oh oh i love her so
btvs + tvd. spike/katherine.
567 words.

summary:"Birds like you never had much faith in me," Spike says.



note: it has been so long since i watched btvs i do not even know what i'm doing





Spike meets her first at the turn of the century in Paris. Spike's blood runs new and hot in his veins still. Angelus has been gone for years that pass like blinking minutes. Darla is – Darla went somewhere, by the sea if memory serves, exhausted and lonely. She took Dru with her out of pettiness, because she was tired of Spike and wanted to punish him, because if she couldn't have her lover she didn't want anyone else to have theirs.

Her name, she says, is Katherine; she speaks French with a perfect accent and plays up a wide-eyed innocence that Spike wants to rip apart with his teeth, even though he doesn't buy it for a second. Spike was recently a man named William who learned French in infancy and even studied it at Oxford but on purpose now he garbles it horribly.

He is young enough that she hasn't heard of him and he hasn't heard of her. He lets her seduce him into an alleyway and returns her fanged kiss with one of his own, startling a delighted laugh out of her lovely mouth.

They take out an orphanage for kicks. Dru would like this girl, Spike thinks.




*




Again in the cold, rough New York City of the mid-nineteen-eighties. Spike is colder and rougher too, hair ice blonde and the blood of two slayers on his hands. Katherine has short, tousled hair like Debbie Harry though the curl is fighting through the styling. Blood-red blush razors her cheekbones and her eyes peer at him with amused indifference through mascara-heavy lashes.

Drusilla is ill, a soft white skeleton in Spike's bed. He drinks drugs through the blood of club kids and finds Katherine in the flashing lights. "I didn't think you'd last this long," she tells him. She wears white fishnets, black leather.

"Birds like you never had much faith in me," Spike says.

Later she sits in his lap in an empty subway car and they trade bloody kisses, Spike's hands tangled in hair stiff with hairspray. She laughs as they fuck and buries her teeth in his neck, nearly rips his throat open when she comes.




*




A decade or so has gone by and she comes to the Hellmouth like they all do eventually. It's the mecca of the evil undead and they all make the pilgrimage at some point. Spike is sick with love for a white hat and he thinks he reads an answering emotion in Katherine's face. They share a cig outside the Bronze.

"What was yours called?" he asks and doesn't specify.

Katherine rolls her eyes, lips twisting, and Spike thinks if she ever stuck around, they could've done some real damage together. "At least mine wasn't a cheerleader," she says.

"When in Southern California," Spike says.

They fuck in the cemetery on the wide, sturdy slab of someone's everlasting rest. This is what he needs, meanness and blood, teeth and faces wearings inner demons. He needs a girl with dark hair and dark eyes who pins him down with a look, a bad girl, a girl like him.

But he still sees the shimmy of the Slayer's hips behind his tightly closed eyes and he's still fucked, totally fucked, a sheep in wolf's clothing and nothing more.

"Let's see if you make it another hundred years," Katherine says, a challenge in her voice and doubt in her eyes.

and when you kiss me
Dan/Blair. Post-series. 1540 words.
w: adultery, mentions of abuse, chuck's existence
written for this prompt


summary: I'm not good at giving in.



Marriage lasted Dan and Serena about a year. One Saturday morning they were doing their usual thing, sitting side-by-side in bed while Dan read and Serena flipped between chipper newscasters and cartoons. The sparse conversation petered out into silence and at some point Dan became aware of Serena looking at him. Later he distinctly remembers the way the soft morning light caught the diamond in her wedding ring.

He meant to ask what was wrong, but neither of them seemed up to talking. Eventually Serena snuggled into his side and they watched three episodes of Adventure Time. A week later Dan moved out. In a few months the papers were finalized.

At twenty-seven Dan was a divorcé, and it was a hard thing for someone like him to stomach. But he couldn't deny that after signing the papers, he expelled the first breath of real relief he'd felt in six years.

After the final signing, they sat side-by-side on a bench outside the lawyers' with their fingers intertwined.

"I just want to know one thing," Serena started cautiously. "I won't be mad, I just want to know."

But Dan knew the question she'd ask and the answer he'd give, so he just kissed her knuckles and said, "We don't have to explain anything to each other anymore," and that closed the door on that.






Blair turned thirty. She spent eighteen years of her life attached to some man or other, been someone's girlfriend since she was twelve and someone's wife since she was twenty. Henry was about to turn eight. Chuck's grip on her has been iron-strong since her seventeenth birthday. Every morning she looked at him across the breakfast table and smiled and thought of all the ways she could gut him with her cutlery. Every morning she woke up wondering just how she got herself here.

Sometimes Blair looked at Henry and wondered just how he got here, where he came from. He was such an exact copy of his father that it was a stark reminder how little Blair had to do with him. The big secret no one knew was that Henry was not Blair's son. The story behind it was a good one because it was practically true: after two miscarriages, it was decided that they'd need a surrogate but before that could go through, Chuck came to her with his head hanging. I made a mistake, he said, but it worked out for him all the same. Henry was made in Chuck's exact image, though every so often an expression would cross his face that must've belonged to his mother, the nameless woman Chuck cheated on her with.

If Blair were a better person, it wouldn't matter. Chuck once offered to love a baby she was going to have with someone else, and the same promise was extracted from her when Henry came to live with them. If she were a good person, she would have loved that baby. After all, it wasn't Henry's fault that his father was Chuck Bass, or Henry's fault that Blair chose Chuck to chase down the aisle.

She didn't know where Henry came from, only that Chuck's pain always came first, his abandonment relived through another woman's baby. Blair would never be allowed to forget being a heartbroken seventeen-year-old girl who promised to stand by him through anything without knowing what that would entail.

Henry called her Mommy and Blair looked at him like a stranger.






It was the night of Blair's thirtieth birthday, a classy and understated affair with no children allowed. Dan was there as Nelly Yuki's date because there was no way in hell he'd make it past Blair Waldorf's (Bass, hissed his unwilling subconscious) door without someone else as a ticket in. He hadn't seen Blair all night, though when he was getting himself a drink at the far end of the room he heard an unmistakable sound, soft and miserable.

Dan followed it, anticipating the source, and found Blair at the end of the hall. She was sitting on the lush white carpeting in her lush silver gown, voluminous fabric puffed up hilariously around her, a small girl in a big dress. Not a girl, though; a woman, just as sad as she was the first time Dan ever found her like this, and that took all the humor right out of it.

He knelt down. He didn't know what to say, having run out of platitudes long before. He knew she wasn't alright so he didn't ask. Finally, when she looked at him with red-rimmed eyes, her face thinner than he remembered, Dan said, "So, you wanna dance?"

It was enough of a surprise to make her laugh and she said, "I can't," instead of no.






Chuck said, "I'm sorry," as he slide the velvet box across their bed – and Blair had to give him credit, he never made it sound perfunctory no matter how many times he said it. He didn't even wait for her to answer before kissing her shoulder and moving on with his life, back to the mirror to straighten his tie. It was an emerald necklace for another epic fuck-up and Blair wore it to the Met Ball, feeling strangled.

Dan was in the crowd. Blair always hated seeing him at events, hated the choking sensation that rose in her throat whenever she caught sight of his distinct profile. But that night he was having a none-too-discreet fight with Nelly Yuki and there was vengeful satisfaction in that.

Blair went to the bar later, just happening to happen upon him. "So," she said carefully, picking the cherry out of her old-fashioned, "You want a drink?"

The look on Dan's face was halfway between wary and thoughtful. She thought he might say no, but instead what came out was, "I can't." He tilted his head back towards the crowd where Nelly must be, somewhere. "Thanks, though."

"Of course," Blair said, cheeks reddening in sudden embarrassment. She added, "Your shoes are hideous," but there wasn't a spark of heat in it, and somewhere in the recesses of her mind she could only think how handsome he was, how handsome he'd always been.






Dan measured sections of his life not by accomplishments but by girls he'd been in love with at the time, and he supposed his biggest problem was trying to pretend an era existed after Blair. Or so that seemed to be the takeaway from his last big fight with Nelly, and it had his head spinning enough that he was dialing a number he pretended not to know.

Blair picked up after half a ring, but seemed annoyed. "What?"

"You got time?" Dan asked.

Silence. Then, "I have a window."

Her window was fifteen minutes for drinks in the lobby of a hotel Chuck owned, but she was dressed up enough that Dan read the signs. Fifteen minute drinks turned into an hour in a rented room. Their first time had been in a hotel room. Dan was better this time around; almost ten years, and he hadn't forgotten how to touch her.






Blair bought Chuck a solid gold watch, its black face embedded with a dozen tiny diamonds.

"What's this for?" he asked.

On Blair's wrist glittered a diamond bracelet Chuck bought her after leaving ten fingerprint bruises on her arms. Around her neck was the pendant she got along with Henry.

"You buy me lovely things all the time," Blair said. "I can't return the favor?"

The lingerie she wore for Dan was always new and she kept it all in a suitcase at the top of her closet, a collection of shopping bags hidden away like a suburban shopaholic. She didn't want him to touch any part of her life, and didn't want any part of her life to touch him. It could be just a game of intrigue as long as she left it like this, secret lace underthings and apology gifts to Chuck like a series of private jokes.






Dan said, "You're the best liar I ever knew."

The gap between what Blair did and what Blair said was never so gaping. Dan at least liked to make a show of honesty; he broke up with Nelly after the first night at the hotel and settled back into a waiting game that is almost ten years old by now.

"The only reason you think that is because you're too focused on what I say," Blair said, her voice quiet enough to be almost unheard.

Her dress was on but unzipped, the pale line of her back facing him as she clipped her garters. Hands gentle, Dan reached to slide the zipper up. He kissed her neck.

"That's all I can go on," he said softly. "I can't live my life in code."

Blair stopped fiddling with her clothes to press her face into her hands, a slow sigh escaping her. But before Dan could do anything, she was turning, her arms slipping around his neck. She pressed her face against him like she used to do when they were together and told him, "I'm not good at giving in."

And Dan said all he could say, the truth. "I'll wait."

Hey y'all –

I'm starting to upload some of my older mixes to 8tracks but there's really too many to do all of them (and looord, some of these are embarrassing as I look through them again) so I thought I'd do a request post. If there's any mix of mine you'd particularly like to have on 8tracks, please let me know here. You can look through them on my fanmix tag or in my masterlist.

Conversely, if you have any fanmix requests at all (anything I haven't done that you'd like to see), that would also go here. 

F I C
lesbian much :: jennifer's body; needy/jennifer.
hey lover come and be my alibi :: thg; johanna/katniss.
you're breathing in fumes I taste when we kiss :: gg; dan/georgina.
oh oh I love her so :: btvs + tvd; spike/katherine.
and when you kiss me :: gg; dan/blair.


M I X E S
atomic :: thg; johanna/katniss.
in the gleaming tides :: thg; finnick odair.
and sometimes she loved me too :: gg; dan/blair.


O T H E R
2013 in fic
2013 picspam

and sometimes she loved me too
Dan/Blair. Post-s5. 7791 words.


Summary: Blair showed up in Rome three days ago and Dan has yet to ask her why, though unasked and unanswered questions haven't stopped him from wondering.


Note: Some wish-fulfillment-y fic because all I want is to take this show and fix things, still.






Blair showed up in Rome three days ago and Dan has yet to ask her why, though unasked and unanswered questions haven't stopped him from wondering.

Her appearance seemed to be coincidental. Dan was typing outside at a café – pretending to type, actually, because he'd blown off his entire program thanks to bone-deep writers' block that he just couldn't shake – on the typewriter Georgina bought for him. Tired and hot and just kind of weary, Dan slumped in his chair, gaze traveling over the street without really looking at anything in particular. At first he didn't notice Blair in the crowd, and then he thought she was a hallucination because, honestly, he'd been seeing her everywhere for the last two months. It was a scene straight out of one of his daydreams, and she looked just how he had pictured her looking during what was supposed to be their summer together. She was tan, her dress a blushing coral against sunned skin; her hair was shorter, just touching her shoulders, and much lighter, brown warmed up with golden blonde. It didn't feel like she was there for him, just that she was there, but her searching gaze locked onto him so fast it had to be on purpose.

She called his name four times before Dan registered it as reality, sitting up so straight he nearly knocked his coffee over. That was three days ago.

Georgina is far from pleased to have Blair around. "I thought the whole point was to avoid her," she sniffs, arm hooked possessively through Dan's.

"She found me. I didn't go looking for her," Dan points out. It's no small feat; even in his flat-out misery he'd entertained more than one fantasy of storming off to Monte Carlo to make impassioned speeches that would have Blair leaping into his arms. In the early days of his trip, he'd wasted so much maudlin time going through pictures of Blair and Chuck online that Georgina took away his internet (except for an hour-long window once a week when she allows him to respond to emails, supervised). Georgina is half a rebound and half a warden, and Dan hadn't minded ceding control to her. Not until Blair turned up, that is.

Blair is at a ritzy five star hotel near all the shopping; Dan and Georgina are in humbler accommodations, an apartment of someone Georgina knows who is elsewhere at the moment. They've stayed all over in the last two months after getting ousted from the workshop lodgings and Dan likes it, likes moving around. He doesn't feel settled in his skin at the moment, so all the restless shifting agrees with him. Since Blair's arrival in Rome, Dan has walked every morning from his borrowed flat to the doors of her hotel, where she is always waiting impatiently for him.

"You should tell her to go fuck herself," Georgina says.

"I really should," Dan agrees, the emptiest of empty words.

He keeps replaying that first moment in his head, Blair's eyes meeting his over cobblestones and busy Italians. Neither of them had smiled but there'd been an obvious jolt of recognition – and something like trepidation. The last time they'd seen each other, she'd promised that he was the one she wanted to be with. Funny how that had worked out.

Blair seemed unwilling to cross that final stretch to him but she did it anyway, hands clasping her purse as she looked side to side before darting quickly to his table. Dan firmly told himself to remain seated but of course he stood, unable to help it. Then they were face to face, in each other's breathing room, and Dan didn't know whether to kiss her or call her a bitch.

Luckily Blair broke the ice. The first words out of her mouth were, "Your hair is actually horrific."

"Yours looks dip-dyed," he retorted, even though he really thought she looked very nice. He wanted to touch the soft waves of her hair but held himself back.

On the tip of his tongue was what the hell are you doing here but before he could say anything, Blair was tugging the sheet of paper from his typewriter and asking what decade he thought he was living in. It was so stunningly normal that Dan fell right into the trap and spent the better part of an hour bitching back and forth with her until Georgina came to collect him for dinner and her eyes went saucer-sized.

Before Georgina pulled him away, Blair said, "Would you like to be tourists tomorrow?" and Dan said, "sure," as though it was nothing at all.

The entire purpose of Dan taking Georgina to Rome was to pen some epic takedown that he'd probably look back on as the big nervous breakdown of his professional and personal lives. That had lasted maybe two weeks before Dan threw all his notes in one of the fountains, returning guilt-ridden half an hour later to fish out his ruined, waterlogged progress. After that he mostly scrawled or typed up bland descriptions of whatever he was directly looking at – his own feelings he kept locked up, unwilling to even waste ink on them. Sometimes Georgina would dirty-talk him into writing porn for her, and then he'd read it while she masturbated. That was probably the highlight of the trip, actually.

He and Blair hadn't planned on where to meet up, but they both gravitated back to the café early in the day, setting off with very little in the way of conversation. Blair told him where she was staying, the Hotel d'Inghilterra on Via Bocca di Leone, and he liked the clumsy way her mouth shaped the words, unsure of her Italian. He gave her his temporary address in turn, hands tucked awkwardly in his pockets. Blair's fingers twisted in the strap of her bag, a very un-Blair-like nervous tic.

In the process of falling in love with Blair, Dan's train of thought would often motor back to junior year of high school: the first and strongest impression she would ever leave on him. He would think about the nasty, beautiful girl he had honestly hated, no subtext there. He would think of the harsh arch of her brow and the warpaint-red of her lips, the precise way she moved and the particular way she dressed. He thought she was so high maintenance. He didn't understand why anyone would put so much effort into being so uptight and he didn't really get that he did the exact same thing back then.

He would compare that girl with the one he fell in love with, the one who was sharp and funny and mean and bright. He would think about the girl who cut him down to size and the girl who tried to hide the fact that black and white movies made her cry. He'd think about a girl whose mother broke her heart and a girl who lied and lied and pretended not to love him. He'd think that those girls were not really altogether different at the end of the day and he's afraid that he would've fallen in love with Blair years and years ago if only he'd been looking to.

As they're walking from the café up towards the Villa Borghese, he says suddenly, "Jenny isn't speaking to me."

Blair's expression is cautious. "Oh?"

"She hasn't been," he amends. "I never told you that. When we started –" He clears his throat. "She's been angry at me since."

"Oh," Blair says again, still uncertain. He's not used to her like this. Indecisive, yes, but never so tentative, especially on topics like his sister.

"She thought it was a betrayal," he presses, eyes on her face for any revealing twitch.

"Okay," she says slowly, taking a deep breath, and that's it, the conversation falters to silence right there. Their conversations rarely falter; they have too much to say, especially to each other, too many opinions and too much sniping. But they continue in silence for the half hour walk, and Blair never once demands a cab or bitches about blisters. They take in the grounds and the art without incident and then part. Dan goes to meet Georgina. He doesn't know where Blair goes.

Georgina is understandably furious about the whole Blair situation. Full lips curled in something between a snarl and a pout, she crosses her arms and glares at him. She says, "You know what's going to happen, don't you?"

Dan knows what he hopes for and what he's never going to get; they're the same thing, after all. Blair is probably here to gently break the news of her engagement to Chuck.

"Don't worry about it," he says.

"Don't worry about it?" Georgina repeats, voice low. "It's bad enough that you haven't been hitting your quotas. You know she's going to completely derail you." She sniffs, chin lifting. "You really don't appreciate a single thing I do for you."

Georgina mostly coaxes him into sex he's only interested in half the time. She tries to keep him from falling into a crippling depression spiral, but her methods are more black market pharmaceutical than he would like. She's also vicious about keeping him on a writing schedule, though she's been gravely disappointed by his piss-poor output all summer; as long as he's doing something, she says she's not picky what it is. Like some kind of crazed ex-girlfriend mother hen from Satan, she likes to remind him that he has a career to think of.

He does appreciate it, kind of; at the very least he's glad he hasn't been alone.

"I wrote something for you," Dan says, a restrained suggestiveness to his tone. Georgina perks up immediately.

"Did you?" she says, reaching out to curl her fingers in his shirt. She pulls until they're chest to chest, though Dan keeps his hands to himself for now. He always puts off touching her just to make her crazy.

"Get on the bed," he says. "I'll read it to you."

The best thing about Georgina is that she doesn't want Dan to be nice, and that's the worst thing too. Right now he's not going to turn away her particular helpful way of shutting his brain off – he could certainly use the quiet – but, as always, he wishes he was in a beautiful city with a person he loved and not just a girl who peer-pressures him into some weird sex stuff he would never have thought of otherwise.

Tonight, however, is not weird or strange or uncomfortable; he gets Georgina off with his words, voice quiet and slow, and his hands, the ink on his skin smudging onto hers.

A week passes and Dan still doesn't ask why Blair is here. She doesn't offer up any explanations either. A little daily ritual develops between them: quiet breakfasts together and quieter roaming, conversation limited to the art or the sights. It's a pale facsimile of the trip Dan wanted to have back before everything went to shit and that seems to twist the knife in his heart poignantly. He keeps a notebook with him at all times and a silly little book is beginning to take shape within it, a novella about a trip with a girl who doesn't love you back. He never puts any of it into his typed notes, keeping it private. He doesn't want to share it with Georgina, or with anyone. It's just for him, his sad little story.

One sunny day is spent reading tour books and eating gelato by the Trevi Fountain. It is exactly what Dan wanted but nothing like what he wanted at all. He still feels like he can't catch his breath when he's next to Blair, like she's going to disappear if he blinks. Part of him is waiting for the other shoe to drop but most of him is just longing for her, just craving.

They sit beside each other on the ledge of the fountain, which is annoyingly crowded. Gelato melts in little paper cups on the foot or so of space they've left between them. She complains about the breeze, which keeps whipping golden brown strands of hair into her eyes, across the bridge of a nose now graced with delicate freckles. He had no idea she freckled in the summer. It's somehow painful, that knowledge, painful like the strap of her white sundress against her tan skin makes him want to tip back into the fountain and choke to death on a handful of wishing coins.

"We should come back at night," Blair says as she glances around, book lowered. She looks at him with a smile, guileless and almost shy. "I'll wear a black dress and try to find a kitten."

