A/N: Hmm... Not quite sure about his chapter. Tell me what you think.

Dan: Opting for Fury Instead of Love

What it is: Anger or Wrath manifests when fury is chosen instead of love.

Why you do it: By nature you are distrustful and suspicious.

Punishment: Dismemberment. Ripped limb from limb while alive. Cut to pieces and reorganized. Reevaluate everything.

Dan is wired for anger. He sees red a lot. He throws out the punches when it makes sense. Which is often.

Also, the people around him are pretty damn irritating.

Chuck Bass, for one, he can't stand. Not only does that asshole think he's God's gift to women and strut around the quad at school with his pot-lined pockets and silk signature scarf, but Chuck also never knows when to shut the fuck up. His slimy voice, calculating eyes, and vengeful smirks are annoying as hell. Dan has often wanted to punch that insufferable sneer off Chuck's face.

At the Kiss on the Lips party, Dan does just that. Because Chuck also never knows when to back the fuck off. Just because the party is called Kiss on the Lips doesn't mean vulnerable freshmen girls want to be kissed—or taken up to the roof and—

The bruised knuckles are worth it. Dan has the satisfaction of seeing that shiner on Chuck's pale face for weeks afterward, the light purple fading to sickly yellow. Showing to the world what a yellow-bellied coward Chuck is. He never throws his own punches. He snaps his fingers and has his lackeys do all the dirty work. He uses his sharp tongue to rile his enemies up until they blow it.

Which Dan admittedly does. Somehow he finds himself escorting Serena to Bart Bass's brunch, only to be confronted by the Fab Four and taken on an intimate history lesson delving into the past sex life of Nate and Serena. And he blows it, first by publicly pushing Chuck in a surge of anger into a waiter, causing a crash that distracts the UES royalty from their pampered, hushed lives to stare at the awkward-footed Brooklyn charity case; and second by turning his back on Serena.

Gossip Girl is a fan of saying, "Nothing Can Keep Us Together" in a charming, ironic way, all the while knowing that her subscribers will come panting back for more. But Dan takes it literally when he thinks about Serena. It seems like nothing can keep them together. No matter how they try, it just doesn't work. It doesn't fit, though in his dreams everything is perfect.

Even when they really start dating, he knows the ground is treacherous. The middle-class Brooklyn boy has unsure footing while traipsing through the shiny buildings and flaky upper crust of the UES. Serena seems to glide above it all, not one hair out of place, not one crumb stuck to her fingers, and Dan just can't help feeling a little resentment at how easy she has it. He'd thought she was different, after all.

How can she not be what he always thought she was? The golden princess he glimpsed at a freshman birthday party two years ago, sparkly and shiny and kind and real and a brilliant light in the drab, faded, mundane world of wanna-be's (Jenny), has-beens (his father), and ignoramuses (Vanessa).

Serena doesn't have to want, right? She has it all. She's never been; she simply is. She's not stupid or vapid or empty; she doesn't just go through the motions because she doesn't know any better; she isn't a stereotype—far from it. She's…perfect.

(Maybe that's the problem? Only it takes Dan simply forever to really see that…if he ever does.)

His pedestal view of her isn't real. He can't see the real Serena standing next to him when he's fixated on the one up above.

She slept with her best friend's boyfriend? He'd thought she was different.

She has a drug problem and had to go to the Ostroff Center? (Oh, wait, that was her brother… But still, she took the public rap for him?)

She ditches him to hang with her bitchy, scheming, spoiled best friend?

She doesn't like the fact that his best friend is a girl. She's weirded out by the fact that their parents seem to know each other (intimately—as in used to date. Which, to be frank, weirds him out, too). She doesn't see that her apparently docile and loving grandmother is a conniving, manipulative bitch. She claims to be a normal person, that she doesn't live a life of ease—yet she uses the power of her name and money to fly above the rules. She won't tell him her secrets. She lies. She drinks. She parties instead of studying. She offers lame explanations, weak reassurances, and won't talk to him.

Dan can't help it. Every single thing she does seems to set him off. Anger boils under the surface, heating his insides, twisting and stretching and making him feel sick. What is wrong with her? Why can't she be who he thought she was? He rarely lets it out, but it seethes within, hard and dark.

So he judges. He holds himself superior. He condescends and lectures and judges some more. Sure she's the best thing that has ever happened to him. Sure he loves her and they make love and have fun. Sure he loves her four-year-old laugh and her long blonde hair and her soft smile. The way she's proud of him and not ashamed of him and kisses him and doesn't mind heading into Brooklyn to see him.

But he can't help it. He judges. He's frustrated. He's confused. He's angry. He's resentful. He's disgusted.

She cheats on him? (So not really…but why not tell him the truth? Is it so hard?)

So he cheats on her right back. Is it revenge? Is it out of anger?

Nothing Can Keep Them Together.

He's known at school as Lonely Boy, even when he's with Serena van der Woodsen. He goes through life first set on Dartmouth, then Yale, English his biggest love—bigger than Serena. He writes about her and his feelings and shit that those prep school princes laugh at. He fucking hates those kids. Born with silver spoons in their mouths. Sometimes he wishes they'd choke on them.

