Title: Eternal Contemplations
Author: fading_tales
Pairing: Damon/Blair (Vampire Diaries/Gossip Girl cross-over)
Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Diaries, Gossip Girl or any of their characters.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Timing means nothing and everything when you have an eternity to live.
Chapter Sixteen
Damon and Blair walks into an unexpected sight as they stepped through the entrance of the bar. Lounging like Cleopatra on her divan sat Katherine Pierce in all her glory.
Blair's the first one to break their stunned silence. "What is she doing here? She's supposed to be locked up in the basement!"
Katherine's notices them from the corner of her eye and gives them an infuriatingly annoying smirk before her attention is drawn away by a tall blonde bringing her a drink. She goes about ignoring their presence while she chats up the mystery man whose face they can't see.
"She must have gotten out somehow."
"Well, shouldn't we do something?"
Damon glances around the bar noticing several patrons scattered about the room even though it was barely 5pm. "We can't provoke her with so many eyes watching."
Blair nods in agreement, scanning the room. "True, you could always compel people to forget, but if she kills any of them it would be bitch to clean up after."
He laughs quietly. If it were Elena or Stefan he'd be getting a sermon on how reckless actions will injure innocent bystanders and how life is sacred or some bullshit like that. Unlike them, Blair's all about the practicality of it, vampires aren't known for their neat killings after all.
Katherine hears his laugh and looks up from her enthralling conversation with the blonde to catch his eye. His smile instantly falters. She looks at him for a long while, as if making some sort of silent debate with herself. She makes up her decision and resumes her smug grin before turning her attention back to the blonde sitting across from her. Damon clenches his jaw at her snub.
"It'll be fine for now. She had a chance to leave, but she didn't. And if she wanted to kill someone she would've done it already. So, until she does something we'll just keep an eye on her."
Blair nods in agreement and he leads her to the bar to get that drink he promised her. They seat themselves in a corner that was in direct view of Katherine and order themselves their drinks. He orders a Scotch, neat and she orders a martini, dry with two olives. They sit there watching as Katherine flirt with her blonde while sipping their drinks.
"No offense… but your girlfriend is sort of a slut," Blair comments as she watches Katherine lean in close to the mysterious blonde and touch her fingers to his chin.
"Be nice."
"Tell her that," Blair quips, noticing how Katherine would shoot random glares in her direction.
Katherine always just does whatever the hell she wants. He tries to shrug off his agitation, but it is difficult to ignore. The blonde shifts in his seat and for a moment his reflection is caught in the window and Damon's eyes widen as he realizes that the guy Katherine is talking up is none other than Nathaniel Archibald. He looks over to Blair and sees that she has noticed the same thing.
"I didn't know Nate was in town," he states, searching Blair's face for some sort of emotion.
She doesn't know how she could've missed it. Looking at him now, she could clearly tell that he's wearing his St. Jude's school jacket and that shiny blonde Nate Archibald hair is unmistakable. Katherine's little prison break had muddled her brain so that she forgot why she came here in the first place. She just couldn't believe that the two were together. She snaps out of her self berating thoughts when Damon waves a hand past her face. She recalls belatedly that he had made some sort of comment that she was suppose to answer.
"Are you okay? If Nate's upsetting you…"
"I don't care," she replies as nonchalantly as she can muster, turning away from the scene before them.
He lifts one perfect brow in her direction. Usually she's better than this at covering up her feelings. It just goes to show how much the Archibald heir still affects her. "Sure you do."
She flit her gaze up at him exasperatedly before returning to playing with the olive in her martini. "I assure you, I do not."
He stops trying to win a staring contest with someone who's not even staring back and him and swivels around on his bar stool to watch Katherine and Nate.
He feels stupid for thinking Katherine really meant what she said. He's not going to be enough. It's no fun for her if there's only one person in love with her. She wants to have everything and even then that's probably not enough to sate her greed.
Blair's watching the couple from the corner of her eyes, refusing to look at them directly. Nate hasn't even noticed her yet, that's how captivated he is with Katherine.
'So much for all of his pretty words on the phone,' she thinks.