"But you wouldn't get in the water," he says, dipping fingers in and flicking droplets at her, which Blair does her best to dodge, nose scrunching up. "You won't even touch a dish after you've put it in the sink."

"Avoidance of germs and disease is a healthy attitude to take," she says loftily. Something in her expression shifts then, and she adds, "But no; I'll never be the kind of girl who spontaneously climbs into a fountain just because she feels like it."

I like that about you, he almost says, but he's not here to give her assurances anymore. The moment stagnates and, awkwardly, they both return to their guidebooks.

Georgina has been missing in action since the night before (she'll often disappear for up to two days at a time, returning with lank hair and love bites, circles under her eyes and rips in her clothes) so when the sunny sky dips into early evening, Dan asks Blair if she'd like to have dinner with him. She straightens up a little bit and bites her lip. "Alright," she says. "I'll have to change first."

Dan is wearing jeans and a t-shirt and has no plans on changing, though he doesn't bother to say anything. Blair has always been a dress-for-dinner kind of girl, even if they were just stopping to get takeout on the way to his apartment. The thought makes him swallow hard. "No problem," he says. "I can meet you."

"It's not far," she says, again worrying her lower lip. He's not sure he's ever seen her do that before. "You could just come up? I won't take long." She smiles slightly, amends, "Very long."

He's going to decline but somehow the word that comes out of his mouth is, "Sure."

Dan follows a step behind Blair all the way back to the hotel and through the lobby, only standing at her side again once they're in the elevator. She kept looking back over her shoulder the entire way like she thinks he might step out on her.

Her room is well suited to her, a mix of glossy modernity and purposeful antiquities. The design of it is neat and classic, all ornate golden mirrors and colorful upholstery against pristine white walls. Nothing was thrown together without great forethought; each piece was a clear decision. That's why it reminds him of Blair, probably, as her image is similarly decided and planned. What's behind the image, though – not so much.

An open doorway leads from the sitting room to the bedroom. A silky something is still laid out over her sheets, abandoned from this morning. On the bedside table is a vase of orange tulips, green stems. He wonders if they're complimentary.

Dan stops at the window, training his gaze outside instead of in. "Great view," he remarks.

"I've had better," Blair says automatically. Despite himself, Dan smiles.

She appears at his side, positioned oddly with her back to him. She glances over her shoulder. "Could you?" she asks, meaning her zipper. "I can't reach."

Dan's not sure he can keep a slight incredulousness from his expression, but he still turns to grasp her zipper and slide it slowly down. The big, airy room feels suddenly airless and Dan can't keep his knuckles from grazing her skin, just a little.

But then he clears his throat and steps back, puncturing the hushed moment. "All done," he says. "I'll wait here."

He would think that was disappointment on Blair's face if he didn't know any better. "Thanks," she murmurs. "I'll try to be quick."

She leaves the door to the bedroom ajar (why not, Dan supposes, it's not like any of it would be new to him) but he keeps his eyes on the street outside, only catching glimpses of her moving around at the edge of his field of vision. In typical Waldorf fashion, the outfit she emerges in is a little too dressy for Dan's plan of let's-eat-at-the-first-place-we-see but it's also kind of…brazenly sexy in a way Blair doesn't typically dress.

It's a relatively simple black dress but it skims so close to the shape of her body that it almost seems to stretch too tight over her hips. Her shoulders and arms are bare, the neckline pulling up into a halter. "Could you get the back again?" she asks, and turns to reveal an almost entirely open back, just a slim zippered strap running from neck to waist. He's not even sure what to point of the zipper is – not that Dan knows anything about clothes – except to drive him crazy by making him do it up.

She has two very noticeable dark brown freckles right between shoulder blades; he used to press a kiss there, usually in the morning to wake her up. He resists the urge now but his hand drifts anyway, gingerly touching the spot as he pretends to smooth the strap.

"You look nice," he says.

It's the simplicity of it that seems so out of place, he decides finally. She's not wearing any jewelry or any color besides black and it makes her seem naked somehow, exposed. It's like she's down one layer of armor.

They end up sticking around the hotel for dinner and it's relatively low-key and low stress on the surface, though Dan is remarkably on edge the entire time. Afterwards she leads the way out into the sticky summer night, her hand reaching back for his. There are no rings on her fingers. "We have touristing left to do," she says.

Their clasped hands are the first prolonged physical contact they'd had since they broke up. There must be some sense memory to it, his hand recognizing hers, because a jolt runs through him at the touch. It settles into anxiousness in the pit of his stomach, a nervousness so acute she must be able to sense it through his skin.

The funny thing is he thinks he feels her fingers tremble in his a little.

They go to the Antico Caffé Greco, one of the few things left on their tourist tour of the city. Admittedly, Dan has been looking forward to it; Rome's an old city in every sense and Dan has been bowled over by it the last two months, having never before been anywhere with quite so much history lining its every square inch.

"You should have put on a nice shirt, at least," Blair says in that gentle chiding way she used to tell him couldn't you have worn a tie? don't you think you ought to have put on a jacket? She smoothes a hand over his chest, nose wrinkling at the plain cotton shirt. The sensation Dan feels in his throat is like a lighter trying to click on and failing; an emotion that refuses to form before he can swallow it down.

The room is warm and red around them, walls cluttered with art in gold frames, the wooden chairs dark and worn. It's somehow soothing, old-fashioned and smelling of coffee, the kind of place he'd only ever want to go to with Blair. They sit in the back corner with a coffee each and one little dessert between them because Blair always refuses to just get her own, instead nibbling off Dan's plate all the time. It's kind of like a date, except nightmarish because it isn't really one. Blair's legs brush against his under the small table and he's reminded of how she used to sometimes rest her ankle over his when they went out.

Blair plucks a piece of glossy fruit off the top of the slice and pops it in her mouth. "I'm surprised you're not with Georgina tonight." Her voice is even, emotion-free. Dan finds his gaze unwillingly drawn to her mouth, her fingers, the fine bones of her wrist.

He shrugs. "You know you're scaring her off."

Blair does a poor job of concealing a little smirk. "I didn't think anything scared her."

"Putting her off, then," he says. "She's not thrilled with me already. I didn't exactly live up to the promise of the summer."

"Oh?" Blair arches a brow. "And what was that?"

"A scathing takedown of everyone we know," he says ruefully. "Well, another one."

A little of Blair's amusement dissipates then. "Have you been so miserable all summer?"

Dan looks at her. "Is that a trick question?"

Blair drops her gaze instead of meeting his, hands smoothing down the napkin in her lap again and again. "I wish you'd have let me explain."

With all the patience he has in him, Dan asks impassively, "What would you have said?"

She hesitates, still refusing to meet his eyes. "That I was sorry."

"That's not an explanation."

Blair releases a little huff of exasperation. "What, would you like an entire psychological analysis, Dan?"

"If you're going to offer an explanation, then I'd like something that actually resembled an explanation." None is forthcoming, however, and it riles him that she can never just say anything. So he decides to say something instead, out of pure honest meanness. "I slept with Serena, you know. Before leaving the city. While you and I were technically still together."

Only technically, as it's not like he'd seen Blair at any point to confirm the end of their relationship. He just heard about it, made assumptions.

He's watching her face for a sign of hurt that he can both savor and kick himself over, a sign that she cares in some way, even if it's just petty jealousy. But she surprises him. "I know," she says. "I've been with Serena the last month."

Whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't that. "What?"

"She's in Barcelona," Blair continues. "She still is, I mean. That's where we were. You haven't seen anything online?"

"I haven't been checking," he says.

Both of her hands curl around her cup of coffee but she doesn't bring it to her lips. "Well, that's where I've been. So I know what happened."

"And you don't care, obviously," he says, watching her. "What did Serena say? That it was real easy to get me to give in? That she got me drunk, that she told me you were with Chuck? Did she tell you she filmed it? Because she didn't tell me that, you know. Did –"

"Dan, please." Blair's fingers curl into tight fists, releasing slowly, and she meets his eyes. "Don't. I wanted us to have a nice time tonight."

"Why?" he says. "What does it matter? We're never going to be friends again. It's over."

"Don't say that," Blair says, not scolding so much as hurt – and he can't help the part of himself that still wants to affect her, even if it's just to hurt her. "You're my best friend. Still."

"No I'm not," Dan says. "Best friends don't treat each other like we treat each other. But I guess I understand why you'd be confused, seeing as your other best friend is Serena."

She gets that look on her face that used to remind him of a cat flattening its ears – angry, ready to hiss and attack. "This isn't about her, Dan. I forgive you, okay? I forgive both of you."

"Oh thank you, how fucking magnanimous," he snaps. "You know what? I don't forgive you. How about that?"

He gets up, pausing only to throw some money on the table because that's a particularly arrogant gesture he was never able to do until a couple of months ago. Then he leaves, knocking into a chair as he goes and marring his dramatic exit as well as drawing the eyes of everyone left in the establishment. He does not look back to see if she's looking, but he wants to.

He finds Georgina in bed when he gets back to the flat and wakes her up just to crush his mouth to hers, his hand between her legs.

The next morning he doesn't go down to the café to meet Blair, opting instead to stay in bed with Georgina. Her black slip dips in a deep V that Dan tugs lower until a strap slides from her shoulder, cupping her breast as soon as it's revealed. Georgina's fingers tap against his lips, which open obligingly, catching her fingertips between his teeth.

"Date didn't go well, huh, baby?" Georgina says, eyes glittering maliciously. It's the happiest she's looked all summer.

Dan's only response is to roll her nipple sharply between his fingers, but Georgina likes that, so it's not really effective. Once Dan has effectively exhausted her – and put an end to any questions, or any talking at all – he goes out to sit on the balcony and scratch half-hearted lines of poetry into a notebook. He stopped writing poetry some time in high school, but a late afternoon in Rome with one girl's scratches on his skin and another's on his heart seems a good time to pick it up again.

He is interrupted by such insistent rapping on the door that he knows who it is without having to ask.

On the other side of the door, Blair looks deeply affronted, her arms crossed over her chest. Today she wears the softest, palest pink silk – cherry blossom pink, lingerie pink, the kind of seashell blush that makes him think of her naked skin – and dark red lipstick, a ridiculous little sunhat on her head and floral jewelry shining metallic at her ears, throat, wrists, fingers. She's got all her armor on.

The dress hangs from two straps so thin they look like they could tear if she twisted the wrong way. The bodice hugs her close but the skirt hangs loose from hips to just past her knees, a romantic kind of dress. Anyone else would look at her and think she's pretty as a picture but Dan knows better, knows what Blair dressed for battle looks like. He can't help looking her up and down, even though it's probably in bad taste considering he's got Georgina's marks all over his bare chest, Georgina asleep and well-fucked in his bed.

Blair's lips purse as her eyes travel over him. Then they flick back to his face. "I waited for you."

"Not as long as I waited for you," Dan says.

She blinks, seeming to have not expected that. But she recovers quickly. "You kept yourself occupied," she sneers.

Bluntly, he says, "What difference does it make to you?"

Blair swallows visibly. "Can you just put a shirt on, Humphrey? I want to go to the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna and we're getting a late enough start as it is." Her nose wrinkles as she looks at him again. "Actually, do us both a favor and take a shower."

They're both moody and silent forty minutes later as they stand inside the museum, moving in that slow thoughtful way from piece to piece as though either of them gives a damn. Dan doesn't understand what Blair is playing at and he hasn't understood for a long time, instead just hanging on the last year waiting and waiting to see if things would go his way. He's not sure how much hanging on he can continue to do but he knows if he asks Blair a straight question, he'll get anything but a straight answer.

Then, suddenly, she says, "I can't believe you just walked out last night. You didn't even let me explain."

"It seems you're always on the edge of explaining whenever I'm not around," Dan says. "When I am, you don't have so much to say."

"You don't make it easy," she huffs.

"It's not my job to make things easy for you."

"No, but it's nice," she says. "It's kind. It's thoughtful. It's all those things I used to think you were."

He gives her a tight, humorless smile. "I guess we're both good at letting each other down, huh?"

She flushes a little, splotchy over her cheeks and throat. She always flushes when she's really angry, or really turned on. The two are pretty close for her. "We both know I've done things I'm not proud of, but I never thought you would hold them against me."

Her choice of words is curious and confusing, but he doesn't ask any of the questions he probably should. "You hurt me," he says. "I think it's my goddamn right to hold it against you."

Blair expels a low breath. "I don't know what I'm doing here," she fumes, turning on her heel. "This was such –"

But he's reaching to catch her elbow, the question that's been on his tongue for two and a half weeks finally coming free: "Why are–"

But before he can finish asking, Blair has spun abruptly again and kissed him, hands crushed against his chest. His hand is still resting lightly on her elbow and he's otherwise frozen, as though his body is too startled to know how to react. Blair pulls back, just a breath of space between them, and presses her fingertips to his lips, wiping away lipstick.

Dan finally touches her, one hand low on her hip and the other at the small of her back. The delicate straps of her dress are woven into a crisscross all down her back, lightly corseted over bare skin. He tangles his fingers in the loose hanging bow, tempted to pull the strings and see if the whole thing falls apart. "What was that?"

"I think it's commonly called a kiss," Blair breathes. She tilts forward so her forehead is pressed to his, her eyes close so he can't read them. "You're familiar with kissing, aren't you?"

They make it outside and into a taxi, though that's as far as they get before Blair's mouth is on his again. He wipes her lipstick off carelessly on his sleeve first, a deep red blur against pale blue. Kissing Blair in the back of a cab is familiar in a way that makes him ache. He presses as close as he can, hands curling in her silk skirt, in the thin, thin straps.

Blair hauls him out of the cab and through the hotel lobby by the shirt, hitting the button to close the elevator doors before another couple can step inside. Dan can't help laughing at the surprise on their faces but then Blair is pressing him against the elevator wall, and that's familiar too.

His shirt is half off by the time they get inside Blair's room and that's just about as much waiting as either of them can take; as soon as the door slams shut, Dan has her up against it, hands under her thighs lifting her up. He nearly loses his balance in the fumbling to get clothes out of the way, remaining upright only through some act of god. He presses into her hands, arches against her and revels in the low, helpless moan caught in her throat.

Blair clutches him tight as he fucks her, arms around his shoulders and then around his neck, her gasps in his ear driving him along. He fucks her about as hard as he can manage while keeping his balance, though eventually his legs threaten to give out; he slides out of her and folds to his knees, brings her thigh up onto his shoulder and uses his mouth on her until she trembles.

Blair sinks down to the floor with him, fingers tangling in his hair as she kisses him. The frantic atmosphere dulls for one long moment while she kisses him, while she holds his face in his hands, her forehead against his. Then she's pushing him flat onto his back and settling onto him, a half-smile curling her lips. The pace she sets is brutal and Dan just does his best to meet it, hips canting up as hers rock down. He keeps his eyes open when he comes so he can see her fall apart a second time, watch the way she bites her lip and tips her head back, shudders with contentment.

Afterwards they crawl under her covers in whatever mussed clothes they've still got on. Dan is out with an immediacy he hasn't known all summer and he really doesn't want to think about how that's connected to the girl wrapped up in his arms. But facts are facts: he hasn't slept half so well since the last time he had Blair curled around him.

When he wakes the bed is empty and the room is dark. Light shines out of the half-open bathroom door, distant music echoing faintly. He gets out of bed and goes into the bathroom to find an expectedly luxurious marble extravaganza, Blair tucked into a bubble bath right in the middle of it. Her eyes are closed and her hair is up, a few escaping tendrils trailing on the surface of the water.

"Hey," he says awkwardly. He crosses his arms over his chest, but it just makes him very aware of how his open shirt is all tangled around him, so he spends a minute trying to get untangled while Blair watches with an amused raised eyebrow.

"Why don't you just take that off and come here?" she says.

"Uh, I don't know," Dan says. He starts doing up his buttons, thinking that he really should find pants… Last he remembers seeing them, he'd been kicking them off before getting into bed. "I should probably go."

"Go?" Blair sits up a little, water sloshing around her, and he can't deny how inviting the sight is – big eyes peering at him, wet skin shining. But her expression is carefully restrained. "I had another idea." She extends one soapy arm, offering a hand that Dan automatically steps toward.

"What's that?" he asks as her fingertips curl over the waistband of his briefs.

"Let's get drunk," she says. "Really drunk. Messy. Very messy."

Dan can't help the corner of his mouth twitching upwards. "Oh yeah?"

She's answering his barely-there smile with a wide one of her own, drawing him down for a kiss. "Yes," she murmurs against his lips. Her fingers twist in his hair, tugging a little. "Your hair's too long." A pause. "I like it."

Blair promises to be quick getting ready but because she is Blair it is obviously a lie. Dan lazes around on her bed like he used to, sighing melodramatically from time to time and flipping through the trashy novel she's got on her bedside table. He climbs back into his own rumpled clothes, trying to smooth them fruitlessly for a minute before giving up. The dark berry stain of Blair's lipstick gleams obviously on his sleeve.

They go to some crowded club or café or something, Dan isn't sure what to call it, and go about getting wrecked. Blair drinks gin and Dan drinks anything, and it's very easy, in the atmosphere buzzing with noise and music and late night air, to let alcohol convince him that things are simple. They are just two people having fun. Blair is all laughter that seems less forced the more she drinks; Dan is wry smiles and low-voiced sarcasm. It's simple.

Blair's cheeks are very pink with heat and booze – or maybe it's just makeup – as she puts an arm through his, leaning against him. "Remember how you used to sing when I asked you to," she says, and of course Dan remembers; their time together was impossible to forget.

He sang in the shower like most of the known world and Blair teased that he had secret rock star delusions, but she must've liked it because sometimes when they were quiet and cozy she'd ask him to do it.

There has been a succession of people of questionable talent performing on the café's tiny platform, and Dan doesn't speak enough Italian to know if it's karaoke or open mike or what. But Blair gets it into her head that he should get up there and she won't let it go, so after one faltering half-in-English conversation with a bartender, Dan gets up there. Clearly he still has trouble not giving her what she wants.

He borrows the guitar of the last guy, thinking he'll do some Smiths or Pixies, maybe one of his dad's songs; he's drunk enough to not be embarrassed about it. But when he looks at Blair what comes out of his mouth is Moon River. He doesn't even realize he's doing it half out of cruelty until he sees the way her breath is sucked out of her. Her good humor vanishes in a blink and, as the familiar words leave his mouth, there's something like heartbreak on her face, a specific vulnerability that he suspects only he has ever seen.

Before he's close to done, Blair gets to her feet, upset, and pushes through the crowd to the door. Dan cuts himself off mid-note and thrusts the instrument back at its owner, rushing to follow her as perplexed and scattered applause sounds in his wake.

It's raining outside. Blair is frozen about a foot from the entrance as though she just realized but is unwilling to come back inside. Dan is less concerned, stepping out into the downpour as he starts, "Blair –"

"I didn't come here so you could make fun of me," she snaps.

"I'm not," he says, but maybe he was; he knows there was meanness in him choosing that song, perhaps mocking too. He wanted to take the things she loved and hurt her with them. She should be proud; that's one of her moves.

"I get it, alright? I do. It was stupid of me to come here thinking you'd still –" Blair purses her lips, angrily pushing wet hair out of her face. "But you don't have to make me feel like – I don't know why you came back to my hotel, if it was some revenge thing –"

"I don't do revenge things," he says. "That's what you do."

"Oh really?" she snaps. "What about your book? What about Serena?"

Dan looks away. "Do we have to do this right now? In the fucking rain?"

Blair's arms are too straight at her side, fingers clenched into fists, so yeah, it seems like they do have to do this right now in the fucking rain. She blinks with lashes heavy with falling rain, mascara smudging on her cheeks, and so transformed by her anger that he thinks maybe she was never lovelier. It's a wonder she doesn't care about looking so messy.

"Sometimes you're impossible too, Dan," she says. "The way you would look at me, like you expected so much of me, like I was so wonderful when I wasn't and we both knew it – It was too much to live up to, no one could live up to the girl you thought I was –"

"Oh, I'm sorry for loving you," he says sarcastically. "I'm sorry for believing in you when you couldn't –"

Blair groans loudly. "God, you're so noble, aren't you? You're so noble and I'm just this crying lost mess –"

"I never said that!" Dan exclaims. "I didn't expect a goddamn thing from you, okay, I just wanted you to be happy –"

"You wanted to make me happy," Blair says, tone suddenly more gentle and subdued. "That's not – that's not bad, Dan, but – but you knew that I had a lot of stuff I was dealing with; you probably knew better than anyone. And just because you were kind and sweet and I loved you doesn't mean all of that goes away, or that I was any better at handling it. I know that it was horrible of me to do what I did and I know that I hurt you, but I just – I had to do it, I had to fuck everything up and I had to fix it by myself."

