he indulges in studying her. Her hair falls down her back, dark and shiny and he remembers how soft it feels between his fingers. Her skin is smooth, her neck exposed when she shakes her head a little. Dan thinks he could write poems about Blair, describe every detail, from her dark eye lashes on her alabaster skin to her pink, glossy lips. He drinks her in until he sees the slight movement of her shoulder, her body pivoting towards him and he shifts his eyes back to the screen of his laptop, back to the black words on the white screen, pretending he wasn't drinking her in, pretend he hadn't forgotten for a moment that he hates her.
Stupid.
He thinks she'll turn away, walk out with her coffee, never even see him sitting there but in the next moment he hears a familiar voice asking him if she can take the empty chair across from him. Dan looks up again, feigns surprise.
"Blair."
His voice is irritable, wondering why she is sitting down across from him, setting her paper cup of coffee on the table, looking at him with dark, soulful, unreadable eyes, and for a moment he thinks he sees sadness there but it's gone and she is smiling and pretending everything is fine.
"I can go." she says softly, hesitantly. Dan swallows. If he didn't know better, he'd think she was afraid of him rejecting her, but that can't be. Not Blair Waldorf who walked away without as much as a goodbye. He doesn't want her to talk to him, to sit down across from him, he equally wants her to stay, to greedily suck up any time he can have.
"Stay."
She reaches across the table, puts her gloved hand on his and the leather is soft and supple. Dan jerks his hand away.
"Don't touch me."
Blair looks hurt. Dan wants to hate her but as she looks at him, he can't. He doesn't want her to hurt. He wants to explain, but he can't. He can't tell her that even touching him makes the lust start to curl like slow smoke in his belly and he's barely keeping it in check as it is.
"Your book?" Blair asks. Dan nods.
It's not a nice book. It's scathing, ripping her apart piece by piece, a self-centered bitch who hurts everyone around her. It's the truth as he's learned to see it, not the intuitive, sensitive fantasy he'd convinced himself he could actually have. It's revenge in black and white plain type. It's his pain poured out onto paper, laid bare for the world to see.
"My book." Dan says, his mouth sour with regret. He won't write another word after that day. It will remain his unfinished masterpiece.
She doesn't stay long, mutters something about an appointment, gazes at him, searching his face. Dan stay still, laptop open, refusing to look away, refusing to absolve her of her part in this play within a play. She walks away and Dan's coffee grows cold as he stares at the screen of his laptop, seeing nothing.
He sees her for the second time.
She's laughing and her hand is on Chuck's arm, and if he hadn't heard it through the UES rumor mill, he might have been more surprised at the ring on her left hand that flashes from across the room. He hadn't seen it before. She'd been wearing gloves. She's not now. It still hurts.
She's in pink, cotton candy and sweet, and there's a headband in her hair, and it's like the Queen B from Constance never left, still ruling the social scene with an iron hand. The color of his dress reminds him of another time, another place, standing on steps with sunshine in their eyes and he thinks he almost saw tears in hers, or was it the glare of the afternoon sun? He's not sure but he knows he's gotten good at lying to himself, to the point where he's not really sure what true anymore and what is a conceit of his mind.
For a moment the world stops and he stares and he wants her like he's never wanted her before. Even when they were actually dating and fucking, it doesn't compare to the lust that rips through him, coiling in his belly, leaving him tattered and breathless, and he wants to touch her so badly he aches deep into his bones. Dan braces himself on a nearby chair, hopes no one notices his predicament, asks him if he's okay, because he's not sure if he really is okay.
Blair tosses her head back and laughs, and Chuck turns and says something to another couple standing near them. He can pick her laugh out of the chatter that fills the room, and he wants to feel her in his arms, hear that laugh in his ear as he nips gently at her earlobe.
He went to Rome to run away from her, drinking bottles of red wine, stumbling home in the middle of the night, fucking Georgina, dreaming of Blair. It didn't work.
