The rest of the day is the longest day of Blair's life.
She can't work. After hanging up with Dan, Blair just sits at her desk, staring, knowing she should do something with the pile of papers sitting in front of her, look at her email, bark orders at someone, but truthfully, she can't really remember anything she's supposed to be doing. She can't think of anything else but the fact that Dan is on his way to see her.
She's getting married.
If it was fifteen years ago Blair would be on the phone telling all her friends and she'd be showing off her ring and she would make Dorota go out and buy every single wedding magazine on the newsstand. Getting married means a big dress and a big party and big presents when you're twenty one. Now she just sits and stares and wonders if Dan wants to just go get married tomorrow, to skip all the trappings.
He won't. Blair knows this. Dan is going to want to do this right, and that means a real wedding, with Blair in a dress and Dan in a tux, with flowers and music, and cake, with their friends lining the aisles and wishing them the best. He'll want to stand in front of everyone, take Blair's hand and tell her that he's never going to leave her, that he will love her forever.
She wants this too.
Blair blinks back tears. She's cried more in the last six months than she has in years, but these tears are the kind a person has when they can't hold back the happiness inside.
Her assistant pokes her perky face around the doorjamb again and asks if Blair wants her to bring in the sketches she asked for, and Blair can't process what she's saying so she stares at her blankly for a long moment, then her brain finally makes sense of what her assistant is asking.
"No, uhm, no I don't want them afterall." Blair stammers, not caring that her loyal assistant is seeing her pretty much completely undone. "I think I'm done for the day."
She asks to have the car called around and her assistant nods and turns to leave when Blair calls out and tells her to stop. The girl turns around with a look on her face that says she thinks her boss may have gone mad and asks what else she can do.
"Nothing really," Blair answers. "It's just, I wanted to tell someone and you're here, and I just want someone to know."
Blair takes a deep breath then lets it all out.
"I'm getting married."
Her assistant's eyes widen in surprise. She mutters a quick congratulations then scurries off to call for the car, no doubt wondering who would marry Blair Waldorf.
Dan Humphrey. That's who.
When Blair gets home she can't sit down. She tries to pick up a book, to get lost in someone else's stories, but she can't even finish a sentence before the words on the page blur and cease to have meaning. She ends up bumping around the apartment, restless, not able to get comfortable, and as the sun slips over the horizon of the city, bathing everything in a gold-red glow, Blair thinks she really should considering sleeping, but she can't even imagine closing her eyes.
She should call Serena. Her dear friend would be excited, and no doubt there would be some squealing over the phone, and Blair quickly calculates that it would be 3 pm in New York, not an unreasonable time to call, but she doesn't pick up the phone.
Finally Blair manages to fall asleep on the couch, not wanting to go to her bedroom because she might miss the knock on the door that tells her Dan has finally arrived. It's 1 am when she gives in to the exhaustion that she can't deny.
She is woken by a tap-tapping on her door.
Blair jerks awake with the sound, and for a moment she is confused, not able to figure out why she's curled on her couch, and she glances at her phone that she's still holding and sees that it's 5 am, and then everything comes flooding back and Blair jumps up, her mouth suddenly dry.
Dan.
Blair practically runs to her front door, undoing the lock, pulling it open and he's there, standing on the other side, and she is breathing hard.
He is rumpled and looks tired, and he needs to shave, but Blair cares about none of this. What she sees is Dan, her Dan. Dan, who loves her and has never given up on her, and now she will marry him, and Blair feels overwhelmed. His eyes are warm and they crinkle a little at the sides because he's smiling and saying her name as he steps through the doorway, his arms going around her, pulling her towards him, crushing her to his chest, and then his head is bending down and his lips are on hers and Blair thinks she has died and gone to heaven because this cannot be her life.
She wants to tell him that she loves him, that she will never let him go, but she can't because he won't stop kissing her, and they stumble backwards, Dan pushing the door of her apartment shut with his foot, his mouth never leaving hers as they make their way to the couch that Blair had been sleeping on only moments before.
Blair is still wearing her clothes from the day before, a simple dress, and Dan fumbles with the zipper until he finally is able to jerk it down, then Blair shimmies out of it and his fingers are on her panties, pulling them down and Blair is reaching around to unhook her bra, and then she's naked and he's pulling her back against him.
In the fog of her brain, Blair is aware of the inequity of the moment, so she reaches down and finds the button on his jeans and Dan finally stops kissing her and Blair jerks in protest, only able to make some sort of primal grunt telling him that she wants him back, but then she sees that he is pulling his jeans off and shrugging his shirt over his head, and then he's back, the stubble on his cheeks rough against her face as he kisses her and Blair his wrapping her arms around him and running her fingers up and down his back.