Dan is quiet for a moment, looking at her through the, frankly, torrential downpour, her expression both defiant and hopeful. "Full psychological analysis, huh?"

"Don't try to be cute, I'm very angry," Blair says, but something in the way she's holding herself relaxes.

"I don't know that I really get it," he offers. "But I know it's hard for you to…say things like that. So…thanks."

"You don't have to thank me, Dan," she sighs. "I just want you to stop hating me."

"I never hated you, and you know it," he says. His thoughts haven't been particularly charitable for the last few months, but that was a lot of bitterness talking. "I couldn't."

The few stragglers swimming through the flood are giving them a wide berth, and Dan realizes how they look, suddenly: two people facing off in the middle of the street in the middle of the night.

"I'd really like to be less drowned," Blair says, and after a moment's hesitation they both take steps closer, and then they both go inside to call a cab.

The idea of returning to her hotel or his borrowed apartment is not an appealing one, so they pay to drive around aimlessly until the rain clears up. By the time the sun yawns pale yellow in the sky, they have decided where to go.

Outside of the cab Dan brushes his thumbs over the black smudges of makeup under her eyes, but they don't really budge. It makes Blair smile, though, and reach up to twist a curl of his hair around her finger. "We look like we survived a shipwreck," she says.

"Kind of did," Dan tells her.

She rolls her eyes fondly. "Don't be dramatic."

There's no one around this early, or very few people at least, so they make their way across the street and past the trees with no interruption. Dan keeps his hands in his pockets but the energy between them is strangely comfortable, companionable, and he feels the most at ease he's felt since she arrived. They come to a stop in front of the Bocca della Verità, the Mouth of Truth, the big and unwieldy stone circle with a face stamped on it like a giant coin. The surface is cracked and weathered, eyes and mouth black with emptiness, creepy. It just has a half-hearted little rope in front of it. Dan and Blair study it a moment, heads tilted, and then he says, "I will if you will."

Blair glances at him with a suppressed little smile as they turn to face each other. She holds up a hand, wriggles her fingers, and then places it on the statue's lip. "This is hygienically unsound," she says.

Dan follows suit, fingertips reaching towards gritty darkness. "I'll buy you some Purell after."

"You can go first," she tells him.

Dan has a mouthful of questions, but none of them are easy ones. The atmosphere shifts, becoming more serious and less silly. "Why him?"

He can see Blair's tongue press up against the back of her teeth as she keeps herself from reacting emotionally, or at all. "I don't know anymore," she says finally. "It's not something I want, it's like..." She clears her throat. "Something I deserve." She doesn't make deserve sound like a good word at all. "Why Serena?"

To hurt you is his first answer, but it's not quite that, not entirely. "Attention, I guess, sort of," Dan says. "She wanted me and you didn't. I thought you didn't. It felt good. And then it felt a lot worse. Does she hate me?"

"A little bit," Blair says. "Do you hate her?"

"A little bit," Dan says.

"You should probably work on that." The half-smile that curls a corner of her mouth is sympathetic and sorry. "Are you still angry with me?"

Dan looks at her for a long moment, just looks at her. She is bedraggled and air-dried, her hair in need of brushing and makeup messy. She is here in Rome, standing with her hand in a grimy statue offering him the truth. "Maybe," he says. "But the other stuff supersedes it."

Blair ducks her head but not quickly enough to hide her smile, and the innocent sweetness of it warms him immensely.

Softly, Dan says, "Why did you come here?"

"For you," Blair says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe it is. Her fingers inch along the stone until they slip between his. "I came here for you."

It's what he wouldn't admit to wanting to hear and he's surprised how hard it hits him; it feels like he's been waiting for those words a lot longer than a few weeks. Before he knows it Blair's arms are around him, her hand cupping the back of his head, drawing him into a hug.

"All summer," she says, voice sounding like she's a little emotional herself, "I kept thinking, like – 'oh, Dan would like that movie,' or 'what would Dan think of that book?' And then it was worse, all the time, if there was something funny, I thought of you; if some European hipster was wearing plaid, or I passed a bookstore – sometimes one of those terrible grungey songs you put on my phone would just come on and –"

Dan pulls back enough to kiss her to shut her up, because he's not sure how much more of that he can take. "You've picked up a rambling thing from somewhere," he murmurs when they part.

"I know, it's a terribly unattractive quality," Blair says.

"Looks alright on you." He gets another eye-roll for that and Blair shoves him a little, curling her hand in his shirt so he doesn't get too far. Dan cups her cheek, wanting to just – breathe her in, or something, and he kisses her instead, again and again. "This doesn't feel totally real."

"You want proof?" Blair says teasingly and pinches him very hard, unnecessarily hard, honestly, and he can't help laughing.

A lot of fanmixes lately for some reason! This is another one that I had done for ages but was too lazy to do the art for. It's second to last in my series of GG character mixes, which can be found in my masterlist; the last one is Georgina, and then I'm done!

Nate music was kind of funny, idk, I thought it would be a lot harder because I don't know if Nate's taste in music jives with my own, if that makes sense? But I think I made it work okay. Also I randomly miss NV a lot? They were so cute! Dimples! Also it's sad I couldn't utilize the lyric of "10,000 Lovers" that namedrops Lola, which was just too perfect. Alas not everything can be squeezed onto every graphic.

I also had this mix done for a while but was lazy about the art. I am officially done with GG character mixes, now that the show has been over for like forever. OH WELL. Enjoy!

The multi-chapter I am asked to update most often is 'be my heater, be my lover' and, for actual years, I have been totally promising to update it and never actually doing so. The last update was in January 2012. JANUARY TWENTY TWELVE. It is against my completionist nature to not finish things, but I've been struggling to find inspiration to continue it since then and, seeing as I promised so many people I would continue working on it, feeling such total guilt about it. But this is the problem with multi-chapters; it can be hard to keep a consistency throughout, especially if your updating is as sporadic as mine is. And a lot of my issues as a writer with this fic in general is that I'm basically a completely different person now then when I started it – that fic might as well have been written by a different human tbh. There are a lot of things I regret doing in the construction and plot of it that have impeded my ability to get back into it. If I were to do it again it would be very different.

But since so many people were kind enough to read it and enjoy it and leave me feedback, I would feel too awful if I just let it drop without a word, which is why I'm making this post letting everyone know that I will not be finishing it. Under the cut, for those interested, I'm going to talk a little bit about what I would have done with it had it been continued.

Part Five was going to be from Nate's PoV. Continuing with the themes of angst and porn, it would have featured Nate emotionally distancing himself from Dan post-threesome and sleeping with both a townie (female) and Serena while keeping it from Dan. Eventually that was going to lead to him and Dan having a big fight and then some angry sex and then the summer would end with everyone being even more fractured then they were before.

Part Six, the final part, would be from Dan's PoV and probably would've been a few weeks later, once everyone was back at school. All three of our kids would have missed each other terribly, Dan in particular feeling quite guilty about how he treated Serena and eventually going to great lengths make up with her and with Nate, at which point one of the three of them would raise the idea of three-way dating. And then it would end pretty happily, because I am really very bad at unhappy endings.

I hope that helps a little? I am genuinely sorry about not continuing it, but it's just not in me anymore.

I will still be working on 'without a key' and 'the age of dissonance.'

What is this?
Since the weather is still kind of terrible and I am terribly bored, I thought a spring-time ficathon might be fun! The title was chosen totally at random, but do feel free to prompt lots of drunk sex if that's your bag. This is open to all fandoms, characters, pairings, genres – whatever your heart desires. AUs, crossovers, RPF, weird stuff, not weird stuff, anything!

How do I prompt/fill?
Only one prompt per comment please. But as many comments as you want! When you fill something, post the fic to that comment and the fills thread. If your fic is too long, then post the link. Prompts can be anything: a word, a lyric, a picture, a poem, a half-baked plot idea.

What else?
Pls do pimp to your f-list! Any questions, ask below. :)

BANNERS
Feeeel freeee to make any!

FILLS
daria, daria/trent – you took a part of me no one else will ever see

with the cruelest of intentions
Blair, Serena, Dan, Jenny. Some others, multi-pairing.
Based on Cruel Intentions. R. 20k words.
W: nothing you don't see in the movie, but just in case: underage sex, consent shadiness, general terrible humans.


Summary: Incestuous stepsisters Blair and Serena set out to seduce poor, innocent Dan Humphrey.


Note: For sing_song_sung! This was intended to be your Christmas fic, but it ended up being your birthday fic, so not too bad? I hope you enjoy it!





Serena knew she was a goner when Blair touched her thigh under the table at their parents' wedding, hand high enough to sneak under the short skirt of Serena's modified bridesmaid dress but low enough to do little more than tease. There'd been girlish, abortive experimentation when they were younger but nothing like that, nothing so brazen. Blair's hand swept up and her knuckles brushed Serena's cunt, not yet wet but wanting to be.

"You're such a slut," Blair laughed, pulling her hand away. "I knew you weren't wearing panties."

Serena cleared her throat and smiled, trying to reveal nothing like Blair revealed nothing but probably failing. "We both have reputations to uphold," she joked.

But it wasn't really a joke, of course. Reputation never was.







Blair watches Jenny Humphrey while she talks with the girls, taking stock of the things that make her laugh or sigh, the things that make her uncomfortable. Blair watches with an impenetrable smile on her own face, the true workings of her mind concealed behind it.

"It was really nice of you to have me over," Jenny says earnestly. Because she's new, she gives too much: "I was really afraid of not having any friends at school."

"Oh Jenny," Blair says. "Of course. We wouldn't want you to feel left out at all."

Around her, the other girls smile and nod, Kati and Iz and Penelope and Hazel lying through their smiling teeth just as much as Blair is.

"It's important to fall in with the right sort of people," Blair adds while the girls continue to nod around her. "The people you surround yourself with really do reflect on you."

Jenny nods too, emphatically, like she's taking each and every word to heart.

"Especially coming from public school." The girls exchange sympathetic glances and Blair leans in to lay a hand gently on Jenny's folded ones. "I'm not trying to be mean, Little J, honestly; it's just that you have so much more to work against than everyone else." She pats Jenny's hands again before sitting back. "But I can tell you're very dedicated to trying."

"I am," Jenny says immediately, like she's on a job interview. "I am super dedicated."

Blair smiles. "Then I'm sure you'll do just wonderfully, especially with us to help you."

Jenny smiles too.

"You better listen," comes another voice from somewhere near the doorway, "Or else you might end up like me."

Blair rolls her eyes without even looking around, through everyone else does, their backs suddenly straight and eyes eager. Serena has a way of exciting attention even with a relatively low-key entrance like that one.

"Jenny," Blair says. "I don't think you've met my sister."

"Step-sister," Serena corrects. She ambles over to one of the chaises, sunglasses hiding sleepless eyes and an iced coffee in one hand. Her free hand reaches for Jenny's in a brisk handshake.

"No, not yet," Jenny says. She's practically vibrating with the thrill of meeting the Serena van der Woodsen, most scandalous of socialites. Blair could honestly puke.

"Girls, would you mind if we cut our little luncheon short?" Blair says. "Serena and I have some family matters to discuss."

The girls dissipate ever so obligingly but Jenny lingers, taking too long to say her goodbyes. Blair fixes her smile again and promises to call Jenny the next day, which seems to cheer her up.

"Nice flowers," Jenny remarks as she leaves, fingering the blossoms on the table in the foyer.

"They're hydrangeas," Blair says, ushering her towards the elevator. "Goodbye, Little J." As soon as Jenny is in the elevator and the doors have closed behind her, Blair turns with a completely changed expression, utterly contemptuous. "God, what a vapid little twit."

Serena laughs as she stretches out on the chaise, kicking her heels over the side. "Why are you bothering, then?" she asks. "How much money does her family have?"

"None, to add insult to injury."

Serena's interest is piqued. "So what's the deal?"

Blair's silver cigarette case clicks open and she brings a bright red cigarette to her lips, gold filter against wet ruby gloss. She likes to coordinate them with her outfits, and today it is the only spot of real color against the navy-and-white uniform she still wears. It might come off ridiculous and affected on anyone else but Blair somehow carries it with class. "The deal, dear sister, is that sweet little Jenny Humphrey has attracted some attention that I'd rather she not have."

"For you, that's probably any attention at all," Serena jokes.

Blair gives her a look that is entirely unimpressed. "Do you remember Marcus Beaton?"

"That pathological liar who dumped you at the White Party?"

Blair's mouth tightens. "Yes. Well, as you can imagine, after all the effort I went through for him, I was quite distraught to find out he was after somebody new."

Serena pushes her sunglasses up to stare at Blair and then starts laughing. "You don't mean…?"

Blair wrinkles her nose. "Yes, that's right. As you may or may not remember, he's rather…obsessed with purity." That had been the final nail in the coffin for Blair and Marcus, so to speak; after weeks of dodging her advances, he'd given in and then summarily dumped her for being, in his words, "a tart." Apparently girls who enjoyed sex were not the type he'd bring home to his mother. "And Jenny is certainly pure."

"So what is it then?" Serena asks. "Friends close and enemies closer?"

"Something like that." She leans past Serena to drop ash into the ashtray, bringing them into very close proximity. Blair's voice lowers. "But I thought maybe you could help me. When I'm done with Jenny, I want her to be the premier tramp of the New York area. I want Marcus' little princess to be damaged goods."

Serena's gaze falls to Blair's mouth briefly. "What would that have to do with me?"

"Introduce her to your world of sex, drugs, and…what else do you do?"

Serena rolls her eyes, pushing Blair away and taking a sip of coffee. "Boring," she says. "She's such a try-hard, she'll be diving in before she even thinks any of it through. Do it yourself. Or better yet, just screw over Marcus; Jenny seemed nice."

"An indirect hit is always the most fatal. And you know I don't like things to be traced back to me," Blair says. "Everybody loves me and I intend to keep it that way."

"Any of the girls'll do it for you," Serena says, waving the whole thing off. "I have something else going on, anyway."

Blair sits back, pouting a little in an effort to guilt Serena, who has reached down to rifle through her purse until she pulls out a rolled-up copy of The New Yorker. "Page sixteen, please," Serena says, thrusting it out.

Blair accepts the magazine with a sigh, turning to the appropriate page. A quarter of it is dominated by a black and white photograph of a boy – dark hair, dark eyes, pursing lips. Clearly going for a moody, artistic thing. "'A Conversation with Rising Young Writer Dan Humphrey,'" Blair reads. "What is this?"

Serena leans in to point at a question towards the end of the page. "There."

The interviewer is asking something about a short story Dan Humphrey wrote, which leads into a question about sex. Blair arches an eyebrow. "'I'm choosing to wait,'" she reads. "'Sex is meaningful, like art, and you don't rush art.'" She drops the magazine and looks at Serena. "Are you fucking kidding me."

"Look at the picture, isn't he hot?" Serena says, scooping the magazine back up. "He's starting at our school soon."

"What he looks like is hardly the point," Blair says. "He sounds like a puritan and a virgin, which means he'll probably give it up like blinking and it'll take three seconds."

Serena laughs at that. "You were a puritan and a virgin too once upon a time," she teases. "He's sexy. And he's new. All of these other boys – they've known me forever." She looks down at the picture again with fondness, exasperating Blair. Everything's going to be ruined, and all because Serena has some stupid crush.

"He says he has a girlfriend," she remarks.

"Half the fun," Serena says.

Blair puts her cigarette out and leans back thoughtfully, fingers quickly loosening the bow at her throat and the first few buttons of her shirt. She feels Serena's gaze leave the pages and settle on her. "Jenny's last name is Humphrey; they must be siblings. Why not make a packaged deal of it?" Blair suggests. "Both Humphreys. Play them against each other. That'll be fun. Remember when you went out with those twins?"

"Not interested," Serena says.

"Are you really so set on him?" Blair says. "You don't seem like his type. I'd hate to see you get rejected."

Serena gives her a look. "You said he'd give it up like blinking."

"I was being facetious for effect," Blair says, well aware that Serena probably doesn't even know that word. "An intellectual hipster like this boy? They don't exactly go for the flighty socialite type. He'll want someone educated, knowledgeable, sophisticated; an equal, someone to challenge him. I mean, did you even read this?" She snatches the article back. "Look at all the namedropping. This boy wears his intellect like a shield. You'd never penetrate it."

Serena's eyes narrow. "You always underestimate me."

Blair smiles. "Hardly, sister dear. I'm just being realistic. He's a snob; that's his fault, not yours." She shrugs a little, reaching out to pat Serena's leg before she stands. "You don't stand a chance."

Serena is fully frowning now. "You wanna bet?"

Blair's smile widens playfully. "That could be fun," she allows, stalking towards the stairs. She hears Serena rise and follow her. "I do love a bet."

Serena bounds up the stairs ahead of her, turning to face Blair once she reaches the top. "Terms?"

"Hm…" Blair brushes past her and into her room, fingers already working at the rest of the buttons of her blouse. "If I win…" She turns suddenly to grin at Serena, who lingers in the doorway. "If I win, which I will, then you have to be clean, sober, and celibate." She pauses to relish that moment. "For the rest of the school year."

Serena makes a distasteful face as she steps into the room. She stretches out across the bed on her stomach, neckline of her dress pulling dangerously low. "And if I win?"

Blair gets on the bed beside Serena, lying on her back. She trails a light touch over her collarbone, down the center of her chest, over her stomach. "I'll give you something you've been obsessing about ever since our parents got married."

Serena raises her eyebrows even as her eyes follow the path of Blair's fingers. "I thought you didn't fuck girls."

Blair bites her lower lip, pushing the waist of her skirt a little lower as she turns toward Serena. "I might be convinced." Then she rises abruptly, hopping off the bed. "Providing, of course, that you can get the little hipster into bed."

"Don't worry," Serena says, watching as Blair continues to change, shrugging out of her shirt and into a silky, concealing robe almost immediately after. "It'll be easy as pie."







Serena tracks Dan Humphrey down to a poetry reading in a used bookstore in Brooklyn. She hits a couple of bars first so she'll be able to stand it, but even buzzed it's rough going; she's never been so bored in her life, not even during junior year American History. She fools around with a guy in the bathroom at one point just to pass the time but it's not even satisfying.

She takes her seat again just as Dan is getting up to the microphone, looking the part in a button down and open vest. He's obviously uncomfortable, but charmingly so – he's all wry smiles, downcast eyes. Serena likes his hands holding his small notebook. Nice hands, poetic hands, ink-stained hands. She doesn't pay attention to anything he's saying, too busy taking him in. She never had much patience for poetry anyway.

Afterwards as everyone is milling around, Serena sidles up next to him. "I saw you in The New Yorker," she says. "Your interview."

He blinks, seeming surprised that she's talking to him. He even looks side to side like it's somebody else she's after. "Uh, thanks?"

"I didn't say I liked it," Serena points out. She leans back against the table in front of him, shaking her hair back off her shoulders. "I mean, you're obviously talented, your short story was great, but the interview?" She shakes her head. "Awful."

"Awful?" he repeats blankly. "Uh, that's…that's one I haven't heard. Awful how?"

"All that stuff about sex," Serena says. "I mean, who are you to criticize something you've never experienced?"

Dan is quick to defend himself. "I'm not criticizing anything – I just think that it's a big deal and everyone pretends like it isn't. People should treat sex with the magnitude it deserves. You shouldn't experience the act of love until you're in love and kids our age aren't mature enough to feel those kinds of emotions." The abrupt flow of words ended, he looks awkward once again. Serena wonders if she could put an end to all this right now by just dragging him into the bathroom.

She laughs. "So God forbid I enjoy sex on its own merits then."

"I'm not trying to pass judgment," he says. "It's just my opinion. I'm not interested in your kind of lifestyle."

Serena looks at him for a beat, honestly a little offended, and says, "My kind of lifestyle?"

"You know," he says, "Blowing money on bullshit, drugs, partying, not cultivating any real connections or talents. It just seems really empty to me. I'm not interested. But if it's your thing, whatever, have at it."

Her brow furrows. "Wait, you know who I am?"

"Serena van der Woodsen," he says with a slight nod. The look on her face must be amusing, because he laughs a little. "Sorry, was it a secret? You're kind of all over the internet."

"I didn't think you read gossip sites," she says.

"I don't," he agrees. "Someone showed it to me. I figured I should read up about my future classmates." He touches her arm briefly in goodbye. "I gotta go. I'll see you in September, I guess."