The heartbreak of rejection feels fresh again and she regrets coming. She wasn't planning on getting back together with Nate any time soon, but she did think that he was at least a bit genuine in his apologies. The least he owed her was some heartfelt sincerity and she thought she deserve as much. It shouldn't surprise her that Nate would have been distracted by somebody prettier.
"I'm proposing a plan," Damon whispers when she finishes her martini in a single gulp and orders another.
He always has a plan. They're usual idiotic or destructive. Majority of the time they're both. And yet it doesn't stop her from asking, "What plan?" She sighs as she stirs her newly refreshed drink a little more enthusiastically than necessary.
"To make them jealous."
"Oh, yeah? And how are you planning on doing that?" she scoffs.
He's smiling mischievously when he answers her. "Like this."
Damon wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her onto his lap so suddenly that she has to wrap her legs around him. In effect, she ends up basically straddling him, his hands on her hips to keep her steady.
Their lips are centimeters apart, but he doesn't lean in those few extra centimeters to close the space. She darts her eyes to the side and sure enough Katherine has stopped talking and was watching them. Nate, too, turns around in his seat and finally sees her. His eyes are wide in shock. She looks back at Damon and while her face is kept expressionless her heartbeat belies her calm.
"Well, you've got them watching," she points out.
He nods in reply. The gesture serves to bring their lips even closer together, but not close enough to touch.
"What are you waiting for?" she asks, not pulling back.
He wants to close that gap, but he hesitates. She's not somebody he could just use once and throw away. She's not disposable like random girls he picks up at bars or hotel lobbies. She's Blair Waldorf and she deserves to be loved and she will be loved.
The only problem is that he's scared to be the one to love her because that might destroy everything he's ever known.
"I didn't want to get slapped like the last time I tried to kiss you," he lies.
He doesn't want to destroy their friendship over some petty show for Katherine and Nate. And it is sure as hell not going to be like how it was the first time. He kissed her the first time for all the wrong reasons and he wants to kiss her for the right ones. She deserves no less.
"It's not like I can hurt you even if I do slap you."
"It's the principle of the matter. A gentleman shouldn't get slapped for kissing a lady."
He's having doubts and he doesn't want to go through with it, not if he doesn't mean it. He can't do a fake kiss because he wants to kiss her for real, has been wanting to for a while now. Even so, he knows that anything between them would be fated for disaster. She still obviously has a lot emotional baggage with Nate despite what she might say on the matter and he's supposedly with Katherine, even if the exclusivity clause on that relationship is a bit skewed. It's just not good timing.
"I think gentleman is a bit farfetched wouldn't you think?" she remarks snidely.
The close proximity in which they are having their conversation makes it hard for him to think straight. All of his doubts and reasons to not kiss her starts to fade into black when she darts out a little pink tongue to lick those enticingly red lips of hers. Suddenly he notices all the places where their bodies touch.
His fingers are touching the bare skin of her waist where her shirt has ridden up. Her hand is playfully tickling the hair on the back of his head, sending his nerves on overdrive. He can feel the heat of her on his lap, her toned legs curled around him in order to keep her balance.
Wherever they don't touch, he's aching to amend.
"On the contrary, I'm an actual member of the Virginian gentry from the early 1800s… so it is not farfetched at all." He somehow manages to sound glib even when he feels quite out of breath.
Blair's eyes flickers one more time to Nate and he realizes he wants her to want to kiss him. And not just for show. He wants her to want him, just like how he wants her right now.
He wants to be the one she's thinking about if they kiss.
He doesn't realize how desperately true that fact is. He doesn't know when it happened when he started to like her more than a friend, but it is happening. It scares the hell out of him, but he likes it.
"Aren't you going to kiss me now? Talking like this is a little uncomfortable." Her gaze lowers to his lips and then back to his eyes expectantly, holding his gaze.
He can't do this. He regrets even thinking of such a stupid plan to rile up Katherine and Nate. He has too much emotional investment for it to be all for a game of charades.
His hands fall from their position around her waist. "Maybe this is a bad id-"
She doesn't let him continue on with his indecisiveness and instead makes the choice for him by closing those last few millimeters of empty space between them. The physical act itself is very insignificant. She merely cups his face with her hands, leans forward, tilts her head a little and kisses him.