Dan sinks into the shadows of on the edges of the room and the band on the stage starts to play. Chuck takes Blair's hand and leads her to the dance floor. They flow into each others arms, two dark heads bent together, Chuck's tie matching Blair's dress, the perfect couple. Dan should leave, turn around, leave her there, but he can't. He stays in the darkness, sipping his too sweet mixed drink, wishing it were whiskey straight-up, his eyes never leaving Blair as she twirls around the dance floor.
He likes the pain. It cuts into the lust and makes him feel alive and in control. If he hurts himself then she can't hurt him more.
She looks happy. He hates that she looks happy. He doesn't consider that maybe she lies to herself as much he does to himself.
The band starts another song and Chuck and Blair melt away into the crowd. Dan stays leaning against the wall just a little longer, feeling its coolness against his back. Finally he pushes himself up and puts his drink down.
He shouldn't have come.
Dan straightens his tuxedo jacket, shoves his hands into his pockets, slouches his shoulders, makes his way to the exit doors. The pain is still there, throbbing, not letting him go. He's done everything he's supposed to do, playing the part of the jilted lover, writing down his anger, turning it into a novel that spares no one, drinking too much, missing her at the most inopportune times. He's written bad poetry and drank coffee until his hands shake. He's stayed at home and refused to take phone calls, not showered, woken in the darkness calling out her name. Nothing makes it better.
The hallway outside the museum ballroom is long and dark and Dan's dress shoes click on the cold marble floor, echoing in the stillness. Everyone is still inside, laughing, drinking, having a good time, unaware that Dan Humphrey is barely keeping everything together, that he's slowly peeling away, layer after layer.
He reaches the doors to the outside when he hears her voice. She's saying his name.
"Dan."
He closes his eyes, wants to ask her to say it again, savoring the way it rolls off her tongue, dragging him back to that day at the loft when he was no longer 'Humphrey', when he kissed her sweetly just because he could, just because she was his and his alone. He wants to turn and grab her by the wrist, pull her to him, to feel her body pressed against him one more time.
They never really said goodbye. The never really ended it.
Instead he stays frozen, staring out the double doors onto the street, watching the traffic flash by. He wants her but she's no longer his. She has a ring on her finger, one that binds her to Chuck Bass, one that says Dan has no place.
"Please."
Her voice echoes in the empty corridor. Everything builds inside him and he turns to find her standing in the middle of the hallway, only a few feet from him, and he realizes she has just come from the women's bathroom, and her hair that was up is now flowing and she's no longer wearing the headband, and she looks so much like his Blair, the one on the steps on that perfect day. He steps towards her. One step. Two steps. He reaches out, his fingers wanting to feel her skin again, and she jerks away from him.
"Don't touch me."
Blair is trembling, shirking away from him, and he at first thinks she's afraid of him, afraid he might hurt her. She takes a breath, bites her lip, and Dan realizes she's trembling for an entirely different reason. She has the same heat in her belly.
They stand in the hallway, facing each other, studying each other, Dan looking into her eyes, refusing to turn away, trying to hold her with his gaze if he can't hold her with his arms. Blair looks back, eyes defiant and hurting, and he sees everything in them, everything she can't say. It's not like the first time he saw her, that day in the cafe, with their polite conversation and guarded emotions. She is raw, laid out for him to see, and what he sees is unmistakable.
She loves him.
He wants to grab her, shake her, ask her why she did this when she still loved him. Why is she wearing Chuck's ring on her finger, why is she sleeping in Chuck's bed. Why isn't she waking up next to Dan every morning, hair tousled, sleep clinging stubbornly, and he would give anything to have just one of those mornings back just one time.
Sorrow creeps up on him, sliding along his veins, filling his heart, and Dan asks what he's promised himself he will never ask.
"Why?"
Blair blinks, opens her mouth then closes it. She begs him with her eyes, pleads with him not to do this. Dan will not back down. He wants an answer, wants to know, even if it hurts. He challenges her with his gaze, refuses to let her walk away this time without the closure deserved in the first place. Finally Blair manages to answer, her words a strangled whisper.
"I thought it was what I wanted."