"See you," Serena echoes, though she knows they'll be seeing each other again long before that. She just can't believe her whole approach has already gone up in smoke.

She's going to find out who showed him Gossip Girl and then she's going to sic Blair on them.







Blair arrives at the designated spot in the park roughly ten minutes early, Dorota struggling behind her with a picnic basket. Blair is usually early to things, either to scope out the situation or to happen upon someone doing something they shouldn't. Today is the latter.

Jenny is already there, her blonde hair falling out of its messy ponytail and into her face as she laughs, dodging a soccer ball kicked to her by none other than Nate Archibald. That gives Blair pause, her throat doing a funny, strangling thing like someone's got a hand on her neck. But then she smiles and moves forward, calling out, "Little J, did you forget about me?"

Jenny turns with comical abruptness, losing her footing and bashing into Nate, who catches her with an easy smile. "Jenny wants to try out for the girls' team," he informs Blair. "I'm helping her out."

"That's so nice of you," Blair says sweetly. She snaps for Dorota to set down the blanket and basket. "Mentoring the underclassman will look so good on your résumé – and you're so suited to it. Just like a big brother."

Both Jenny and Nate frown a little at that, faces mirroring discontentment.

"But unfortunately, Nate, I'm going to have to dismiss you," Blair says, still smiling. "Little J and I have a date."

Jenny watches Nate go with clear, distinct longing before she flops onto the blanket with a sigh, her fingers twisting in her lap. "I saw him when I was at school for orientation," Jenny says. Something about the wistful way she says it, I saw him, reminds Blair of herself.

Blair starts pulling food out of the basket, food she has no interest in or plans to eat. But still, for some reason, she snatches one of the wrapped-up lemon bars and takes a big bite. "Nate and I used to go out, did you know?"

Jenny's eyes go very wide, very fearful. "Um," she says.

"You probably didn't hear about it because it was so long ago," Blair says. "Before Gossip Girl, even. We were so young." Her smile widens and she laughs. "You don't have to look so nervous, Little J; Nate and I are just friends now. We were totally unsuited to each other."

"Oh," Jenny says with a nod, but she hardly seems to relax. Blair's eyes focus on her unwaveringly.

"You're going to be so popular at Constance, I can tell," she says. "I heard Marcus Beaton has been asking about you too."

"Oh," again, but this time with a laugh, Jenny dropping her gaze. "We went out once. It was kind of weird. He kept talking about this bulimic headcase he dumped at some party."

Blair's kind, open expression does not falter and she picks up a large chocolate chip cookie, breaking off a piece to pop in her mouth. "Bulimic headcase," she repeats. "Really."

"Yeah, he said she was crazy," Jenny says with another laugh. "Anyway. He invited me to a party at his Hamptons house for Labor Day weekend." Then she hesitates.

Blair seizes on that pause. "But?"

"I guess I'm nervous?" Jenny fidgets a little. "I mean, he's older…so sophisticated. I heard his mom is, like, a duchess or something."

"Or something," Blair mutters.

"And I've never had a boyfriend," Jenny continues awkwardly. "Or…anything."

Blair watches her, curiosity poorly disguised. "Jenny," she says, "Have you ever even kissed anyone?"

Jenny's cheeks go delicately pink and Blair is slightly envious, because she's never managed blushing on command. "No."

"Haven't you ever practiced with one of your girlfriends?"

"I never really had any girlfriends," Jenny says. "Also, ew."

Blair laughs softly. "How else do you think girls learn?" She sits up a little and takes off her sunglasses. "Alright, come here. I'll help you out."

Jenny seems a little reluctant as she shuffles forward on her knees, brushing strands of hair out of her face as she does so.

"Don't be scared," Blair teases. "I don't bite."

She tips Jenny's face up with a finger, holding back a scoff when Jenny's eyes fall shut with obedient immediacy. Blair keeps her own open, bored, as she presses her mouth to little Jenny Humphrey's. It's just too easy, and Blair abhors easy, as much as she'd been annoyed with Serena for feeling the same way. Jenny is too quick to please, too quick to give herself up; she pushes back into the kiss, a little noise catching in her throat.

Blair will have to barter with Gossip Girl to keep any pictures of this off the site; the incriminating sexts Penelope sent to her dad's junior partner should do nicely as a bargaining chip.

Blair pulls back impatiently. "See? That wasn't so bad."

Jenny's eyes open slowly, dreamily. "That was cool."

Blair is poking through the remaining desserts for something that isn't messy. Light and casual, she says, "You should try it on Nate sometime."

At that, Jenny's eyes snap wide. "What?"

Blair glances at her, laughing. "What do you mean what? He's so obviously into you. Trust me, I would know."

Jenny bites her lip, hesitation clear as she offers, "He did send me…kind of a love letter."

"A love letter?" Blair repeats, spine turning to steel. "That's so romantic. Did you write back?"

Jenny shakes her head.

"Well, don't you like him too?"

"I – I don't know," Jenny says.

"Little J. I thought we were friends."

Jenny's fingers start twisting in her lap again, a nervous habit. "Okay," she says, soft. "Okay. I do – I – I really do like him, I like him a lot, I can't stop thinking about him."

Perhaps too intent, Blair says, "So what's the problem?"

"I don't know," Jenny says with sudden teenage agony, arms going around herself. "My parents said I'm not allowed to date yet but I don't see why not, just because my brother was too much of a hermit to date when he was my age – and Dan, that's my brother, he thinks it's weird that all these older guys are interested in me, but Marcus is only three years older and Nate is only two, so I don't think it's that bad… And it's like, at my old school no boys were ever interested in me and I haven't even started Constance yet and now there are two."

Blair reaches out to rub Jenny's arm in an approximation of comfort. "Don't worry, alright? I told you I'd be here to help you with all of this. Bring me Nate's letters and I'll help you write the absolute perfect response ¬– he'll be eating out of the palm of your hand. Just don't tell your family and there'll be no problem." She smiles kindly. "Maybe we can even arrange a little get-together for you two at my place."

Jenny looks at her with complete, implicit trust. "Really? You'd do that for me?"

"I said we were friends, didn't I?"

"Best friends," Jenny says, and then she throws her arms around Blair in an impulsive hug. Blair frowns, patting Jenny's back lightly.

Blair wouldn't be Blair if she couldn't spin a situation her way.







Serena doesn't have any interest in being a stalker, but Dan Humphrey isn't giving her a lot of options. One tip to Gossip Girl to be on the lookout for him seems to do the trick. He's particularly insular, not socializing much outside of those eternal poetry readings and the occasional outing with his sister; Serena thinks he doesn't have any friends, and she wonders about that alleged girlfriend. She does find out that he was on the swim team at his old school, and he likes to go swimming late at night on weekends. She's giving up some prime parties, but Serena puts a bikini on under her mini-dress and hauls ass to Brooklyn once more.

The skeezy-looking guy at the front desk of the public pool informs her that they're closing in an hour, but Serena's done better work in less time. Some key flirtation gets him to promise that he won't let anyone else in. He informs her that there's only one guy here this late, anyway.

Serena steps into the big shadowy room, water reflecting on the walls and everything reeking of chlorine. Dan looks good in the water, a pale streak with good form slicing through dull blue water. Serena catcalls him, the sound echoing and echoing.

Dan pokes his head out, seeming startled until his gaze focuses on her. Then a sardonic sort of look settles over his expression and he swims slowly back towards her.

"Did the great Serena van der Woodsen actually step foot in a public pool in Brooklyn?" he says. "Or did your cab just break down out front by accident?"

"Ha ha," Serena says. If he's as well-versed in her bad behavior as he claimed, then he should know she's been in worse places than this. "I don't know about you, but I'm here to take a dip." She shimmies her dress up and over her head and then bends down gracefully to unlatch the clasps on either side of her strappy heels. "It's so hot out, isn't it?"

"Uh-huh…" Dan says, tone expressing extreme doubt but eyes undeniably trailing over her body. "Is this your move then?"

"My move?" Serena steps to the edge of the pool and slowly eases herself in.

"Though I guess just taking off your clothes isn't really a move, per se," he muses, drifting backwards. "Probably works as well as anything else."

"You know the pool at Constance is much nicer than this," she says. "I could show it to you sometime." Temptingly, "I have a key and everything, so we could have the whole place to ourselves."

"We have this whole place to ourselves," Dan points out. "How did you end up with a key?"

Serena smiles at him, playful and secretive. "Guess."

"Slept with the captain of the swim team?" he says pointedly. "I forgot ¬– that was on Gossip Girl too."

A little taken aback, Serena says, "You know, it isn't fair for you to not tell me who showed you that."

"I think it's pretty fair," Dan says, still drifting away from her. "The site's not a secret or anything."

Serena purses her lips a little. It was probably some jealous girl, maybe even one of Blair's friends; they sucked up to her face, but they were all backstabbers at heart. "Still. I'd like to know."

"Then I'm sorry to say you're going to be disappointed," he says.

Serena treads water, her long hair trailing on its surface. She hopes it doesn't turn her ends green or anything. "Why don't you like me?"

"I don't know you," Dan says.

"You sure act like you do," Serena points out. "Bringing up rumors and gossip – judging me on things I did in the past –"

He's looking at her with evident amusement. "It's amazing that someone as charming as you could be so manipulative," he says. "Look, I can tell you're coming on really strong for some reason, even if I don't get why. And I have a girlfriend. So. Pretty as you are…no thanks."

Momentarily put off by that – Blair is the manipulative one, not her– Serena nevertheless seizes an opportunity where she sees it. "Is it that crazy to think someone like me might be interested in someone like you?"

"Yes," he says bluntly. "You don't know anything about me."

Serena glides closer to him, dipping in and out of the water once so her hair streams out long and wet behind her. "I know your morals and values are important to you," she says. "And I envy that. I really do. It's a rare thing with the people I know. You're smart and cute and determined – basically everything a girl could ask for in a boyfriend."

"Determined?" he repeats, laughing. "Okay, that's one I've never heard."

Being laughed at bothers Serena; she's not used to uneven footing in situations like these. "I'll admit I'm not proud of everything I've done," she says, gaining speed with irritation, "but at least I own it. You're too busy being judgmental to even try and see me for who I am."

Actually seeming slightly chastised, Dan drops his gaze for a moment before looking back to her. "I'm really not trying to do that," he says, more gently. "We can be friends. That would be great. But I have a girlfriend."

Serena is close to him now, close enough that she could reach out and touch if she wanted. But she doesn't – not yet. "Are you sure?" she murmurs. "I've never seen her."

Dan's mouth opens and closes and then he says, "You're just not my type."

That had been almost exactly what Blair said, and it sets Serena's teeth on edge. We'll just see about that, she thinks. Serena is everybody's type. "Friends it is," she says easily. "I gotta go, but I'll see you soon, okay?"

He nods, appearing relieved. Serena swims back to the other side and hoists herself out, squeezing the water from her hair. She uses the towel – his towel – to pat her skin and ruffle her hair, and then she unties her bikini, letting both pieces hit the damp tile. She hears a rough cough behind her and smiles, glancing over her shoulder. "I just hate wet clothes, you know?"

She wiggles back into her dress and saunters out, leaving the bathing suit behind. It wasn't a total loss, she decides, but there's an uncertainty in the pit of her stomach that she's never felt before.

She doesn't know what to do with someone who doesn't want her.







It's early morning when Serena crawls into Blair's bed still in her party dress, hair coarse and messy from a combination of chlorine and sweat. "B," she says, drawing out the single syllable. She lifts Blair's face mask and lets it snap back against her skin. Blair bats her away. "B, I think Dan Humphrey's gay."

"If he is, he's not going to realize it until his sophomore year of college," Blair mumbles sleepily. "You still have time."

Serena gives an exasperated laugh. "That's not helpful."

"I wasn't trying to be helpful."

Serena cuddles closer, pouting a little, her hand slipping under Blair's pajama top to coast over her sleep-warm skin.

"Uh-uh," Blair laughs, just as Serena's fingertips brush the underside of her breast. She sits up, probably more awake than she'd been letting on, and takes her mask off. "You don’t get to admit defeat and still collect a prize."

"I'm not admitting defeat," Serena says. "I'm admitting…obstacles. He's so caught up in all this Gossip Girl stuff; totally ruined my element of surprise thing."

Blair slips out of bed and flounces over to her vanity to sit. She picks up her hairbrush and then glances back over her shoulder at Serena, looking too bright and too pretty for someone who'd just woken up. "I have a secret for you," she says. "What'll you give me for it?"

"That Marc Jacobs I just got," Serena says without missing a beat.

"I'd have to have it taken in so much I could probably make another dress with the extra fabric," Blair says, turning back to the mirror. "Next."

Serena rolls her eyes. "That satchel your mom got me from Bendel's?"

"There you go," Blair says, pleased. "Alright, I'll tell you, even though I crossed my heart, hoped to die that I wouldn't say a word." It's with positive glee that she slides another look Serena's way. "You've been wondering who showed him the website."

Serena sits up. "Who was it?"

Blair smiles. "None other than little Jenny Humphrey herself." A dismissive wave of the hand. "Not that she knew what she was doing. She's addicted to the site, couldn't help showing him all the most scandalous posts."

Serena purses her lips, feeling a little less vindictive but just as annoyed. "Great," she says. "Just great."

"Don't sound so put out," Blair says, something of a purr in her voice. She rises, making her way back to Serena. "If you think about it, it's quite perfect."

"How's that?" Serena asks, eyebrow raising.

"Well…you scratch my back…" Blair says, trailing off. "That dress makes you look like a streetwalker. No wonder you're scaring him off."

"You're such a bitch."

Blair traces the line of Serena's throat before her hand settles at its base, thumb pressing gently against the hollow. "Lucky you love me anyway."

Pushing back against Blair's hand slightly, Serena murmurs, "Yeah, lucky."

"I like to work alone, but we were always better as a team," Blair says. "I've been trying to get Jenny and Nate to act on their desires but they're taking too long. I need somebody to take care of Jenny before Labor Day."

"So I fuck with the freshman for you; what do I get out of the deal?"

Blair's hand moves over Serena's collarbone, the slope of her chest. Jenny's a sophomore, but Blair doesn't bother to correct her. "Dan Humphrey has expressed a desire in both the honor society and student government; as reigning class president, it's my job to meet with him." Her fingertips catch on the fabric of Serena's dress before closing on the tab of her zipper. "I can explain that he's got the wrong idea about my lovely sister, even though it isn't the wrong idea at all."

Serena wets her lips as she feels her dress begin to split at the side. "And then?"

"And then you get what you really want," Blair murmurs, leaning in, "Me. Do you accept?"

Their lips have barely brushed when Serena breathes, "Yes," and Blair pulls back, all business.

"Good," she says, smiling. "I'm going down for breakfast. You really ought to take a shower; you reek."

She wiggles her fingers at Serena in a wave before she exits the room and Serena just sits there in a disbelieving lump, though she can't say she's entirely surprised. Blair practically invented the word tease, after all.

Instead of getting up Serena gets off, nestled amongst the bedding with her hand between her legs.







Blair watches Dan from across the courtyard like prey, cataloguing anything that might prove useful later. He's talking animatedly to some teachers, utterly focused and too eager even from a distance. His enthusiasm is so genuine as to be off-putting, a puppy tripping over its own legs. Loser.

Still, she can't remember ever seeing the faculty here put so much effort into courting a scholarship student before. Usually the honors luncheons are only for currently matriculating students but she knows for a fact he was summoned by personal invitation. That means he must be smart. Very smart. Almost as smart as Blair, perhaps.

He's better looking in person, she notices.

Headmistress Queller introduces them before departing to cozy up to a benefactor. She'd attempted to facilitate some small talk, giving quite the list of Blair's accomplishments and accolades. Blair couldn't help preening a little under the attention; she always likes hearing things like that announced aloud. Dan's expression is unreadable, however, neither intimidated nor impressed but simply neutral.

"They keep you busy at this place, huh," he says, lifting his glass of punch for a sip. Blair bets he didn't even spike it. Her own drink is mostly champagne with a splash of fruit juice.

"It's a highly competitive environment," Blair says, then recites the words on every Constance-St. Jude's pamphlet, "Encouraging healthy competition is the first step towards success."

Dan gives her an odd, curious look. "Maybe that's why you guys have to let off so much steam."

"Don’t be so uptight, Dan Humphrey," she says. Her smile is pleasant, nonthreatening. "We like to have our fun, it's true, but we work harder than we play. I'm afraid you have the wrong idea about us Constance girls."

"Oh?"

She leans in a touch conspiratorially. "She'd kill me, but I can't help saying it – my sister, Serena, she has this massive thing for you. Ever since she saw your picture in that magazine she's been – oh, all a-flutter." Blair punctuates the sentence with a flutter of her own lashes, hand posed elegantly over her heart. "It's just driving her crazy that you won't give her a second look. Most guys aren't like that with Serena."

"I know," Dan says. "I read all about it."

"How would you like it if people made snap judgments on you based on what they'd read, hm?" Blair says. "I know I have a bias, but Serena's the best person I know. Her rep is mostly bullshit. I mean, you know how jealous people can be."

He shrugs, and then remarks, "I don't remember seeing much about you."

It stings a little in the way it always does when she's actively reminded of the amount of attention Serena receives just for tossing her hair, but Blair has spent the last three years crafting a specific persona that she'd take any day over Serena's transient, candle-flame success. Or so she tells herself. Blair is a girl who believes in long cons.

"I'm not much of a partier, true," she says. "As you said, I'm very busy."

His concentration is waning, gaze slipping away. God, this boy would actually rather talk to teachers than her.

"I'm just doing my familial duty," Blair adds. "I'd be remiss if I didn't. I hate to see Serena upset."

With some amusement, Dan's eyes find hers again, his just as dark but a good deal warmer. "She doesn't have a crush on me," he says flatly. "I don't know what rich kid bullshit is going on behind the scenes here, but I do know that the Serena van der Woodsens of the world do not have crushes on nobody writers from Brooklyn who they only met twice."

It's logic that would be difficult to argue with if she were anyone else. "No one can win with you, can they, Humphrey? You're so set in your ways."

"It's not about winning," he says.

Everything's about winning, Blair thinks, but what she says is, "It wouldn't kill you to go on a date with a pretty girl. You should lighten up."

"Back at you, il presidente," he says. He salutes her before moving off, leaving Blair standing there holding her drink, making calculations.

She is just light enough, thank you very much.







Jenny takes in the club with wide eyes, lips closed around the straw of her drink, seeming impossibly innocent beneath the flashing lights. She'd actually asked for a diet Coke, though Serena got her one spiced up with rum.

"This is really nice of you," Jenny says loudly over the music, ever so polite. "Everyone's been so nice to me!"

It'd be enough to break Serena's heart if she wasn't already so far gone herself, feeling hazy and blunted by whatever it was Carter Baizen gave her before she got here. This is Serena's second club of the night and it certainly won't be her last; she knows she should be playing the good girl because of the whole Dan scheme but it's hard to keep away. Too hard. She'd been glad for the excuse to dive back in totally, so she overindulged a little and now the inside of her head is blurry, golden, and she finds it hard to care about Jenny Humphrey's feelings.

"No problem," Serena answers. Her smile is wide and deceptively happy. She knows the lines she's supposed to say without really having to think about them. "You're just such a sweetheart!"

Jenny is pleased, her cheeks pink with the heat and her own excitement, the booze starting to circulate in her body. She looks how Serena probably looked once upon a time: lanky but beautiful, very young and carefree, powerful without realizing how just yet. She just looks like she's having fun. Serena was already a legendary party girl by the time she was Jenny's age.

Two more clubs and Jenny becomes warmly familiar, leaning unsteadily into Serena's side as she laughs. She was coaxed into a few more drinks and her limbs are infused with a buzzing easiness that makes her ungainly on her cheap heels. Serena should probably be unconscious at this point with all the things she's put into her body but, well, she's always had a high tolerance.

"I told my parents I was sleeping over at a friend's house," Jenny says, arm slung around Serena's neck and sweet little heart-shaped face upturned. "I hope you don't mind?"

"Not at all." Serena tucks some of Jenny's hair back behind her ear, touches her pink cheek. "Not at all."

Laughing and shushing each other, they fall out of the elevator into Serena's place, though the only person likely to be home is Blair and she'd never interrupt; the parents are always away on business or pleasure. The dark apartment feels large and echo-y. Serena takes off her heels before going upstairs, leaving them strewn casually at the foot of the steps, and Jenny does the same, though she keeps hers with her, held protectively in the crook of her arm.