He doesn't hesitate to kiss her back.
xxx
Once their lips touch, the rest of the world falls away. It's a kiss without urgency or haste. It's slow and languid, as if time has stopped for both of them. Her lips are soft and yielding. That heat that was missing from Katherine's kisses, she has it in spades. She's so hot that he feels like he's burning, but he wants to be consumed by her fire.
Halfway through the kiss, between his hand reaching up to caress her face and her tongue finding his, he forgets that Nate and Katherine were watching.
He's a better kisser than she ever imagined him to be, and she has imagined many things about how Damon Salvatore might kiss. Their first kiss was too brief for her to fully experience just how a hundred years of experience can lend to the art of kissing and Damon has had a lot of experience. She understands now how so many girls could fool themselves into believing that he loves them. It's from the way he kisses.
Damon Salvatore has a way of kissing you that makes you think you're the only girl that matters in the whole entire world. She tells herself that it's just a kiss. She tells herself that she won't be one of those foolish girls. She tells herself a lot of things, but she finds that she doesn't know how to kiss him without falling a little bit (more) in love with him.
Does he kiss Katherine this way too?
The passing thought is enough to remind her why they're doing this in the first place and her eyes flutter open and darts over to their audience. She was looking for Katherine's reaction, but meets Nate's gaze instead. She can tell from his face that their little show was eliciting exactly what they originally intended. Both Katherine and Nate are seething with jealousy.
Damon opens his eyes when he notices that Blair's attention has been sidetracked, which is a miracle in itself because he's Damon Salvatore and girls do not get distracted in the middle of a hot make out session with him. He follows her line of sight to see Nate Archibald glaring daggers in his direction. It bothers him that she's staring at Nate even though her lips were still on his and he forces her attention back to him.
"Don't look at him," he rasps before deepening their kiss.
This time he's more urgent, more possessive. His hand moves down to her thigh, rubbing them through the tight denim. He moves to kissing her neck and she tilts her head back to give him access. He can feel the vibrations of her pulse through his lips and it takes all his will power not to graze her skin with his fangs. Her hands instinctively reach for his hair to bring his head back up for a hungry kiss. She grips it a little too tightly, but he likes the pain. He sets himself to the task of kissing her so thoroughly that he erases all other kisses from her mind.
The loud rapping of knuckles on wood startles them. They break apart, a little dazed, a little light headed and a lot confused.
"Hey! Where do you two think you are? This is a public place! Keep it PG-13 rated, otherwise I'd suggest you get a room," the bartender admonishes them.
Once he leaves, Blair starts bursting into laughter and Damon can't help but follow suit. Their audience, however, was in no laughing mood.
"I kind of like his suggestion," Damon smirks, his eyes are still cloudy with lust.
He leans in to place another kiss on her lips to which she returns briefly with a smile on her face.
"Of course you would," she replies with a hair toss.
He notices a love bite right under her left earlobe when she flips her hair back and it makes him oddly pleased to know that he's left his mark on her.
"You'd jump on any opportunity to get into some girl's pant," she continues casually. She leans forward as if to kiss him again only to leave him hanging when she pulls back and slides off his lap to return to her own respective seat. She busies herself smoothing the front of her shirt to look presentable again.
"You know you're not just 'some girl' right?" he says sincerely as he reaches to stroke her cheek, his finger trails down and lingers at the corner of her mouth. Her lips are wonderfully swollen from his kisses and it only makes him want to kiss them again.
Blair's teasing smile falters when she sees his serious expression. She wants to say something back, but she doesn't know what to say when he's looking at her so intently.
He takes her right hand into his left one and rubs circles into her palm soothingly. He studies her features as he brushes an invisible strand of hair out of her face with his free hand. He needs any excuse to touch her, make sure that this isn't a dream because he feels like he's dreaming.
She looks the same (same chocolate hair, same pouty lips, same rosy cheeks) and yet she's so different from the girl he met back in New York. She's a bit more broken, a bit more damaged, but she's stronger for it. The girl back in New York was jaded, but she still had a sense of innocence about her that secretly believed that everything would turn out alright in the end. The girl besides him doesn't have that same naïveté. She's been hurt and she's survived, but there are scars and it shows. He liked the girl in the New York, but he's liked other girls before. It never stopped him from leaving them behind before. The girl sitting in the bar stool besides him, however, he'd be willing to go to the ends of the earths and back if she asked, but he'd rather stay put wherever she was.