He doesn't understand their set of rules, the way they function. The Blair Waldorfs and Chuck Basses and even Nate Archibalds leave him tongue-tied and stupefied. Fashion is everything. Grades—either you work for them or get someone else to do your work for you. Drugs and alcohol…all the time, just don't embarrass yourself. Box seats; town cars; limitless credit cards; private jets; vacations in the Maldives, Paris, St. Bart's, Monaco, Dubai, Buenos Aires. They know all the right people, they have connections and weight behind their names, Hampton houses and false smiles and daggers they're waiting to throw in your back. Dan does not understand them, and so lashes out in anger.

He tries, sometimes. He really does. He tries to help Blair with her overbearing mother, and even up her confidence to tell Chuck her true feelings (Love is love, he reasons; even if it's love between Blair Waldorf and Chuck Bass, it's still love, right?). But his efforts go to waste: she still sneers at him in the hallway, turns her nose up when they meet at social functions, smirks at the reminder of his old Cabbage Patch doll, and doesn't hesitate to scheme, manipulate, or humiliate him or his friends. He can't trust her. He hates having to go to her for help sometimes, like to get rid of Georgina. Blair knows what to do, but that doesn't mean he likes her help. She's a fucking bitch. So he nourishes his righteous anger, tries to protect Vanessa and Jenny from her claws, and pretends he can stand the sight of her for Serena's sake.

He tries with Nate. He tries to be his friend, to get to know him, to even play soccer. But when Nate thinks he's offering charity. UES-ers don't want pity—but, then again, if it's out of friendship, that's another story. If it's out of friendship, they don't mind taking all you offer and then some.

What the fuck was Nate thinking, putting the moves on his fifteen-year-old sister? And then playing between Jenny and Vanessa? And then breaking Vanessa's heart?

Dan accepts Nate's "Yeah, man,"s and "Hey, sure"s with a tight smile. Fucking hypocrite. Sure, it was probably hard when his daddy was taken in by the Feds, but Dan is almost too angry to care.

He's sick of the Mean Girls laughing behind his back and sending embarrassing tips to Gossip Girl about his private life. (He has a secret half brother, by the way? What? Thanks, dad for not telling him first. Thanks for making him have to lie to Serena. Thanks for being in love with her mother all this time and never letting him know that when people said he was his father's son, they really fucking meant it.) Dan is sick of the endless parties and mindless debutantes, the snobby girls and stupid jocks. Dan is disconcerted when stalked on the street by three middle school UES girls, decked out in Prada and Marc Jacobs, telling him how he should live his life.

He thinks he meets a kindred spirit in Rachel Carr. She's new to New York, taken aback by her students' attitudes, and has such lovely soft doe eyes…and even softer skin… She visits the gallery's café and they talk about literature and poetry and New York. She praises his writing and encourages him to do what he wants and meets him for coffee and soon she's just Rachel, not Ms. Carr.

First it's just a vicious rumor, and they both deny it, even as the "could be"s simmer between them. And then when she's fired (well, they thought she was…) there's no reason not to give in.

Dan feels good. He can choose his own path. He can go against the grain (it's not a cliché, right?). He doesn't need to listen to his father or admit that Blair was right (that bitch is never right, right?).

And then Rachel starts dropping gossip bombs that disrupt the magnetic force of the universe. Dan almost thinks Blair's eyes will shoot fire. When she admits she spilled all the secrets he told her, in confidence (in bed), his stomach plummets to the soles of his shoes.

What a fucking disappointment. She refuses to apologize? To own up to it? She lies and manipulates just as much as any UES-er, no matter how Midwest her clothes scream that she is.

God, he's so frustrated he can hardly breathe.

Why can no one live up to his expectations? Why can no one meet him half way? Why is it always Dan Against the World? (Because even Vanessa falls for the bleary-eyed prince of the UES, no matter how much she insists she's her own person.) At least when Dan was with Serena he held his own. (Maybe that was the problem—? No. He can't think like that. If he does, he'll hate himself.)

He tries with Chuck, too, even though just the name Chuck Bass turns his stomach. He finds out Chuck's deep, dark secret, the reason he's a sad, poor little rich boy. Dan discovers the secret behind Bart's success, too. But he can't use the info. His stupid middle class, self-righteous morals won't let him. Even as Jenny hijacks a gala event for her gorilla fashion show and lies and steals to get what she wants, Dan can't take the plunge. He can't push people out of the way to get what he wants, even if the fame and prestige and ticket to the school of his dreams is just within reach.

So Yale is officially out, at least at first. Then when he can just still glimpse it on the horizon, the stamp of denied financial aid hits him over the head out of nowhere. So it's off to NYU…

Even as Dan pities Chuck (his dad did die, after all), and Chuck throws that pity back in his face, Dan still can't help hating that dandified king of the UES underworld a little. Dan wants to do what's right, and he does it, but sometimes he wishes he doesn't have to.

He sometimes wishes he could be just like the UES-ers that he can't stand. When he finally graduates, he's a little surprised that he's going to miss high school. The drama and gala events and crazy snobbish tools of the Upper East Side. And for that, and his secret wish, he can't forgive himself.

And his anger seethes.