"You know," Serena says once the door to her bedroom has closed on them, "Blair told me about your crush on Nate." Her voice is the voice of a thousand girlish sleepovers, conspiratorial and persuasive. "Don't be mad. She just thought maybe I could help."

Jenny is probably too drunk to be really mad, but she is nevertheless put out, her lips pursing and brow furrowing. Then, "Help how?"

"I have lots of experience with boys," Serena says, laughing. She gives Jenny a gentle push and the other girl goes sprawling over the bedspread, also giggling. "That's how."

"Okay," Jenny says. "What should I do?" She stretches a little, wriggles, getting comfortable. The strap of her dress falls off one shoulder.

Serena crawls up beside her. "What does he say in his letters?"

Jenny glances at her before bursting into a fresh fit of giggles. Her hands come up to cover her face. "I don't know," she says in the tone of someone who definitely does. "Um. That he cares about me. And he can't hide the way he feels. He said –" Her hands slide down enough to reveal luminous blue eyes, but her mouth remains muffled. "He said what he feels is too serious to pretend it doesn't exist."

Serena finds herself swallowing surprisingly hard and then she blinks and it's gone. "Can I tell you a secret?" she says softly, moving close. "Something not even Blair knows?"

Jenny's eyes widen and she nods, thrilled.

"Nate and I fooled around a couple of times… Forever ago. He's a really good guy, you know." That's all it was at the end of the day, fooling around a couple of times when they were both too young to know any better. Not that Serena would ever know better. "You like him a lot, huh?"

Jenny nods again.

"Let's write a letter back," Serena suggests.

They tear some notepaper from one of Serena's unused schoolbooks and Jenny flops on her stomach, poised with a bright blue pen in hand.

"You have to decide if you want it to be romantic or sexy," Serena tells her.

"I'm not good at sexy," Jenny says uncertainly.

"Only because you're a virgin." More teasingly, tucked close against Jenny's side, she says, "Tell him he makes you wet."

Jenny drops her forehead onto the paper, embarrassed laughter filling the air once more. "Oh my god, I cannot say that."

"Why, isn't it true?" Serena says, still teasing. Her fingers dance over Jenny's side, tickling her to get more of that laughter, and then unexpectedly they dive under Jenny's skirt, slide between her thighs. "Ha. See, I knew it."

Jenny gives a little surprised gasp, but the giggles are still on her lips.

"He's really hot," Serena says, almost conversational. Her hand slips past lace panties to find waiting heat, Jenny's clit hard and ready against her fingertips. Jenny's breath catches. "Don't you think so? Really great hands. And his shoulders, god."

"Y-yeah," Jenny says, eyes falling half-closed as she shifts against Serena's hand.

The first time with Blair had gone something like this. They'd been drunk, the first time Blair had ever gotten really drunk; it was before they were sisters, during the last of Blair's annual sleepovers, at the exact age when the whole idea was beginning to feel silly and passé. Blair and Serena shared a sleeping bag because they always did before but they were probably too old for it. All the other girls were asleep or pretending to be and Blair was easy and happy like Jenny, bubbly with booze. So Serena snaked her hand between Blair's pressed-together thighs, rubbing inexpertly through her panties until Serena felt Blair clench, heard Blair's breathing stutter. That first time Blair had even returned the favor.

Serena doesn't expect as much from Jenny, though. It's enough to get the other girl out of her off-the-rack dress, polyester panties and plaid-patterned bra, to hold her legs apart and give her the most confusing orgasm of her young life, and possibly the first too. "Don't tell your brother, okay," Serena says before her mouth dips back between Jenny's legs, hand sliding up to cup Jenny's breast. Serena thinks about how sweet it'll be to have Dan in bed, how maybe he'll press a hand over his face and tug at his own hair like Jenny does; maybe after he'll look just as dazed and distantly pleased, but he'll reach for Serena too, he'll want more, want everything.







Blair is enjoying breakfast in bed (parfait, black coffee, whole wheat toast no butter) when the bathroom door crashes open, framing tousle-haired Jenny wrapped up in a comforter with last night's eyeliner smeared beneath her eyes.

Blair lifts her cup. "Ever hear of knocking, Little J?"

Jenny seems not to hear her as she lands on the foot of Blair's bed, jostling her breakfast tray. Blair tries not to show visible annoyance.

"Something happened," Jenny says.

Blair arches an eyebrow, taking her in. "I can tell." But then she shakes her head slightly, reminding herself that Jenny requires a softer approach – it's difficult to be on her game so early in the morning. Blair schools her expression into something much more open and sets her tray aside so she can lean forward, ready to listen. "Tell me what happened, Jenny."

Jenny's brows draw together and she sinks deeper into the comforter, pulling it up around her ears. "It's…" She bites her lower lip. "It's Serena."

"You went out with her last night, right?" Blair asks carefully. "Did something happen then?"

"No, that was okay," Jenny murmurs. "It was after."

Blair waits but when nothing is forthcoming she needles a little. "Well?"

Jenny takes another long moment to chew her lower lip before launching forward and murmuring in Blair's ear. Blair tries not to laugh.

"She went down on you," Blair says. Jenny nods tremulously and then collapses in a blanketed heap, completely submerged. With slight impatience, Blair peels the comforter back until Jenny's troubled face is revealed again. "Well, didn't you like it?"

Going very red, Jenny shrugs. "I'm not…that way."

"Of course you're not." Blair hops up off the bed, reaching for her robe, gauzy and white. "You're practicing." At Jenny's slightly confused look, Blair explains, "Remember when I kissed you at the park? It was practice. This is what friends do, help each other." She fingers the dress Dorota has set out for her today, a royal blue construction of her mother's. "Consider Serena a tutor. A guide. I can help you with everything at school, and Serena can help you with this." Musingly, "As long as you don't enjoy it too much – that makes you a lez."

Jenny appears dubious. "What, like a sex tutor?"

Blair laughs. "Something like that. You want to please Nate when the time is right, don't you? And practice makes perfect." Perhaps putting too fine a point on it, she adds, "You should practice with as many people as possible."

Jenny opens her mouth, shuts it. Then, with the air of someone asking a dumb question, she ventures, "But I only love Nate?"

Blair has to bite her tongue sharply. She turns away, shedding her pajamas and slipping into today's lingerie, careless of Jenny seeing her. "Which is why you want to make him happy." She snatches the dress from its hanger and steps into it. "Zip me."

Jenny rises but doesn't reach for the zipper immediately. Over Blair's shoulder, their eyes meet in the mirror. "Isn't this…kind of slutty?"

"Everybody does it, Little J." Blair suppresses a sigh and turns to take Jenny's hands in hers. "Just remember that whatever you do, you're doing it for Nate."

Jenny looks at Blair with such impossible trust. "What if people…say things about me?"

"You're one of us now, Jenny. If you want to be part of this world, people are going to talk whether you actually do anything or not. You're going to need to decide if all this is worth it." A half-smile curls Blair's mouth. "And honestly, you might as well have some fun along the way."

Jenny seems to be taking this in with great concentration, but all she says is, "You look beautiful."

Blair rolls her eyes, releasing Jenny's hands so she can shrug out of the dress, letting it fall to the floor. "It's average. The color is last season and Stella McCartney has a much better version at Bergdorf's."

"Right…" Jenny says. "Bergdorf's." She dips to pick the dress up, gazing down at the fabric. Blair watches, as always.

"You know," Blair says, "If you like that dress, you can have it." Taken aback, Jenny looks at her. "I'm sure you'll find some way to repay me."

Jenny returns her attention to the dress for a brief minute before meeting Blair's eyes again. "Everybody does it?" she says. At Blair's solemn nod, she asks, "And it'll really help me with Nate?"

"Oh, Little J," Blair says, "Would I lie to you?"



next part

with the cruelest of intentions
Blair, Serena, Dan, Jenny. Some others, multi-pairing.
Based on Cruel Intentions. R. 20k words.
W: nothing you don't see in the movie, but just in case: underage sex, consent shadiness, general terrible humans.


Summary: Incestuous stepsisters Blair and Serena set out to seduce poor, innocent Dan Humphrey.


previous part



Serena looks at Dan curiously as she sucks the gelato from her tiny spoon, not trying for once to be enticing. "Pretty much the last thing I expected was you calling me," she says.

Dan shrugs a little, not making eye contact. "It was brought to my attention that maybe I wasn't being entirely fair."

"How about that," Serena says with a slight smile. She gives him a little nudge with her elbow.

"And Jenny says you've been really cool to her," he says. "I appreciate that, you know. It's never meant much to me, but Jen… She really wants to fit in. She wants to make friends. I was always kind of a loner, but I think she was just lonely."

Last night Serena fingered Jenny in the grimy bathroom of a bar and then fed her so many shots she puked in the back of a cab. Real cool. "She's a great girl," Serena says and then, eager to change the subject, "So your girlfriend doesn't mind you taking me out for the afternoon?"

"I'm not taking you out," Dan says.

"Evasive," Serena accuses with a smile. "Seriously. I don't know what girl wouldn't be jealous of the likes of me." She means it playfully, mostly as a joke, and she tosses her hair and bats her eyelashes for emphasis. Dan laughs.

"Alright, well, if we're being honest," he says, "She and I broke up at the start of the summer."

"Aww," Serena says, feeling triumphant. She'd never bought that whole thing. "I'm sorry."

"You are not sorry at all," he says, but he's smiling.

"Well, no," Serena agrees. "Her loss, my gain. What happened?"

"It was that article," Dan admits. "Apparently she was not so happy about me calling her my girlfriend. She said that she doesn't like labels, I should have known better, and I wasn't respecting her boundaries. So. That put an end to that."

"Wait, she was your friend with benefits and you weren't even getting benefits? That's cold."

"There were some benefits," Dan protests, then, "Why am I even discussing this with you."

Serena grins. "I'd never complain about you calling me your girlfriend," she says, which is an out and out lie, because no one word is as likely to send her running for the hills as that one.

"Too bad we will never ever be testing that theory," he says.

"Never ever," Serena repeats contemplatively. "Those are some very definite words, Mr. Writer."

"That they are," he agrees.

"You so sure about never?"

Dan glances at her, his lips pulling into a little bit of a thoughtful pout before his mouth relaxes. "I don't mind being friends," he says finally. "Which I told you. But c'mon, we both know that whatever thing it is you're trying to start with me, it wouldn't go anywhere."

"It doesn't really have to," Serena says. "We can just have crazy wild sex until we get sick of each other."

He flushes a little, looking away. "I –"

"I know, I know," Serena sighs, disappointed. "You're not that kind of girl."

"Wanting to wait does not make me a girl."

Bluntly, Serena says, "Yes it does. I have never in my life met a guy who'd turn down no-strings hot sex because he wanted feelings. It's usually the other way around."

"I guess I'm a particular guy then," he says.

"Particularly strange," Serena says. She hooks her arm through his, leaning in to steal a scoop of his gelato. Serena wouldn't consider herself especially good at playing people, at least compared to Blair, because she just doesn't pay enough attention to find out what makes them tick. But boys are easy enough and she knows boys, could ace the SAT of boys, and the same games bring them down every time. "Is it because you don't know what to do?"

Dan gives her a mildly harassed look. "I know what to do."

She shrugs a little, leaning more heavily into his side. "I get that it could make you nervous," she says. "Not knowing."

"I know, okay, I know," Dan says. "It's not that much of a mystery."

Serena laughs. "Yeah, but it's one thing to jerk off alone in your room to porn and a totally different thing to actually be with another person."

Clearly uncomfortable but trying to hide it, Dan says wryly, "Yeah, I could've figured that one out."

"Could you?" she teases. "Have you ever even touched a girl?" Her fingers curl around his wrist, touch trailing up his forearm. "Or another boy?"

"I'm not gay," Dan murmurs.

"Could've fooled me," Serena says. "Not that there's anything wrong with it. In fact, it's pretty hot. I've done that, you know. Two guys. You must've read about it." Her fingers run up and down his arm as they walk, and she's speaking directly into his ear. "Done the other kind too. What have you done? Have you touched a girl? Did you go down on your girlfriend ¬– your non-girlfriend?"

"Ye– No. You're asking a lot of questions."

Serena smiles. "They're not exactly hard ones."

"I –" He pulls his arm from her grip suddenly. "I gotta go, my – my train's right up here, I'll – It was, uh, nice, I guess." Dan runs a hand through his hair, looks her over once without seeming to mean to, and then nods briskly before dashing off down the nearest subway steps.

So skittish, she thinks. Not like Jenny.







Blair and Dan run into each other again at a student government meeting. Blair is holding it ahead of time to get the jump on everything; Dan is shadowing because he wants to run for something. He spends the entire time slouched in the far corner of their lounge, silent except when Blair brings up one of her new plans for the year, which is when he'll lazily raise his hand and then poke holes in each and every idea. Blair becomes slowly more infuriated and it must show because all the girls start hiding smirks. She can't wait until Serena finishes this loser.

Afterwards she accosts him. "You know," she says, "I can't quite understand how someone who doesn't even attend a school yet thinks he has some say in how it's run."

"You don't run anything," Dan points out. He swings his bag up onto his shoulder and heads for the door. Rude. "All you do is pick prom colors or whatever."

Blair snatches up her purse and is at his heels. "If you think that's all it is, then why are you even here?"

Dan pauses to let her catch up to him. He gives her a slightly sarcastic smile. "I feel very strongly about gold and cream."

Blair rolls her eyes. As they step out into the sunshine, she fishes her cigarettes out of her bag and makes a point of not offering him any. She chooses a yellow to complement her blue sundress. Proving his rudeness once again, Dan reaches over to take the silver case right out of her hands, laughing. "Are you kidding me," he says. "Do you really color-coordinate your cigarettes?"

Blair grabs the case back angrily, snapping it shut. "There is no detail too small when it comes to the perfect ensemble." She thinks her mother said that in an interview once. Blair always felt that whatever Eleanor's faults, she was usually on point with fashion advice.

It's Dan's turn to roll his eyes, though he appears to be a good deal more amused than Blair is. "I guess you guys have nothing but time on your hands to come up with stuff like that." He holds out a hand. "Match me one."

Blair frowns at him, but nevertheless deftly chooses a green to offset his blue striped shirt. He leans in for a light and for some reason, perhaps just to make him uncomfortable, Blair tilts her face up and presses the tip of her cigarette to his. Their eyes meet and he doesn't even seem the slightest bit ill-at-ease, only confused. He turns a little to exhale a slow stream of smoke but his eyes remain locked with hers. Blair's breath is in her throat though she'd never admit it, something about their proximity, or knowing he has no clue that she's integral in fucking over his family, something.

Then he says, "Do you know what your sister's deal is?" and Blair swallows whatever it was she'd felt, tasting venom.

"Do you suspect everyone of ulterior motives, Humphrey?" she says, moving off down the street.

"Everyone here," he says. He must answer everything honestly, she thinks. How funny. "I don't know, it's not that I think she has ulterior motives; I just don't get it. I doubt I'm…her type or anything."

"Serena doesn't have a type," Blair says, which is fair enough; Serena will fuck anybody. "She likes you. Girl meets boy, girl likes boy. It's that simple."

"Is it?" Dan says with a little bit of a sigh.

Blair glances at him. "Is it not romantic enough for you?" she mocks. "I read your article too, you know. If you're trying to turn your life into some kind of novel, you're going to be sorely disappointed every time. Life's not fiction. It's not a movie."

"Says the girl who matches her cigarettes to her dresses," he says. His smile seems a touch more genuine this time.

"Complements her dresses," she corrects. "I'm only saying. If you're looking for a grand romance then you're not going to find it. It doesn't exist. Believe me."

He gives her a faintly curious look. "You don't believe in love?"

Blair smiles a counterfeit smile. "I learned my lesson," she says simply. It's only at the look on his face that she thinks she gave away too much; his honesty must be catching.

Back when Blair was still something of a little girl, when she still thought Nate hung the moon, she probably wasn't altogether unlike Humphrey when it came to matters like this. She'd wanted to lose her virginity on a bed strewn with rose petals and surrounded by candles on the night of their cotillion. She probably spent more time dreaming of that than anything else, even though she knew it was silly.

In those freshman days before Gossip Girl, they were all so inept at the game, so young. Blair never did learn who Nate gave it up to; he confessed without naming names. She'd been upset enough to get drunk and fuck the first guy she found, attempting to strike back vengefully – though of course Nate hadn't been jealous at all, possibly hadn't even noticed.

It had been in the back of a limo, that first time. She doesn't even remember the guy's name now and it's conceivable that she was too drunk to ask for it. That had been the only time Serena was the one to come to the rescue since, after all, she had experience in quickly regretted drunken hookups. Even at that age, Serena had been where Blair was many, many times before.

Blair had wanted so badly for it to be special, that first time and every time after. She knows now it never is. You enjoyed it if you could and used it if you must. But it's never special.

Perhaps sensing the change in her demeanor, Dan says gently, "You really could stand to lighten up, Waldorf. You're glaringly pessimistic."

"Optimism is just delusion," Blair tells him. "I'm realistic."

"Says every pessimist ever, with no sense of irony," Dan says.

"You're so naïve," she says, adding smugly, "I'm just smarter than you are."

"I can't wait to see your face when grades come in," he says and Blair smiles, telling him once again that he's deluded. But Dan ignores the insult, instead focusing on her brief flash of amusement. "So you can smile for real. I thought it was just a rumor."

Blair gives an annoyed huff. "You're not funny."

"No, I am," he says. "I'm very funny. You can laugh, you know, if you want to; I won't tell anyone."

"Laugh at what? That hideous shirt you're wearing? Certainly not your nonexistent wit."

"Physical comedy is just as valid," Dan allows with a nod, unflappably calm in the face of her zippy irritation.

Blair sort of wants to do something childish like push him, or at the very least storm off, but she finds that quite without intending to she does laugh, the sound bubbling up like champagne. "God," she says. "You're an idiot."

Dan grins at her. "But a funny one, am I right?"

"Comedy is the lowest form of entertainment," Blair informs him. "Which makes perfect sense, considering the source."

He laughs then. "You're so full of shit," he says. "It's astounding."

Blair looks at him, very aware that he has no idea just how true that statement is and suddenly not so pleased by the idea. "Have you ever been in love, Humphrey?"

He seems a little surprised by the question and then tells her, "No."

"Then it doesn't seem to me that you're informed enough to speak on it," she says. "Don't discount Serena just yet."

"Oh," he says, as if he'd forgotten. "Well. I think I'll know when the time comes."

"Or you'll spend your life waiting for something that never arrives." Blair drops her cigarette to the sidewalk and grounds it out with a sunshine yellow heel. "Green suits you," she says, giving him a last look. She does leave him then, unable to stand such insipid conversation for a minute longer.







The last month of the summer is always spent in the Hamptons and this year is no exception. Since before they were sisters, Blair and Serena have been wiling away the sticky end of summer at the house of Serena's well-meaning-if-senile-and-drunk grandmother. Blair is the one to extend a polite invitation to Jenny Humphrey, which the other girl snaps up with ease, slinking back two days later to ask if it wouldn't be okay if her brother came too? He just has all these ridiculous ideas about protecting her, it's so embarrassing, but can he?

Of course, Blair said, her expression neutral. Of course he can.

Serena is the one who drives down with Jenny, in some ridiculous sporty little car her father got her that only seats two. She'd been planning on a romantic little drive down with the brother but when Jenny arrived, touting a Disney princess sleeping bag of all things in addition to a beat-up duffle bag Blair wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole, she explained that he had to come a day late because of some internship interview. Blair was already going a day later than the rest of them, so she offered to take Serena's boytoy off her hands.

"Better me than the jitney," Blair tells her. "The bathroom of that thing probably has your name and number on it."

"Alright," Serena says warily. "But don't be too much of a bitch, okay?"

Blair smiles. "I'll be utterly charming. He'll leave that car thinking you're the one who put the sun in the sky."

But when Blair and Dan arrive together, him stepping out of the town car first and giving Blair his hand, Serena isn't so sure. He has that usual look of wry entertainment but there's something hesitant in his smile, vulnerable almost. Amusement sparks in Blair's eyes, but otherwise her expression is so locked-down that it must mean she's hiding something.

Serena thinks she understands now why Blair suddenly decided to be so helpful about Dan. She should have been more suspicious from the start; the idea that Blair would ever let her win anything is laughable. Of course, Blair never intended for her to win at all. Blair's been undermining her instead.

Serena's eyes narrow as they walk up the path together, Dan saying something that makes Blair smile. Two can play at that.