He ponders whether or not she's changed to become somebody he cares so much about or was it he who changed to become somebody who could care so much about her? He doesn't know why such strange thoughts occur to him, but for some reason he feels that it is urgent that he figures out exactly how he feel about Blair Waldorf because it starting to feel a lot like love which can't be possible because he's suppose to be in love with somebody else.
Nate's approach doesn't leave him enough time for further contemplation or conversation.
xxx
Nate has on a strained smile and ignores Damon as he focuses his attention on Blair.
"Hey, Blair."
Nate seems to want to ignore the fact that she just had her tongue down another guy's throat and is all smiles. She doesn't know what to do about that so she puts on a bored face and twitches her mouth upwards briefly in greeting when he continues to smile stupidly at her.
"You really came. When we spoke on the phone I didn't think you'd show up, but I'm so glad you did."
Damon shoots Blair a surprised look. She left out the part where she was still on speaking terms with Nate let alone her plans to meet with him. Damon was of the firm belief that two had severed their ties when Nate had left Mystic Falls about two weeks ago. Is this why she was so insistent that they go out for drinks? But he was the one that suggested it so it couldn't have been her idea. Or maybe he just beat her to the punch. Maybe she planned on meeting Nate without him. Such are the thoughts invading his mind.
He doesn't know why he feels so betrayed when he had no right to object to her meeting with whoever she want, doing whatever she want. They were merely friends; he has no claim on what she does. Still he feels that this revelation is harsher than the slap she gave him the last time they kissed. She avoids meeting his accusing eyes.
"You… Wow! You look great!" Nate comments after getting an eyeful of her new wardrobe.
Blair frowns and fidgets in her seat, her cheeks flushing involuntarily and she manages to murmur a begrudging "thanks."
"It's good to see you," Nate beams.
As much as Nate tries to dazzle her with his smile, she hasn't forgotten all of his sins and returns his smiles with a grimace.
"So now you've seen me. What more do you want?" Blair replies coldly.
Damon should feel some comfort that she's treating Nate with such iciness, but he doesn't. He can hear her heart rate hitch even as she glares up at the pretty boy bobble head.
"We have to talk, Blair," Nate insists, his grin falling away.
"There's nothing left to say, Archibald. I'm surprised you even had the guts to come back here," Damon injects.
"This is between me and Blair."
"Well, my fist is about to be between your eyes," Damon threatens in a casual tone that does little to mask his malice.
Blair pulls back Damon's arm and shakes her head before turning to Nate. "You want to talk? Let's talk. Outside."
Without another word, she slips off her barstool and heads towards the bar's exit without waiting for him to follow her or to listen to Damon's protests.
xxx
The night air is cold and it bites at her bare arms. She shivers a little and Nate, in a familiar gesture, takes off his jacket and drapes it over her shoulders despite her protestations. His hand briefly touches her cheek when she turned to look at him and with any other guy she might think that was a calculated move, but Nate never really think about things like that. He never needed to learn such tricks; girls usually just throw themselves at him naturally. She had forgotten how sweet and simple he can be when he's not cheating on her with her best friend.
"Do you remember this jacket?"
Blair looks down and fingers the navy sleeve. Yes. She does remember. She lifts the right sleeve and sure enough the little heart pin is indeed attached*.
"You gave me your heart once, Blair. I wasn't very good at taking care of it, but I swear to you. This time will be different."
"'This time will be different,'" Blair repeats. "That's what Serena said too when she came back," she whispers softly not breaking her gaze from the small gold heart as she rubs it between her thumb and index finger.
"Serena left. She went back to boarding school. She's no longer a part of this."
"So what? She's moved on. It's about time you did, too."
"Blair," Nate pleads, reaching for her hand. She doesn't let him.
"I only came because I wanted to tell you that to your face. I'm sick of your little messages and your phone calls."
"You don't mean that."
"I do mean it. Move on, Nate. I have."
Nate glances back at the bar and notices Damon watching them through the windows.
"Are you… with Damon now?"