It's hard to be Blair Waldorf. It's even harder to move past being Blair Waldorf. She might tell him one day that she thought she could only be happy if she was Queen B., that she thought Chuck would give that to her. She might tell him that it was about status and power, that a powerful woman can't rule the world with a writer from Brooklyn by her side. Right now she can't tell him any of those things. She doesn't really know them herself. All she knows is that she hurts and it never stops, so she smiles and pretends, and seeing Dan has made her realize why the pain won't go away.
She loves him.
She twists the wedding ring on her left finger and they both look at it. It sparkles, catching the light, blinding Dan with its brilliance. Blair looks back up at Dan, her face a mask of pain. He wants to reach out, smooth her hair back, stroke the inside of her wrist with his thumb, take it away.
"I thought it was what I wanted, until now," she says softly. "I made a mistake."
Her words cut him open. Dan's heart is beating so hard he thinks she must be able to hear it. Their eyes are locked, both refusing to look away.
"Kiss me," Blair whispers.
oh god
He wants to more than anything he's ever wanted in his entire life. Dan steps forward. He wants to feel her lips on his, to slide his tongue inside her mouth, the rub his hands up her back, to feel her gripping his shoulders. He wants to lose control, to let the lust curling inside his belly take over, to hear her moan. He wants this, her, Blair, them. He wants...
"No."
She made her choice. She walked away from him. But that's not what stops him. It's the ring. She's a married woman. She didn't just choose Chuck over him, she chose Chuck for the rest of her life. He's been a cheater. He won't do it again.
"I can't save you, Blair."
He lies. He wants to save her. He wants to take her into his arms and never let her go.
Dan walks away. He walks away like she did six months ago, turns and never looks back, leaves her standing in the hallway, staring at his retreating figure. He never turns around. She doesn't call out his name. When he pushes through the double doors and is standing on the sidewalk he can breathe again.
He sees her a third time.
The rain is pouring down and Dan hunches further into his jacket, wishing he had remembered his umbrella, wishing he'd caught a cab, wishing he hadn't decided to walk home. Droplets cling to his hair and run down his nose and he blinks as the rain stings his eyes. He turns the corner to his street and sees a figure in front of the loft, a woman, lit by the streetlamp, huddled against the rain. He doesn't think much of her. Someone waiting for a ride, a prostitute desperate for her next trick, willing to brave the rain, needing the numbness of her next hit of heroin.
Dan puts his head down, not looking at the stranger, hurrying by, not wanting to deal with niceties and fake smiles, and then he hears his name.
"Dan."
It's hoarse, almost a whisper, but it stops in his tracks because he knows that voice.
Blair.
He turns and she's standing in the same spot, her hair plastered to her forehead, her raincoat soaked through, her arms hanging limply by her side, her eyes huge and luminous, watching him. Unwavering. Unyielding.
Dan doesn't move, doesn't say anything, just stares at her. Blair, standing on a sidewalk in Brooklyn, an overflowing dumpster in the background, lit by the streetlight and he sees that she's shivering.
"I left him."
He's falling with her words, the entire world tilting and tumbling away from him and suddenly it's just Dan and Blair, standing in the rain.
"You...what?"
He tilts his head, narrows his eyes, can't believe what she's saying. She smiles a little, a flash of happiness, because he hasn't walked away, hasn't told her to leave, because he's still standing there.
"I left Chuck."
"Why?"
He asks the question even though he knows the answer, because he can't think of anything else to say.
"Because I love you." Blair gasps, her words forceful, like she's been holding them back and they can finally burst through.
Dan finally moves, stepping towards her, one step then another, until he's standing inches away. He looks down at her, her mascara smeared, her lips trembling.
"Blair." he gasps. Then his head is bending down and his lips are on hers and her hands are winding around his neck and she's pulling him close until there is no space between them and she's pressed entirely up against him, and Dan feels the smoke of lust start to curl up in his belly again.
"Can we go upstairs?" she murmurs, barely breaking away from him, fingers tangling in his hair, nuzzling his cheek, leaning further into him until he has to take most of her weight.
"Yes." Dan says, breaking into a smile.
~fin~