Serena tousles her hair in the mirror, twisting strands this way and that, fixes it and musses it, digs through her products, curling iron hot and at the ready. Normally she's not one to put all that much effort into it and she doesn't understand why she's being so fussy, why she even cares what Dan thinks or what Dan likes. She's just getting it right when Jenny drops onto the bench beside her, beaming, and slides her fingers into Serena's hair. Her other hand curves over Serena's thigh.

"You look so pretty," Jenny says, and she's leaning in, lips pink and glossy.

Serena, however, is having none of it. She hadn't anticipated Jenny being more than a one-off, but she's having difficulty shaking her. She dodges the kiss, hopping up. "Why don't you go out and have some fun, huh, Jenny? Get some ice cream or something."

"I thought we could have some fun," Jenny says. She pouts a little, her eyes wide and appealing. She learned fast, that one.

Serena's eyes are on herself in the mirror, adjusting the way her top falls and the line of her lipgloss. "Some other time."

Ignoring Jenny's disappointment, Serena heads for the door – but not before casting one final look in the mirror. Her goal is Dan, but she finds Blair first. She's in the study that overlooks the backyard, peering through the curtains.

"I think you turned Jenny into a lesbian by mistake," Serena says by way of a greeting. "Which is probably just as good."

Blair glances at her, twitching the curtains closed. A sly smile graces her lips. "Don't give me all the credit. You're the one who's just too good with her tongue."

"Not like you'd know," Serena points out. Then, "What're you looking at?" She crosses to Blair and pushes the curtains aside widely, sunlight pouring into the room. There on the grounds, back against a tree, is Dan. He's absorbed in a book, absolutely engrossed, his troubled expression mirroring whatever's happening on the page. Serena looks from him to Blair and laughs. "Do you have a thing for him now too?"

Blair makes a gagging sound. "I was just looking out the window, Serena; not everything has a double meaning."

"With you it does," Serena says. "Look. I know you're up to something." Blair's face betrays nothing, not even a hint of interest. "Whatever it is, I want you to know it's not going to work."

Haughtily, Blair says, "I have no idea what you're on about."

"Yes you do," Serena says. She reaches out, fingers slipping between the buttons of Blair's blouse to find the rough lace of her bra and the warmth of her skin. "I want you to know that I'm going to win. And then we're finally going to finish this."

Blair doesn't enjoy being so openly challenged, or at least likes to pretend that she doesn't; her lip curls. "You can try," she says.

Serena smiles. The first few buttons of Blair's top become undone between her fingers and she revels in Blair's slight intake of breath. "I'll take you up on that," Serena says.

In the matter of a few minutes, Serena is outside, dropping down onto the grass beside Dan. He glances up at her with a smile before returning his attention to the book; once he finishes the page, he marks his place and closes it. "Hello there," he says.

"Hi." Serena gestures him closer and he leans in obligingly, though his lips part in mild surprise when she pushes up onto her elbows and kisses his cheeks, one and then the other. The smile on his face curls so sweetly that she kisses that too, her mouth insistent against his. There's only a half-breath's pause before he responds. Her arm curls around his neck, pulling him down, and Dan's hand settles high on her ribs, a finger brushing bare skin where her crop top ends.

Neither of them are looking so neither of them see the curtains shift closed in the window of the study that overlooks the grounds.

And then Dan pulls away and sits up again, turning away.

"What?" Serena says, a little impatient. Things had finally started to go well for once. "What is it?"

Dan's brow is furrowed and he gives her a wry, helpless look. "I don't know," he says. "This whole thing is really confusing."

"It's actually not, though," she says. She wriggles down a little and lets her top ride up tantalizingly, but Dan doesn't take the bait, instead reaching over to tug her shirt down with pink cheeks. That makes her angry. "You know what? I don't get it. Are you fucking with me? Is this some kind of game you're playing to – I don't know, to make me feel bad because you don't approve of my past? Because you think I'm a –"

"What?" Dan stares at her like she's flat-out crazy. Such mental gymnastics would probably never even occur to him. "No. No, this has nothing to do with you. It's me."

Serena rolls her eyes. "It's not you, it's me," she mocks. "How original."

Dan takes a breath. "Look, I like you. I think you're beautiful. But I don't trust myself around you. I don't trust myself in your world. I'm just trying to get through high school unscathed and go to a good college. That's all I want. I don't want to get wrapped up in all – in all this."

"I don't get you," she snaps. "If you really think that, then why are you here? Why did you call me the other day? Why are you hanging out with Blair?"

Chastised, he looks away again. "I don't know," he says.

"Try and figure it out," Serena says, annoyed, and gets to her feet, taking off in a huff.







Blair eschews breakfast and gets a massage instead, though she's too tense and irritable to really enjoy it. Neither Serena nor Dan had showed up for dinner the night before, so Blair had been forced to spend half the night pretending to listen to Jenny's inane prattling while she replayed that kiss every time she blinked. Blair doesn't know what's bothering her. It's not like she didn't know what was going on – it was the whole point of their bet, for crying out loud. Perhaps she's disappointed in Dan for giving in to a pretty blonde so easily despite his grand proclamations of moral superiority. Perhaps she's just bored by all of this.

The door clicks open and Serena swans in with sex-mussed hair, dismissing the masseuse cheerfully. Blair frowns, pushing up into a seated position and draping the sheet around herself. Disgruntled, she says, "You're cheerful this morning. I suppose you’ve come to make arrangements."

Serena runs a hand down the length of Blair's bare back as she passes. She drops into the armchair facing Blair, legs kicked up over the side, shoes off. She's got a lollipop in one hand, shiny red against her pink mouth. "Arrangements?"

"Collecting your prize," Blair explains with a bit of an annoyed huff.

Serena arches an eyebrow. "I didn't win yet."

Blair narrows her eyes. "You didn't?"

Serena gives a little bit of a sigh and stretches in the chair, rearranging herself with both legs folded up Indian-style. "Dan's so uptight," she says. "I don't know what else to do with him."

Blair straightens. The thrill of triumph threatens to race up her back. "So you're forfeiting."

"I never said that," Serena says. "I've just been thinking…" She sucks on the lollipop for a thoughtful moment. "I'm not having much fun. Are you?"

Blair looks at her curiously. "I can't say I am, no."

"So why stick to the same old program?" Serena says. "Let's change it up. This is about having fun."

Blair's lips purse slightly and she tucks her legs up on the table, a tendril of hair escaping her pins to trail gracefully along her shoulder. She does not correct Serena, though she wants to; this isn't about fun, it's about control. "What do you mean?"

"Let's readjust the bet. Instead of me doing all the work, how about…" Her eyes meet Blair's, blue and open and somehow inscrutable all the same. "The first one to get him wins. Stakes are the same, but the game's more complex." Her eyebrow lifts and a small smile curves her mouth. "We've always been rivals for a reason, right?"

Usually that word is unspoken between them, a label slapped on by the other girls or by Gossip Girl but not addressed by either Blair or Serena. They prefer terms like best friend, sister, soulmate, or even frenemy on occasion. Rival has an altogether different taste. They always have been rivals. They have always been rivals for a reason and that reason is that no one else is half as fun to compete against, or half as difficult, Blair's dogged pursuit of her goals versus Serena's seemingly effortless side-steps into good luck. But their tools are the same even if they use them differently and they’ve been beating each other to the same finish lines since infancy, so why stop now?

"Isn't Dan getting in your way at school, anyway?" Serena goads, seeing Blair remains unconvinced. "He's probably the only person there who might be smarter than you."

"Oh please," Blair scoffs.

"Well, he'll try to be, anyway," Serena says. "Come on." Her eyes almost seem to sparkle, deeply blue and darkly mischievous. "Why destroy one Humphrey when you can destroy them both? Isn't that what you said to me when we started this?"

Blair is silent, considering. Her heart flutters madly in her chest, not that it would be visible or obvious to anyone on the outside. The Humphreys have been a thorn in her side ever since their first appearance, and despite the odd feeling of something akin to friendship that Dan has inspired in her, Blair would be much happier with them ruined and gone. Out of her way. Unable to affect her.

"Yes," she says finally, looking back at Serena. "Yes, I think those terms will be acceptable."







Dan is in the study in a green leather chair beside the window, a floor lamp casting a pool of light around him that looks almost staged. The world outside the window is impenetrably dark. Dan has one book open in his hand and two more stacked in his lap.

"Do you have any other hobbies?" Blair asks. She shuts the door behind her and leans against it, arching an eyebrow at him as her lips curve up at the corner. "Maybe you could take up something besides reading and bothering socialites. I've heard hiking is quite invigorating."

He shuts the book and sits up. "I like to swim," he offers.

"Ah. I have heard that." Blair walks towards him with a little sashay in her hips, demonstrating an astonishing lack of subtlety that would embarrass her normally. Her only excuse is that she's so pressed for time, so intent upon beating Serena. It's exciting, the competition; Blair loved to compete, especially against someone who could beat her, because it always made the winning sweeter. It also made the losing worse.

She's wearing a short black dress, bare legs, collarbones and cleavage. Dan's gaze drags up over her legs before he looks at her face and she likes to think that she doesn't imagine his throat working in a swallow.

"Anyway," Dan says, his eyes on hers now. "Bothering socialites was never really my plan."

"An unexpected talent," Blair says. "You're terribly good at it."

"Am I?" he asks.

Blair leans back against the large desk across from him, crossing her legs at the ankle. "You're driving Serena crazy. She gets bored so easily, so you're actually doing a very good job if you're trying to rope her in for long haul."

"I'm not trying to do anything," Dan says. "Except have a decent summer."

"I'm just trying to have a decent summer," Blair says mockingly, a smile curving her lips. "Everyone's got some kind of plan, whether they admit it or not."

"Is that so?" Dan slouches back in his seat, posture becoming relaxed and oddly sexy, and tilts his head. "What's your plan?"

She smiles enigmatically, evades it. "Are you really just here to have a pleasant summer?"

Dan glances away, seeming to fight a smile, before he looks at her. "Are you really just here to talk up Serena?"

Blair bites her lip. "No," she admits.

"No," Dan agrees. He sets his books aside to join her at the desk, leaning beside her companionably.

"You're a real hypocrite, you know," she murmurs. "You say you want to wait for love, but then you turn your back as soon as you get close to finding it." Their eyes meet in a sidelong glance and she adds, "With Serena, I mean."

"It's all kind of freaking me out," Dan admits. "Serena's got a lot more experience than I do."

"Don't worry," Blair says. "She probably doesn't remember most of it."

He starts to reply but seems too taken aback by that, lips parted and brow furrowed. Finally, he says, "See, that's part of it. That's not a normal thing to say. You guys are all so nonchalant about things like that."

"You have an awful way with words for a writer," Blair tells him. "There's nothing to be afraid of. It won't get you anywhere in life." Blair looks at him again and finds herself tilting closer. "If you want to kiss a girl then you ought to kiss her. If she wants to go to bed with you, then you ought to take her at her word."

"I ought to, huh," he muses. She does not imagine the flicker of his gaze to her lips. She presses them together briefly, wets them.

"Don't be scared," she says. "I don't bite."

"Not even figuratively?" he says.

"Not unless you ask me to," Blair says and gives up on subtlety altogether, presses her lips to Dan Humphrey's. His part automatically, as though he is ever-surprised by the idea that someone would kiss him.

Blair is embarrassed by how quickly her hand comes up to touch him, not gripping or grasping but just resting, palm against the warmth of his cotton t-shirt. Her fingertips just barely brush his throat. He is a better kisser than she would have taken him for, careful and gentle but with something beneath it, a promise of passion.

"That's the thing," he muses softly, his eyes still closed and mouth so close to hers, "About Serena. I like her a lot, but…the way you make me feel –"

Blair cuts him off with another kiss, unprepared for words of that nature right now when she's just trying to cross a finish line. She curls both arms around his neck and hops back onto the desk, kissing him like it's something she really means – and the terrifying part is that maybe it is. His hands are on her hips, ribs, breasts, waist, he kisses her like he absolutely means to do nothing else, possible ever.

And, breathless, Blair suddenly feels – suddenly feels.

"Excuse me," she breathes, pushing him away. To his credit, he immediately backs off. "Excuse me, I just –" But she doesn't even have it within her to work up a lie, she just rushes for the door she came in through, looking like a fool. She's a complete fool.

His mouth had been red, flushed, and he'd let her go with every muscle tense like he wanted to follow.







In between bouts of fucking and evading Jenny – who is such a quick study that she's become stunningly proficient at eating Serena out, so efficient Serena can't possibly turn her down all the time, and anyway she needs someone to release her tension – Serena sidles up to Dan some more. He apologized for kissing her and then shutting her down, though his phrasing had been much more delicate and surprisingly earnest, in a way that warmed Serena, a little. But he hadn't tried to kiss her again, and she certainly wasn't setting herself up for rejection yet again. She could do other things instead.

After he said his sheepish sorry, Serena only stuck out a hand. "Friends?" she asked, face crinkling with a smile sweet as his, just as innocent.

"Friends," he'd agreed, relieved, and they shook on it. Dan is the kind of guy who means what he says and therefore takes other people at their word, so that simple exchange had freed her up for a lot of flirtatious behavior that he would feel too good-natured to call her out on.

She steals his books and entices him to chase her, involves him in friendly tumbles in the grass to get them back. She splashes him in pools, loses her top by apparent accident in the ocean. She curls up against him to watch TV at night, arm through his and fingers intertwined. She is such a good friend.

The weird part is that Dan is kind of fun in his not-fun way, low-key and quietly sarcastic. She'd like to pull him over to her side of the divide, get him messy and drunk and high and hear his poetry then, mumbled against her mouth or between her legs.

And their growing closeness is obviously driving Blair crazy, though it only shows in her sharp quips and pursed lips. She's also become consumed with planning a party for that weekend to the exclusion of all else, so if she's working on her own to seduce Dan, Serena can see no sign of it.

But once, sitting outside on a blanket, Dan reading and Serena on her stomach getting a tan with her bikini untied, he asks, "So what's your sister's deal?"

"What do you mean?" Serena peers at him, eyes screwed up against sunlight, and is rewarded by the way his gaze travels briefly over her naked back.

"I don't know." Very purposefully, he focuses on the pages of his book. "I've just gotten the impression that she's kind of…sad about something. Like, underneath all the bitching, she's just really sad."

Serena snorts. "I guess that's a word for it," she says. "Can I turn over or will it offend your delicate sensibilities?"

He rolls his eyes but goes a little red too. "I can keep my eyes averted."

"You don't have to, I don't mind," she says, turning over. She gives a good stretch, then folds her arms under her head, eyes closing again. "Why do you think she's sad?"

It takes a minute before he answers, and Serena suppresses a smile. "Uh, just a feeling, I guess," Dan says. "I wondered if she had a really bad breakup or something like that. There's not really much about her online."

"Have you been looking?" Serena says, tone teasing to cover up her mild annoyance. "She's had a few. Like everyone." When Dan doesn't answer, she opens her eyes to catch him staring, though he's trying not to be too obvious. She does smile then. "Dan?"

He starts, dropping his book, and then laughs a little, shakes his head. "Sorry," he says. "You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?"

"Little bit," Serena says cheekily.







The party goes off without a hitch, though Blair spends an inordinate amount of time trying not to glare darkly at Dan and Serena over her martini glass. They keep giggling together like idiot schoolchildren, like they've been doing for the past week, and it makes her want to puke. She lights a pink cigarette to complement her dark-gray-and-cream ensemble, thinking she might just do that later. It's either that or venting furiously in her diary, which is pathetic and she's been doing too much of lately anyway.

Since the night in the study, Blair has been experiencing a heretofore unknown amount of performance anxiety and outside of sniping at Dan every time they cross paths, she has yet to make any real strides with him. She's going to lose badly, she can taste it, and that is both unforgivable and infuriating.

At the other end of the room, Jenny is holding over-confident court with Nate. It seems all the exuberant lesbianism and rampant hedonism has only led to Jenny becoming more self-assured, so really nothing is going right for Blair lately. She isn't even sure Jenny's had sex with a boy yet.

It all leads to Blair downing quite a few more gin martinis than she ought to.

Blair doesn't get drunk, that's just not what she does, especially since the last time resulted in the ill-advised loss of her virginity and that's not a road Blair is ever going down again. It's easier to fake it (she fakes everything else) and keep cool, keep in control, keep poised. She has an image to maintain and getting sloppy isn't part of it.

But at this party she gets relatively sloppy anyway.

She doesn't realize how much until she gets to her feet, teetering away from the rest of the girls on unstable feet, hearing them muffle giggles. She gropes for the backs of couches and tops of tables, head swimming. Water. She needs water, and –

"Whoa there." A hand curls around her elbow and Blair automatically starts to jerk away until she looks up to see Dan's face, his brow creased with obvious concern. "You okay?"

"Perfectly fine, Humphrey," she says with irritation but then remembers she is meant to be seducing him and turns a wide smile his way instead. "I am perfectly perfect, how are you?"

He smiles a little and answers, "It seems to me you're pretty drunk."

"What powers of observation you have," Blair says, trying to take another step but weaving too much. "I imagine you don't approve at all."

"Be a little hypocritical considering how many times I've told you to lighten up," he says. "But then again, I hear I'm a hypocrite."

"You are," she agrees, "One of your many bad qualities."

He laughs again and she doesn't know why, because she's terrible at this. Blair was never very good at making people like her. Making people fear her, making people respect her, tricking people into liking the girl she pretended to be – all that she could do. But his complete and insistent personal honesty makes it strangely difficult to use her usual tricks, so she's stuck being mean to him like a grade school bully.

"Why don't I take you to bed," Dan is saying, and she realizes they are carefully walking towards the stairs. "You can sl–"

"Yes, bed!" she exclaims, latching on. The hand clutching the back of his shirt slips around his waist and she leans in close. "Take me to bed, Dan."

Dan clears his throat with an air of nervousness, eyes averted, and Blair smiles. Just as they make it to the top of the landing, where it is quieter and more private, she tilts and kisses the corner of his mouth. He inhales and pauses, holding his breath, so Blair kisses him again, this time on the mouth. He says her name quietly.

"What?" She loops her arms around his neck and kisses him on the cheek. "I thought you were taking me to bed."

"To sleep," Dan says. "You're drunk."

"I don't want to sleep," she says. "I want you to kiss me."

"I'm not going to kiss you when you're drunk," he says gently. "That's not right."

It makes Blair suddenly angry, the intensity of her anger inexplicable to her. She pulls away from him, then pushes him for good measure. "You're so moral," she sneers. "So noble. Most people don't care about things like that, you know. And we all survive."

He gives her that look he's so good at, somewhere between concerned and pitying, and she hates it. "Blair –"

"Whatever, Humphrey," she hisses. "Why don't you go find Serena?"

Dan sighs, rubbing his temples briefly. "I don't get you."

"That's obvious," Blair snaps. Her bedroom is only a few doors down and she heads for it hazily, hand outreached. "Your understanding of women is obviously limited. But that's not surprising, considering."

As her fingers close around the handle, Dan frowns and asks, "Considering what?"

"That you're an uptight, inexperienced, patronizing virgin," she says. "It's not the fifties, Humphrey. Get a grip."

And before he can work up a reply, she's gotten the door open and slammed shut behind herself, sound echoing. After ten breathless minutes, she hears another door on the landing close. Then she slips out and goes back to the party, itching to do damage.



next part

with the cruelest of intentions
Blair, Serena, Dan, Jenny. Some others, multi-pairing.
Based on Cruel Intentions. R. 20k words.
W: nothing you don't see in the movie, but just in case: underage sex, consent shadiness, general terrible humans.


Summary: Incestuous stepsisters Blair and Serena set out to seduce poor, innocent Dan Humphrey.


first part
previous part



Serena wakes up in a shitty mood. Jenny Humphrey is curled up on one side of her and Parker Smythe is on the other and Serena has no memory of how either of them got there, so it's business as usual, albeit business she doesn't really look forward to. It gives Serena a bad feeling, worse than that pit-of-the-stomach queasiness that comes along with her hangovers; she's been good about hiding how bad she is, and now she's gone and blown it.

She obviously lost track of Dan at some point last night – Serena lost track of a lot last night, it seems. She reaches over Jenny to grab her phone and check Gossip Girl, breathing a brief sigh of relief when the only pictures are of her drunkenly dancing. That's okay, charming even; it wouldn’t do for roaming hands or lips to be caught on camera considering she's close to convincing Dan that all of that is behind her.

But that's not the only thing that's bothering Serena. It's something like trepidation, and it grows as she crawls out of bed and pulls on a t-shirt and cutoffs, grows as she crosses the hall to Blair's door. Grows as she hears unmistakable moaning behind it, Blair's high and rising, Dan's soft and muffled.

Fucking bitch. Serena wants to laugh a little, almost. She grasps the door handle without thinking much aside from getting in there, calling out Blair or maybe just crawling in with them, that would certainly blow Dan's mind –

But upon opening the door, she sees that the boy in Blair's bed isn't Dan after all.

Then Serena does start laughing, hand covering her mouth but doing little to stifle her. It's partially Blair's scandalized expression and partially that Nate doesn't even notice at first, his eyes tightly shut as he moans away. It's not until Blair scrambles off him, sniping, "Serena, can't you knock?" that Nate realizes someone else is in the room, and his comically shocked expression – wide eyes, open mouth, and all – sends Serena into a fresh round of cackling.

"Finally got it done, huh?" Serena says.

Blair just glares harder, but Nate looks a little sheepish then. He reaches for his boxers and hustles into them before slipping out of bed. "Uh, I should probably –" he says with an uneasy glance between them, grabbing his clothes. "That was really fun, though, until…" He trails off, perhaps aware that neither of them is really listening to him, and kisses Blair on the cheek before turning to leave.

Then he says, "This is just between us, right?"

Blair shifts her gaze off Serena and her expression alters totally, a cheerful smile gracing her lips. "Of course, sweetie," she says. "I'll call you later."

Nate seems relieved. He gives them both a final awkward nod before exiting.

Blair has the sheet tucked up under her arms and she sweeps it up around her like a wrap as she gets up. "Not I'm going to be all backed up," she complains. "Thanks a lot."

"What the fuck was that?" Serena asks good-naturedly, since she's still laughing a little. "Since when is Nate on your radar anymore?"

"He's never been off it," Blair says, disappearing into her closet. Her voice is even-toned and betrays nothing. It might be sarcasm; with Blair it can be hard to tell. She reappears in a lush white bathrobe. "You might say that was always the plan."

Serena's brow quirks. "And that means…?"

"What, did you think I was going to let Jenny Humphrey run off with all my exes?" Blair inquires incredulously. "I wanted her to get close enough to having everything that it would really sting when I took it all away."

"Because you can just do that," Serena muses. "Take it all away."

"Can't I?" Blair says. "Gossip Girl's been holding back, but one word from me and every last little tidbit on Little J is out for everyone to read. She'll be socially ruined before she even started." Blair punctuates that with a fake little pout. "How sad. Marcus won't want her anymore and neither will Nate, not that it matters now that he has me again. It's over for her." Blair pauses, and smiles. "She's just like you."

"Just like me?" Serena repeats, gaze hardening.

"Just like you," Blair reiterates. "A slut. A toy. A thing people like to play with and dispose of, because it gets boring so fast."

Serena tries to keep her voice as empty as Blair does but she can't – it comes out rough and hard and hurt even though she wants to disguise it. "That's all I am to you?"

"Mm. Though admittedly I get more use out of you than most people do." She takes a seat at her vanity, her back to Serena, utterly careless. "Just a game, like Dan Humphrey's just a game. But I'm bored of it now with both of you. You're too boring to fuck, or fuck with."

Serena's throat contracts in a swallow. "You think I don't know you by now? You're just bitter because you suck at this, you can't get Dan to pay attention to you because you're such an uptight bitch about everything – that's why boys never go for you unless I set you up, no one wants to deal with –"

Blair laughs, a brittle sound. "Oh, please," she says. "You think he actually likes you, and not just the fact that you're always losing your clothes around him? He'd never be with someone like you – he knows everyone else has. Plus you're really just not smart enough." Her eyes meet Serena's in the mirror. "And did you honestly think Dan Humphrey was going to fuck you after you took advantage of his baby sister?"

Serena presses her lips together. "You don't get to think you're better than me," she says. "Maybe I started first, but you're just as bad as me, maybe worse. At least I'm not a coward. I'm not afraid of what people say about me. So I'm a big slut – so what? I'm not doing anything that everyone else isn't doing, I'm just not hiding it."

"The rules are different for the Serena van der Woodsens of the world, but I'm a Waldorf," Blair says, turning back around to face her. Anger has brought the first crack to her façade. "People expect you to party and be wild and sleep with whoever you want. You shot your reputation to hell a long time ago, it doesn't matter what you do. Do you think I relish the fact that I have to act like Mary Sunshine twenty-four seven so I can be considered a lady? I'm the Marcia fucking Brady of the Upper East Side and sometimes I want to kill myself. But I do what I have to do to get what I want."

The silence seems to vibrate after that. Then Serena says, low and easy, "You know everyone hates you? Really. Everyone knows you're a two-faced bitch. Nobody likes you, nobody trusts you, and they can't wait to see you fall."

"Is that a threat?"

"Just the facts," Serena says with a shrug. "I think I'm gonna go find Dan." She heads out the door without so much as a backwards glance, though she can feel Blair's eyes on her. She knows this isn't over, if it ever even could be; she knows that Blair lashes out when she's cornered or hurt, and Serena might as well have just fired a shot, or started a war.







Serena and Dan sit on her bedroom floor with half the contents of the liquor cabinet, plus some other goodies they'd gone into town to get. Serena holds maraschino cherries between her teeth and tries to teach him how to make cocktails, smiles when the taste of whiskey makes him wince.

"I'm sorry you and your sister are fighting," he says.

Serena shrugs. "You know Blair," she says. "She can be really hard to get along with, secretly sad or not."

Dan ducks his head with a wry smile. "You guys are really close, though, aren't you?"

"Close as two sisters could be," Serena says, then tops off his glass. "C'mon, I'm here to teach you to drink and you've got several years of experience to catch up on."

Dan gets drunk startlingly fast and he makes a real cute drunk, happy where she thought he'd be maudlin. His eyes are bright and he grins easily, face flushed. Serena just gets tipsy enough to press her fingertips against his cheeks and kiss him on the forehead. "You're adorable," she tells him.

"You're not too bad yourself," Dan says. His eyes fall to her mouth in an unconscious way she's seen plenty of times before, though it never fails to please her.

"Oh no?" They're leaning up against her footboard, initially side-to-side but now halfway facing each other, shoulders pressed and heads tilted against the upholstered bedframe. Serena lets her hand rest on his neck, fiddling with his collar. "Then why are you always running away?"

He sighs softly but negates it with a slight smile. "Apparently I'm an uptight, patronizing virgin," he says. "That's what I hear, anyway."

"Being a virgin just means you haven't had sex yet." Her fingers traipse over the arch of his cheekbone. "It's a pretty easy fix."

Dan turns his face away from her a little. "It's embarrassing," he says.

"What is?" Serena murmurs.

"Waiting," he says – and something about the way he says it, his inflection and the roll of his eyes, reminds her suddenly of Blair. "Wanting to wait. I mean…. What am I really waiting for?"

"Love, I thought," she says gently.

"I'm starting to see how ridiculous that is," he says.

It's strange, because the entire point of getting involved with him was his newness, his morality, his hard and fast rules in a world where most people didn't bother with any. To hear him say something like that ought to make her happy because the whole point is to break down his barriers but instead it's a little niggling disappointment in the back of Serena's mind. She wants him to believe in love. She wants him to hold onto all that because if he can't, then probably no one can.

Before she can wrangle her ineloquent tongue to get any of those words out, Dan tilts forward and presses his mouth to hers. It's the first kiss he ever initiated. It's what she was waiting for, but it feels oddly like a letdown.

But still she wraps her arms around him, kisses back. Dan presses closer until she tips backwards, hand reaching out for purchase and knocking over bottles. They both laugh a little, sheepish, and right them before clambering up onto her bed, kissing much more insistently. Dan's hands slip under the hem of her t-shirt as hers curl in his hair, his touch warm and uncertain. Serena presses quick little kisses to his mouth before pulling back briefly to tug her shirt over her head and then reaching for his too.

There's a breathless pause. Instead of kissing her again, Dan's just looking at her, something soft and indecipherable in his expression. He brushes her hair back off her shoulders in a purposeful way, almost seeming to arrange it gently around her. His thumb brushes over her cheek before his fingers skate down the length of her neck, trace her collarbone, follow the upward curve of her breast. But the entire time he's looking at her. He's looking her in the eye.

"You're so beautiful," he says, not in the way guys usually do, but like she's something remarkable. Like there is something particular and special in her beauty. "I'm happy I'm here with you."

He gives her a small smile before leaning in to kiss her, only Serena flinches involuntarily, her stomach twisting. He pulls back, worry creasing his forehead. "What? Did I do something wrong?"

"No, no, it's –" Serena blinks suddenly, averting her gaze. "I don't know, I… Maybe we shouldn't do this."

She doesn't know what she expects from him, but agreement isn't it. "You're right…" he says, just a touch of regret in his voice. "I'm a little drunk, and… I don't think it's fair, to be with you if –"

He breaks off, so she asks quietly, "If what?"

"If I have…feelings…for someone else too," he says apologetically. "It's shitty of me to do. I'm sorry."

"That's okay," Serena says even though it's anything but. "Um, can we just… Don't go?" She didn't mean for it to come out as a question.

"Of course," he says with that same small smile, moving close enough for her to put her head on his shoulder, her arm draped over his chest. She blinks her eyes dry and presses close to his warmth, telling herself that being jealous is stupid, telling herself she has time with him now that Blair doesn't want him anymore.

Serena tells herself a lot of things but she never really believes them.







It's late, the night before their return to the city, and Blair is spending it sulking in her room. She's already packed so she's spending the last hour before bed tucked in her window seat and writing in her diary, spilling out all the things she can't normally say. It's hot out but in the worst way, sticky and muggy, and rain pelts the windows relentlessly. The last time she spoke to Nate, he told her that she had been fun, that all he was looking for was fun, didn't she have a good time too? He asked to hang out once they were back in the city. Blair knew all of it was boyspeak for wanting to fuck her and still get to romance a skinny Brooklyn social climber.

There's a knock on the door and for a moment she thinks it might be Serena, only Serena doesn't ever knock. It could be Jenny. Or…

"Come in," Blair calls, straightening a little. She closes the diary and tucks it amongst the pillows, out of sight. And of course when the door opens it's Dan, looking both self-conscious and contrite. "What do you want?"

He makes a face at her. "To talk to you, but I can see that'll be as difficult as always."

Blair rolls her eyes and reaches for her cigarette case. She plucks a red one out because the color suits her mood, but it goes nicely with her black slip too. She doesn't offer him any, both to be a bitch and because the kind of cigarette that would look best between his lips would be a white one – straightforward, classic, traditional. "What is it you want to talk about?"

"You're mad at me," he says.

"No I'm not," Blair disagrees. "I just don't like you, and therefore am unpleasant in your company."

He does that dry little laugh that he does when she's mean to him, which just annoys her more. "Okay, but I think there's a little more to it than that."

"What difference does it make?" Blair asks dismissively, taking a drag. "The outcome's the same. Why don't you go find Serena, Brooklyn, since the two of you are so terribly chummy?"

This seems to bother him, because he makes an irritated sound and strides forward to sit beside her. Blair inches away pointedly. Dan is undeterred. "Stop telling me to go find Serena," he says. "You wanted me to kiss you when you were drunk. I know you're upset because I didn't."

"Awfully high opinion of yourself."

"I just didn't want it to happen that way," Dan says. "I wanted it to be, well – more special than that."

Blair bites down on the inside of her lip, unwilling to show any kind of reaction to the words. "Whatever are you on about, Humphrey?"

"Stop being such a bitch," he says bluntly. He takes the cigarette from her fingers without asking and puts it to his mouth like he needs it to steel himself. "I can't stop thinking about you, I've tried and I can't, despite myself I – I think about you all the time." A pause, then, "You like me. I know you do."

She looks at him, voice softening deceptively when she says, "Do you think I'm the kind of girl who'd go after my sister's boyfriend?"

"I'm not her boyfriend," Dan says. "Nothing's ha– Well. In the interest of full disclosure, something did happen, but it was only –"

"You don't have to tell me," she says, cutting him off. Whatever had begun to loom in her when he started talking has sunk to the bottom of her stomach. "I don't need to hear it."

So Serena had won after all, not that that was a surprise, ultimately. Serena often wins the things Blair wants the most. That's just how it is.

"It doesn't change how I feel about you," he says.

It's oddly upsetting that even Dan Humphrey is guilty of boyspeak. She'd entertained thoughts that maybe he wasn't quite like all the others, who were always after more than one girl at once, wanting to have their cake and eat it too. Romancing one and fucking another. Wasn't that always how it went?

"You're terrible at trying to be friends with girls," she says, much more subdued now, as she takes the cigarette back.

"I can't keep my feelings bottled up," he says. "You can tell me I'm crazy if you want. You can tell me to fuck off. But I know there's something here, whether you want to admit it or not." He waits a moment but Blair offers nothing, does not even look at him. "Am I wrong?"

The moment stretches quietly, the music Blair put on earlier gratefully filling the silence. She stubs the cigarette out in a cut-glass ashtray. "You're not," she murmurs. The room feels hushed and isolated and there is something very safe about Dan, so the honesty slips out. All bets are off now. "But I can't do this."

"Because of Serena? I promise I –"

"Because I don't trust myself with you," she interrupts.

Dan frowns. "I don't understand."

"I know you don't," Blair says. She gets up, putting some distance between them, as reluctant to explain herself as she was to admit anything in the first place. She knows giving in to Dan will require giving something up, a part of herself that's ugly but nevertheless integral, and to give it up she'll have to face it, admit her own ugliness. Giving in to wanting Dan is dangerous. He is the opposite of everything she knows, and she can't have both at once. She knows she can't. She'll just end up dragging him down with her.

He doesn't press her further, but she hears him stand and come up behind her, hands resting on her arms. Blair leans back against his chest, thinking as she does it what a stupid thing it is to do. He presses a kiss into her hair and then releases her entirely, stepping back. "Okay," he says unenthusiastically. "I don't have to understand it, or like it. If you don't want to, you don't want to. I respect that."

There's a little hysterical laugh caught in Blair's throat and to keep it from exploding out of her, she turns and kisses him on the mouth, feeling him start in surprise. "What I want," she says firmly, still standing so close to him, "is for you to kiss me. Can you manage that?"

"I can try," Dan says, and immediately his arms go around her, gathering her to his chest as he kisses her. It's another stupid thing that she really shouldn't do but abruptly she is aware of how much she wants him, and how she can feel it in her entire body, this desire for him.

She supposes there's something to be said for the appeal of good boys.

Dan's nerves are clear in the way he touches her, hands never settling for long – on her back at first, then her waist, then both hands on her cheeks, cupping her face as they kiss. It's sweet that even after sleeping with Serena he'd still be so uncertain. She curls her fingers around his and puts his hands on her hips, low enough that he can take it as an invitation.

"I'm sorry," he says, a little sheepishly, "I don't know what to do."

"It's okay," Blair says, giving him another light kiss. "I'll show you."

Blair unbuttons his shirt, pressing kisses along his chest as it slips from his shoulders. Belt and jeans follow, her mouth trailing over his hipbones. Then she slides the straps of her slip down and allows him to tug it so it falls to the floor, leaving the two of them in their underwear, bare chest to bare chest, Dan's cheeks pink and lips parted as he looks at her.

"I know I'm not –" Blair starts, suddenly awkward herself. "I mean, compared to –"

But Dan covers her mouth in a kiss that deepens until they're falling back onto the bed and he says, "You're perfect," like it's the easiest thing in the world to say. It's untrue enough to be laughable, but she doesn't feel like laughing.

His first time with Serena must've been a real mess because his hesitancy shows in his every move. Blair has to put his hand between her legs, then press so his fingers slip between her folds, has to position them right against her clit. But even so, she doesn't mind, doesn't think any less of him. She likes being handled with such care. She loves the way Dan checks every few seconds if she likes something, if he's doing everything right. She loves the tenderness of his mouth against her skin, the earnestness in his expression.

It's brief but beautiful, the way Dan comes apart – the trembling in his arms and shoulders, teeth sinking into his lower lip, brow furrowed. "I'm sorry," he says immediately after, but Blair doesn't mind, "I couldn't help it –"

"You can make it up to me," she says, tipping him over onto his back as she arches an eyebrow, a genuine smile on her lips. She positions herself with her cunt over his mouth and Dan gets the picture pretty quickly, though he still needs a good deal of direction.

It's getting light out by the time they're even halfway done with each other and Blair is exhausted and thrilled, worries blunted by however many orgasms she'd had. Catching her breath, laughing, she pushes Dan away when his hand slides between her legs again, much bolder now than he was a few hours ago.

"I think I love you," he says, and she doesn't take it a bit seriously, though his smile is dazed and happy.

"You're ridiculous," she tells him fondly, letting him tug her closer. She trails her fingers over his chest, smoothes his rumpled hair. She admits, "I don't want to go back to the city."

"So let's stay," he says. "The summer isn't really over yet. We have some time before school."

She wants to give in but it would only be postponing the inevitable. She doesn't know how bad it's going to be yet; she only knows that everything good comes with a price tag attached, and she's not sure even she has enough to pay for choosing Dan. He doesn't come from the right family or have enough money. He's no one, socially speaking. He was branded by Serena long before he was even a consideration for Blair, and that's not a mark that will wash off easily.

And all that says nothing about Blair herself, the kind of person she is. Dan doesn't know half her past because it's not as neatly categorized on the internet as Serena's, and he's going to be in for a world of disappointment. She wishes she could stay right here in this early summer morning with Dan looking at her like a few good orgasms means it must be love.

Sadness is settling in the closer they get to reality. Blair kisses him. "You should make sure you have everything packed," she says. "We're leaving soon."

She kisses him again at the door, his clothes in shambles and her just in the sheet. Dan makes her laugh because he won't stop kissing her until she gives him a playful shove, and even then he comes back for one more. She allows herself to watch him walk back down the hall and she's so busy drinking in the sight of him that she doesn't notice Serena at all, doesn't even register Serena stepping out of Jenny's room just in time to see everything.







The first thing Blair does back in Manhattan is oversee the unpacking of her luggage, and she's interrupted every ten minutes or so texting Dan. Each little message brings a smile to her lips that she fails to suppress. She shouldn't be allowing this silliness to continue, she shouldn't feel good about it; she should cut her ties and move on to hooking Nate, or someone similar. She should let this go before it comes back to bite her.

She's replying to one of his dumb jokes with a halfhearted criticism when she realizes that Serena is leaning in the doorway, arms crossed over her chest. "Have you been taking lessons in lurking?" Blair says snidely. "How long have you been standing there?"

"You're not so observant lately," Serena notes in lieu of answering. "You must be feeling pretty good, considering."

Blair stiffens. "Considering?"

"Considering your victory."

Blair's eyes narrow as she stares at Serena uncomprehendingly, lips parting to ask what that's supposed to mean. But something in Serena's tight expression sparks Blair's understanding, and she's momentarily overwhelmed by it – Dan had said something happened but not what, because Blair wouldn't let him say it, which means…which means he hadn't slept with Serena at all, it was only Blair. It's only been Blair. She doesn't have a name for the feeling that suffuses her because it's one she gave up a long time ago but there is something certain and warm to it. Blair smiles, fingertips coming up to touch her lips. It had only been her. He waited for her.

"You love him," Serena accuses, voice wavering with emotion. Serena is unable to hide anything and her face betrays how hurt she is. "You love him and you don't love me anymore."

"That's not true," Blair says sharply. "You're my sister. What is you is me. All that bullshit I said – we were just fighting."

But Serena shakes her head. "No," she says. "No, you should see your face. When he came out of your room –" She presses her lips together. "You used to look at Nate like that when we were kids. Remember how that ended?"

Blair stares at her. "Are you really so pathetically jealous?"

Ignoring that, Serena continues, "People don't change, you know. Especially not us. You're just going to end up disappointing him like everyone else. He'll use you and leave you for someone good and pure and not fucked up."

"No such thing," Blair says but the words are like ashes in her mouth. The truth is everyone she ever got close to did break under her relentless pressure. They all gave her up for simpler partners, less complicated girls, less cruel ones. "Dan isn't like that, anyway."

Serena huffs a laugh, her arms still tightly crossed. "They're all like that," she says. "All those stupid boys are like that. The only person who never fucked you over is me and you don't even care."

"Oh please," Blair scoffs. "Like you've been some kind of knight errant. You steal things from me, remember – remember my mother's photoshoot and Kati's party last year and the Ivy mixer and –"

"And Nate," Serena says, voice low. "Or didn't you ever figure that one out?" When Blair remains silent, perhaps shocked into it, she adds, "We share everything, after all. Always have."