Blair trains her body to not flinch at his question.
"No. Katherine… the girl you were talking to before, Elena's…"
"Cousin?"
"Yeah… That's his girlfriend. We… we're just friends."
She doesn't know why she's telling him this, but she feels like the last thing their messed up relationship whatever it is they are to each other needs is more lies. She's going to be as honest to him as she is to herself. Maybe if she can convince him, she can convince herself. She is not, repeat, not falling for Damon Salvatore. And she doesn't care about Nate Archibald either. She doesn't need anyone.
"Then that kiss-"
"He wanted to make her jealous and I…"
"Did you want to make me jealous, too?" he prods hopefully.
"I would have to care about you enough to do that," she answers coldly, but her eyes are darting away from his face despite their firm glare earlier.
The problem with her motto of honesty is that sometimes she's lies to herself out of self-preservation.
After several years of being Blair's boyfriend, in spite of how dense Nate usually is, he has picked up on the little cues that tell him that Blair is lying. She may not admit that she does and she may even tell herself that she really doesn't, but deep down inside he knows that she still cares about him, even if it's only enough to hate him. Nate vaguely remembers somebody telling him that there's a fine line between love and hate so it gives him hope.
"Come back to New York with me."
"And why should I do that?"
"Because I was wrong. Because I was stupid. Because I made the biggest mistake of my life letting you go."
"That's all correct, but they're not good reasons for leaving with you. I haven't forgiven you yet."
"I was wrong for sleeping with Serena, but you ran off with another guy. We're both guilty parties!"
"Are you saying this is my fault?"
He's put his foot in his mouth and scrambles to find the right words that won't end up with her slapping him across the face.
"No! No! What I'm trying to say is… What I'm trying to do…"
She's tapping her foot impatiently, waiting to see how he was going to get himself out of this mess. He thinks she probably finds it sadistically entertaining that he's bending over backwards trying to get back into her good graces. In fact, he knows that she's enjoying it. Which makes it all the harder.
"I want to fight for you. I know that now. You're the one I should've been fighting for all along, but I was too stupid to realize it. I didn't love anyone else, Blair. Lust and love are different things. With Serena it was lust, but I love you."
She flinches at the L-word and he knows he's found the crack in the wall she's put up against him.
"I love you," he repeats.
She shakes her head.
"I love you!" he declares. He's found the chink in her armor and so he's hammering away at it with the only weapon he has.
"Then your love must be very cheap."
"If you can call ten years of being together cheap, then I guess it is. Call it whatever you want, but we have history and you can't erase that. Those ten years don't just disappear overnight. We had something, Blair. Let me make it up to you. Those ten years, they were good!"
Yes. Those ten years with Nate had been good. But then again, anything can be good until it goes bad.
"I can't trust you. I don't trust you."
"Then maybe this will convince you."
Blair is rendered speechless when Nate Archibald gets down on one knee.
Damon gets up from his seat hastily from where he was watching inside the bar, but Katherine lays a hand on his shoulder to still him.
"Don't get involved," she whispers. "She wanted this."
Damon finds Katherine's words strange, but continues to focus on watching when Nate takes Blair's hand into his own.
"Nate… What are you doing?"
"I've procrastinated doing this for too long and I know that I've kept you waiting all this time… but better late than never, right?" he chuckles nervously.
Blair frowns at him fighting the urge to wretch her hand away.
"Nate, I'm not kidding. Get up!"
He merely shakes his head in reply to her protestations.
"This has been a long time coming."
"Nate, get up right now," she commands.
He ignores her and goes through with his proposal anyways.
"Blair…would you marry me?"
Just then Katherine forces Damon's face away from the scene playing on the other side of the window, breaking off his concentration so he never hears Blair's answer.
* Yes… I know that Blair actually sewn the heart pin on Nate's sweater and not his school jacket, but there's actually a reason for the change. Also, I thought it would be weird for Nate to drape a pullover sweater over her shoulders. _
A/N: So I guess you all realized that my teaser was that there would be a kissing scene. I hope I made it sufficiently steamy enough, I tried my best. I left it off at another cliffhanger, but I did update sooner than expected so don't hate me! As always, comments/reviews are love! I hope you enjoyed!