Dan lowers Blair gently down onto the couch, and it's a strange moment of gentleness because everything up until now has been driven by an intense sense of necessity, and Blair spreads her legs, preparing for him to settle between them, and the leather is cold on her back. Her lips are parted, her breathing fast, and she wishes she could find the words to tell him that he is the love of her life, and he always has been.
Instead she watches as he licks her lips and lowers himself onto her, and then he's inside her and Blair is bucking, her body almost spastic from the intense wave of sensation that runs through her and Dan's hips start to move and it's not long before they are both tipping over the edge, Blair clinging to him, burying her face in his shoulder, calling out his name.
They collapse against each other, spent, skin sticky and sweaty, and a night with little sleep finally starts to catch up with Blair. The only word she can manage is to mumble 'bed'. Dan nods and they untangle themselves and get up from the couch, still naked, not caring. The clothes remain in discarded piles on the floor. Blair takes his hand and leads him to her bedroom, and they crawl under her lofty, comfortable duvet, curl back around each other and Blair allows her eyes to flutter shut and sleep finally overcomes her.
The last thing she hears as she drifts is Dan's voice, deep and rumbly, and he's telling her that he loves her over and over, his hand stroking her hair, and Blair wishes she had the energy to answer him but instead she finally gives into the fuzziness of sleep.
She's alone when she wakes up and Blair can tell from the light that it's late afternoon. She rolls out of bed and grabs a robe, then makes her way into the kitchen to find Dan standing at the stove, pushing something around one of her fancy copper pans that Blair rarely actually uses and he smiles when he sees her standing in the doorway, blinking away sleep.
"There's not much to eat around here," Dan smiles. "And a woman named Natasha stopped by and said she'll send groceries.
"My assistant." Blair says, thinking that Natasha but have been very surprised to find someone besides her boss answering the door. She realizes that she forgot to call in to the office to tell them she wouldn't be coming in and her assistant must have come by to check up on her.
Blair smiles but she doesn't move from where she's standing. She just looks at Dan, memorizing every detail of him. He's wearing his boxer shorts and a t-shirt and his feet are bare, then Blair can't stand there any longer and she's flying into his arms.
"You're here." she says, wrapping her arms around his neck and Dan is smiling back at her, and she says 'you're here' over and over between kisses and she feels Dan laugh.
"I'm glad you missed me."
Missing him doesn't begin to cover it.
"I'm so sorry." Blair murmurs, laying her head on his chest, leaning on him.
"Here and now." Dan whispers to her. "I'm just glad to be here with you right now."
"Here and now." Blair repeats.
"What made you change your mind," Dan asks, pulling back enough to be able to look into Blair's eyes.
"I had a visitor who helped me get things into perspective."
"A visitor?"
Blair takes a deep breath, then she tells Dan that the least expected person in the entire world showed up in her office, and she watches his eyes widen as she says Chuck's name.
"You've got to be kidding me." Dan says. "Chuck? After all these years?"
Blair nods and says something about timing, and how strange this world can be, and Dan laughs because it's almost preposterous that they are standing in Blair's kitchen, arms wrapped around each other because of Chuck Bass, and he tells Blair this and she laughs.
"And now we're getting married."
She loves the way the word rolls off her tongue, and she stares up at Dan only to see his face suddenly changes again, and he's pulling away from her, his arms dropping to his side, and Blair shivers a little, wanting him back.
"I have something for you." Dan says, going to the bag he'd dropped in the living room that morning. He unzips it and rummages around then returns holding a small, velvet pouch. Blair looks at it then looks back at his face.
"I should do this right." Dan says, then Blair is giggles as Dan drops down to one knee and he's taking her hand in his, and right there, in her kitchen, he makes her the happiest woman on the face of this earth.
"Blair Waldorf. Will you marry me?"
He opens the pouch and pulls out a ring, and it's the most exquisite ring she's ever seen. It's white gold, a beautiful moonstone in the center, and around it are diamonds. Later Dan will tell her there are exactly fifteen, one for each year they've spent apart, and the moonstone with the diamonds is the closest he can get to giving her the moon and the stars, and that he had this made after he returned from New York because he knew then he wanted to marry her. This will make Blair swat him because he's always discouraged her from looking too far into the future and he went and had an engagement ring made when there was no indication things would work out between them.
But right now she's stares down at Dan, bended on one knee, the ring extended towards her and she takes it from him and gives the answer she's already given him and will keep giving him for the rest of her life.
"Yes," Blair gasps. "Yes, yes, yes! I will marry you, Dan Humphrey."
The ring is a perfect fit and she slips it onto her finger and gazes at it, then Dan is standing again and she's in his arms and his lips are on hers, and Blair is happy.
TBC