"You're deluded," Blair says, ignoring the little voice in her shrieking I knew it I always knew there was something. "In what world does that equal out to you being the only one to never screw me over? I suppose I'm sorry you feel cast aside, but I'm not going to be miserable just to give your self-esteem a boost."

Serena's expression is briefly and uncharacteristically unreadable. If Blair really tried, perhaps she could discern hesitation and indecisiveness but then Serena's frown deepens and all she's telegraphing is her pain.

"I never did it on purpose," Serena says. "Never." A pause, then, "Until now."

Genuine worry snakes down Blair's spine. "What did you do?"

Serena wets her lips, eyes downcast. "It seems Gossip Girl got ahold of some pages of your diary. Things about Jenny and Dan…and all the plans you had for them." She looks up, meeting Blair's gaze straight on. "You won," she says. "How does it feel?"







Dan isn't answering any of Blair's calls.

Dan isn't answering any of her calls and school has started back up again, so she gets to see him move silent and stone-faced through the crowds, ignoring the bullshit he's getting from everyone. They really like to quote Blair's diary at him, especially the parts about how he's "only a conquest, another little pawn" between her and Serena.

Jenny's been getting it pretty bad too, but she has Nate and the status that gives her.

And Blair, well. Blair has it worst of all.

It's a strange thing to be exposed to everyone for exactly what you are. Serena said everyone knew Blair was a two-faced bitch and maybe they did, but now they have it in black and white. No one has to pretend to put up with her anymore. Penelope has gleefully taken over with the girls at school and the entire student body follows their example in shunning Blair. She's greeted with sudden silence upon entering every classroom and followed by whispers down every hallway. The girls drop yogurt in her hair on the steps. She is called a slut and a bitch and a cunt and a liar.

It's ironic in its way. She always wanted to be the one everyone was talking about, and now she is.

"It was Serena who fucked your little girlfriend," Blair tried to tell Nate during the conversation in which he dumped her unceremoniously, again. "It was Serena who took her out and fucked her up. She's just bitter, she's just getting back at me."

Nate looked at her with surprisingly cool blue eyes, as though there had never been a time in his life when Blair meant anything. "Everyone knows it's you that pulls the strings," he said. "I mean, you did that with me too. Controlled me. You try to control everything. Couldn't take it after a while."

"I suppose that's why you slept with Serena, isn't it," Blair said, watching his expression. She'd swallowed that bit of information like medicine, sour-tasting but somehow expected – learning it had been Serena made everything make more sense, in retrospect. Blair had been hurt, but she had not been surprised.

He looked embarrassed for half a second but recovered very fast. "I didn't want you to find out," he said, as though that statement was of any value to her. "I just couldn't. You were too much."

Blair would rather die than attempt to approach Dan at school – on top of everything else, the girls keep harping on her about slumming it, fucking a nobody scholarship kid from Brooklyn. But it's not just that; she knows he'd rebuff her brutally if she tried to talk to him in public and it's another humiliation she can't face.

The journal entries Serena snapped photos of and sent off to Gossip Girl were all from the beginning of the summer, before Blair's feelings for Dan began to invade her private musings. She'd probably be more embarrassed if any of that sentimental nonsense had gotten out but at the same time she wants Dan to see that, to see that she's not just a cold, nasty bitch. She thinks of sending in her own tip, but then it slowly occurs to her that it would only seem like more manipulation. She knows the only thing that matters to Dan is honesty and so that's what she decides to give him: full disclosure, all of her worst moments, everything.

She takes a taxi to Brooklyn with a stack of three journals on her lap, identical powder blue books filled with neat writing. They cover years of her life. She held nothing back in private, between herself and those pages.

She takes a deep breath before knocking on his door, stomach twisting at the sound of his voice calling out, "Who is it?"

"Me," she says, then louder, "Blair." Silence greets that. She swallows, not having expected anything else. "I know you don't want to see me. And that's fine. I wouldn't want to see me either. But I – I have some things for you, I want…" She takes a breath, leaning against the door. "My life is a joke. I'm a horrible person. I like to rip people apart. I take joy in other people's misery. But… But I was happy with you. Even if it didn't last very long. You made me happy and it was terrifying to me. The idea of changing, it was –" Her voice falters. "Terrifying."

Silence reigns once again, for so long that Blair resigns herself to leaving the diaries before excusing herself from his life. But then the lock clicks and the door opens and there's Dan, thin serious face as solemn as ever.

"Please, take these," she says before he can speak, thrusting the books at him. "It's me, everything about me. I'm not going to lie to you, not anymore."

He accepts them, looking down at the blue covers for a moment. Then he looks back at her. "I always knew you were fucked up," he says. "I could probably get over all of that, forgive you for it, understand it. But I'll never ever forgive you for what you did to my sister and I never want to see you again."

And he shuts the door in her face.

Blair drifts home in a daze after that, feeling only a crystalline emptiness. There is nothing left inside her, bad or good.

She finds Serena in her room, on her bed. They haven't really spoken since the blast, outside of a couple shrieking arguments, and they've been carefully avoiding each other for the most part – as much as two people in the same house can. Serena looks familiar and inviting, with her hair a tangled mess and too-short skirt riding up as she curls her legs under herself.

"Hi," Serena says in a small voice.

Blair acknowledges her with a nod, drifting over to sit on the edge of the bed. She clears her throat a little and says, after a moment, "It's always you and me, isn't it?" though she doesn't sound particularly happy about it.

Serena inches closer and slides her arm around Blair. "Always," she says softly, her face so close, close enough to kiss.

sing_song_sung and I were bemoaning the lack of general fandomness lately and particularly the lack of fic, so we were considering doing a small fic exchange, either multi-fandom or Gossip Girl-centric. Here is the post where I ask if anyone would do that! Or if anyone wants to ask questions or make suggestions or really anything of that nature.

LET US HAVE A POLL.

Dear wonderful person writing a thing for me,

I am the most easy to please, especially with AUs, which are my favorite things. Whatever it is you want to write, I love it already. Feel free to ignore any of this, but if you're itching for some inspiration or anything of the kind, here's some vague and probably unhelpful stuff that I like! Some general things: I really like character-driven stuff and relationshippy stuff. I'm not picky about plot. I like a good mix of heartbreak and comedy. Sexy fic is A++. Het, slash, and femslash are all totally fine by me. As you can probably tell from my prompts, lol, I am mostly a Captain America girl. The only things I absolutely do not like are Steve/Tony and MCU!Clint/Natasha (Comics!Clint ftw tbh), but otherwise I'm pretty chill. Also, pls no Coulson. Please.


Bucky/Steve ::bars/pubs, coffee shops and cafés, neighbors, romance novel, greasers & socs
They are otp, so I am not really picky about their interactions tbh. Angsty, fluffy, anything, as long as it's in character, we're good.

Bucky/Natasha ::assassins, ballet, noir, spies and secret agents
I've kind of been craving – though this is just an idea, absolutely feel free to disregard – a kind of The Americans AU for these two. Which, if you're unfamiliar with the show, is basically Russian sleeper agents pretending to be a nice, normal American married couple and then slowly falling in actual love. You know, just. Spies! Fake love becoming real love! Disguises! Questionable morality!

Steve/Natasha ::dirty dancing, noir, fairy tale fusion, winter soldier has different identity
I am into them both in a shippy way and in a hot-friends-who-sometimes-kiss way, so whichever floats your boat. I like how different they are, and how draw to each other they are despite that. And, lol, the Dirty Dancing au idea was too hilarious a mental image to pass up, because lbr Nat is Swayze and Steve is Baby. And who doesn't love a good someone-else-is-the-Winter-Soldier AU? Either Steve or Natasha; I think both could be really cool.

Bruce/Natasha ::dystopia, post-apocalypse, fairy tale fusion, coffee shops and cafés
I am very newly into this pairing and haven't read much fic for them yet, so at this point I am very open to anything and everything.

Peggy/Steve ::role reversal, time travel, characters met differently, cap unfrozen differently
Their relationship was so tragically cut short in canon, so I just want MOAR tbh, anything that gives me more of them is swellsville.


I hope this was helpful! Can't wait to see what you come up with. :)

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the age of dissonance (4/9)
Dan, Blair, Serena. Appearances by everyone.
10911 words. PG.
A re-working of Wharton's The Age of Innocence.


Summary: If she still needed him, she was determined not to let him see it.


Note: I know I'm a spotty updater, but as these chapters are quite long, I hope that makes up for it. A lot goes down in this one and I deviate from Wharton a bit in places, but as per usual there is some direct plagiarism with dialogue and occasional lines of prose. I am going to try and update this every two months or so because I don't want to stress myself out, so let's expect the next chapter some time in early July. Hopefully. I don't like to make promises but I would like to update more regularly.











The Vanderbilt estate on the Hudson is called Bellomont. It belongs, as do all the other estates in the Vanderbilt name, to Nate’s grandfather, though this particular manor has been doled out to cousin Tripp and his wife. They are happy hosts, always eager to have guests fill the many rooms and spill out onto the wide lawns. In winter the place has a literary feel, rising from the snow-covered grounds into the gray sky like a castle from a fairy tale.

Dan spends half the weekend playing in the snow with the littlest Vanderbilt cousins, sporting with Nate, and uncomfortably evading the flirtations of Penelope’s friend Miss Williams. He finds himself envious of Nate and Penelope's new marriage; he's happy for his friend but he also wishes he could be as happy himself. Dan's smiles are neither false nor forced, but he can’t deny the part of himself that is counting the minutes until his departure.

Midday on Sunday he takes his leave of Bellomont in a borrowed cutter so he can travel the distance to Skuytercliff.

Though Dan isn't sure he'll ever really be accustomed to the grand manor houses of the New York elite, he's over the twinge of envy he used to feel upon seeing them. During his youth, which coincided with the early years of his family's wealth, Dan had been struck embarrassingly dumb by each new show of splendor. Now he is able to suppress such feelings admirably. It is a help that Cyrus Rose's Skuytercliff is less imposing than most, a cheerful yellow-and-white house that looks best in summer, sitting as it does on a wide green lawn and between two massive leafy trees. Now it is a little lonely, the immense trees twisted and dark, bare branches poking into the white sky like witches' fingers. Still, it is not a bad place to visit and Dan feels little trepidation as he climbs the steps to ring the bell.

The butler informs Dan that the Countess is out attending an afternoon service with other guests, though Mr. Rose is in if Dan would like to speak to him. With thanks, Dan declines, thinking that instead he will head back up the road on foot in hopes of meeting the carriage on its return. But after a few minutes' walk he is rewarded with something much better: a small, distinctive figure coming down the road toward him in bright green, her hands tucked in a white fur muff. A smile crosses her face as soon as she is near enough to make him out.

"You've come!" Countess Grimaldi says with something of a laugh in her voice.

"I have," Dan answers. "I came to see what you are running from."

Her good humor vanishes briefly, eyes rolling heavenward in petulant dismay. "It's no matter. Come, I've such a chill; let's walk on."

With some concern at her evasiveness, Dan's brow furrows and he says, "Blair, what is it? You must tell me."

"I will, I will," she says with a touch of insistence, though her gaze strays across the snowy expanse ahead of them. "Look – do you see that little house there? It was opened so I might have a look at it; let's see if it is still unlocked!"

Confused, Dan also turns his attention to the small house in the distance – and quite without warning or expectation, he finds his ankles kicked out from under him, and he crashes to his back in the snow. It startles him so much he can only laugh, struggling to a half-seated position as he reaches for his knocked-off hat.

Blair picks it up and sets it on his head. "Now I shall take advantage of your being indisposed to run away and win the race."

Indeed she does just that, darting ahead with hardly a pause as Dan calls after her, "I wasn't aware we were racing!"

Her green cloak is a streak of life against the tundra, the only living thing in all this white. He takes off after her a moment later and they meet again at the door of the cottage, both a little breathless with exertion and laughter. She looks like Snow White, the dark ringlets of her hair against her pale cheeks, now flushed from her run, and she looks happy and young; it reminds Dan that he too is capable of being happy and young, though so often now he feels bogged down by the responsibilities of proving himself a respectable kind of man.

"I knew you'd come," the Countess says, looking up at him with dark eyes fringed by dark lashes. Her lips, too, are like blood on snow; he'd like to see if the color would come off with a touch or if the deep blush of her mouth is natural and unpainted.

"That shows you wanted me to," he says, voice softer than he intends.

Her eyes are focused intently on his own as her lips part for a response, but all she asks is, "Where did you come from?"

Dan feels a moment's hesitation, as he does any time he must speak Blair or Nate's name to the other. "Bellomont," he says. "Nate invited me, but truly I only came because of your note."

She straightens, eyes narrowing warily. "Serena asked you to take care of me."

"Be kind to you, yes," Dan corrects. "But I didn't need any asking. Serena didn't send me along; I came here myself, if you will believe it or not."

"Because I am very evidently helpless?" she says. "You must all think me such a poor thing!"

"I think of you as a friend," Dan says gently. "I only seek to help, as you asked me. What happened?"

"Does anything ever happen in heaven?" Blair murmurs with the barest hint of bitterness, but then she says, "I will tell you. But inside, out of this cold, where we can be alone. Mr. Rose is ever so kind to me but I can never find a moment to myself in his home, and I do long for the peace of being alone with one's thoughts." She takes her slim white hand from the muff so she can twist the door handle and let them in. A fire still blazes cheerfully from her earlier visit and it is a charming, warm little cottage. "Once I craved such constant attention but now it only makes me feel as though I am on a stage before a dreadfully polite audience that never applauds."

Dan wonders sometimes if the amusement she oft inspires in him is an inappropriate reaction to have. "Ah, you don't like us!" he says, inanely pleased by the thought.

She glances at him over her shoulder as she moved further into the room. "Don't be so quick to count yourself amongst their number."

It is a phrase that, taken on his own, might cut him to the quick considering his efforts to become a member of society, but the compliment in her voice is obvious. She takes a seat, unhooking the clasp of her cloak as she does so, and Dan moves past her to stand by the heat of the fire. "You're laughing now, but when you wrote me, you were unhappy."

"Yes," she allows. "But I can't feel unhappy when you're here."

Dan does not turn to look at her. "I won't be here long."

"I know," Blair says quietly. "But I have grown so used to my unhappiness that I must seize each moment of respite."

The words make him ache. He wishes there was anything he could do for her, anything at all. He swallows a handful of replies that would be too cloying, too familiar, or too cliché; he fears the depth of his concern for her, which has grown so much in such a short time. He thinks they should not have come to this private little house together, not when the very purpose was confession.

Dan clears his throat and drifts over to the window, which overlooks the grounds all the way up to Skuytercliff and the road they had met on. "Tell me, Blair, if I'm really to be a help to you – what is it you're running from?"

Had she been running from him?

He is abruptly very grateful that the length of the entire room is between them; the distance seems very necessary. He hears her rise but still does not turn to look, hears her soft tread on the carpet but pays no mind – and he imagines, just for a moment, that she steps closer and slips her arms around him. Something in him almost seems to wait for it.

But just as he feels the companionable brush of her fingers against his, Dan sees a man coming up the path of the house and it startles an ugly laugh from him. Chuck Bass has come chasing after the Countess too, stomping his way through the snow to this very doorstep, and Bass is whom she is undoubtedly running from.

Dan pulls away from her, hand slipping free of her grip. "Is that it then?" he asks with a gesture outside.

Blair blinks, some of the color fading from her cheeks. "I didn't know he was here."

But Dan barely waits, instead crossing to throw the door open and push his way out, saying as he does, "Hello, Bass – this way! The Countess was expecting you."

Dan's intention is to sulkily remove himself from the premises, take the cutter back to Bellomont and be done with the whole damned day, but Blair and Bass end up joining him on the walk back to the house, where Mr. Rose cheerfully demands they remain for lunch.

The Countess' emotions are unreadable as they sometimes are, though Dan had begun to think he wasn't so awful at turning her pages. Bass' ill temper, however, is poorly concealed, and his sometimes-biting comments toward Dan reveal him to be at least part of its cause. When Bass is not being snide in Dan's general direction, he is speechifying at great length about the small house he found for Madame Grimaldi on a fashionable street at a reasonable price.

"And without even a hint as to your destination, I had to come hunting after you," Bass says. "Marching through the snow when I could be warm at home."

Madame Grimaldi only smiles slightly and sends a glance toward Dan that he does not return. Dan excuses himself shortly after lunch.

It seems clear that Bass is undeniably in pursuit of the Countess Grimaldi. Bass is a man of base pleasures and few morals, with attentions as freely given as they are snatched away. He had grown weary of his pretty wife after little more than a year and then began to make sport of conquering the other young wives in their set, to varying degrees of success. It was not unfathomable to Dan that Bass would turn his efforts to someone as lovely and lonely as the Countess.

Madame Grimaldi had quite obviously been running from Bass, but the real question was: had she wanted him to follow? She had not left word with Bass, true, and she had seemed both genuinely surprised and ever so slightly vexed by his appearance. But these were not definitive signs; after all, it could be that she was bothered by her feelings for him and seeking to escape them lest she give in – Bass showing up would certainly be vexing in such a scenario. There was also the possibility that it had been the kind of game of which Bass was indisputably fond, where she ran to entice him to chase. Such a plot would not have been above the Blair Waldorf of old.

Still, Dan doubts. It is a miserable, insidious thing to suspect so much of Blair without real proof outside of his own fears. Had she been pursued by any other man, Dan is not certain his reaction would be so volatile; he might even wish her happiness, inappropriate as it would be. Bass is too vulgar, too impertinent, too cruel to the women whose lives he passes through. Yet he is also well-traveled, culturally connected, fashionable, and deems most of the rules of New York society ridiculous. He is on the outside in the same way Dan is, but his greater wealth means he can have open contempt where Dan must bend and acquiesce. Dan can understand too how someone in Madame Grimaldi's position could be drawn to a person like Bass. He is probably not unlike her husband; she was attracted to such a man once, and what had attracted her once might do so again, even if it were against her wishes.

All this passes through Dan's mind on his journey south to St. Augustine. Held privately between two pages of the book on his lap is the note he received that morning from the Countess, which read Come tomorrow and I shall explain all to you.

He had made the decision to visit the van der Woodsens impulsively, which was quite unlike Dan. But the past few days had found him unable to concentrate even on the simplest or most pleasant of tasks and the note from the Countess had compounded his discomfort acutely. The only clear option seemed to be escape.

As Dan walks up the path leading to the van der Woodsens' picturesque white house with its black shutters, Serena emerges through the garden gate as though she had been called to him. Her hair is windswept and golden with sunlight, spilling over her shoulders and across her sun-browned face. Her skirt has dirt along the hem and her arms are full of flowers, blossoms of bright rosy pink and shining bluish lilac. There are daisies in her hair. Looking at her, Dan feels suddenly so full, almost overwhelmed by the warmth she exudes so effortlessly. He wonders that he did not come sooner.

When he calls her name, Serena is caught by such surprise that she drops all the flowers – but then she smiles happily and comes darting across the multicolored heap to throw her arms around him. No one is around to chide her for such open affection and Dan is glad of it, returning her embrace almost too forcefully.

"I can hardly breathe," she murmurs, but presses a furtive kiss to his cheek before pulling back entirely. "You're here!" Worry crosses her face briefly. "Has anything happened?"

"Yes," he tells her with mock seriousness, "I found I had to see you."

"Lucky Daddy is your boss, or I'd imagine you'd be in some trouble," she teases, and though she does not mean it as a reproach in the slightest, Dan does prickle slightly at the reminder. He shakes it off as she pulls him toward the house by the hand, thinking: this is where he is supposed to be. This is his life, the life he chose for himself.

His appearance at the breakfast table is evidently unexpected, but the van der Woodsens recover admirably well. Mrs van der Woodsen is primly cordial in her usual way and Serena's brother Eric amiable as always; Mr van der Woodsen levels Dan with an amused look and says, "I suppose the firm is left in the lurch without either of us ¬– but no matter! After all the help you've given this family, you deserve a holiday, eh, my boy?"

He is so plainly referring to Dan's involvement in Madame Grimaldi's divorce, or rather lack thereof, that a rush of exasperation suffuses Dan and he cannot enjoy the rest of the meal.

Afterwards, Serena and her father go on a drive that they had planned the day before – Dan urging her to go along despite her offer to remain behind now that he's here – and Eric goes off with his friend Jonathan Whitney. Dan remains behind with the ever-disapproving Lily, and privately he's glad of the occasion to beg her once more to hasten the wedding.

"The entire family owes you thanks once more for intervening with dear Blair," