you are my life, my love, my only
A/N: I just keep on cheating with the word limit, I have no self control whatsoever.
Her foot is warm in his hand, toes curling under against the hard press of his thumb. She hums when he hits a spot at the apex of her arch, the muscle tense from ten hours spent on her feet, walking down 5th Avenue while shopping with Blair on four inch heels.
"That's good?"
"Mmm."
"Use your words, Serena," he teases, grinning as she gives him a half hearted eyeroll from behind her glass of wine.
"All talked out," she mumbles, the glass clinking against the coffee table as her heart thumps against the arm of the couch. He loves her like this, relaxed and content, her legs tossed across his lap, his own personal blanket of Serena. "You talk."
"What do you want me to talk about?"
"Whatever." She lifts a hand off her stomach, waves it lazily through the air. "Surprise me."
"You remember what happened the last time you said that to me, right?"
Serena cracks open an eye and stares him down and he tries so hard not to grin but her exhausted glare is immensely adorable and he feels his lips tilting, stretching across the bow of his teeth.
"Okay, a story then," he laughs, running his fingers over the top of her foot, slipping up under the hem of her pants to circle the bony jut of her ankle. "Have I ever told you about the time I spent two hundred freaking dollars tracking down Jenny's lost copy of the third Harry Potter book?"
Her eyes don't open as she laughs, her hair crinkling against the leather of the couch as she shakes her head. Dan switches to her other foot, eyes trained on her face, watching the way her lips twitch and part, a soft sigh resting on her tongue.
"She was ten and fully esconced in her Harry Potter phase. There were only five books at the time and she read them in constant rotation, never went anywhere without at least one of them," he says, the memories rolling easily off his tongue. "I'd just gotten back from a soccer game and found her sitting on the stairs, sobbing, her nightgown pulled down over her knees." Serena hums, her body sinking further into the couch as her consciousness starts to fade.
"She'd left the book in a cab while she was out with one of her friends and was inconsolable. She was so mad at herself for being irresponsible and not having more respect for her books." He chuckles softly and drops his head back, continues telling his story to the ceiling. "I told her we'd get a new copy but she refused. Said she didn't deserve to have a new copy if she couldn't managed to hang on to the old one. She cried herself to sleep that night and it broke my heart. So the next day I called her friend's mom and found out what cab company they'd used and then spent the afternoon on the phone, talking to dispatcher after dispatcher, trying to find her book."
His hands drift up her calves, smoothing over the soft material of her slacks in time to the cadence of his words, the story playing vividly in his mind. He remembers giving up on the phone and pulling on his coat, heading out in the cold February afternoon with a wad of cash in his pocket that he had earned from working at a bookstore in the past 6 months, determined to find the book, to mend his little sister's broken heart. It took him seven cabs before he found the book tucked under the seat of a battered old cab, the cover bent and scuffed. He'd straightened it out as best as he could, left it on the foot of her bed, watched with anticipation as she trdged home after school, her little shoulders sagging with a weight far too heavy for her years. The peeling squeal of joy echoes in his mind and he smiles, heart swelling at the memory.
"You're an amazing brother and you're going to be an even more amazing dad." The quiet words startle him and he jerks upright, finds her staring at him with soft, sleepy eyes.
"I thought you were asleep."
"And miss a story like that?" Serena sits up slowly, her hand warm on the base of his neck as she pulls him in for a long, gentle kiss. She brushes her nose along his jaw, eyelashes tickling his cheek. "Never."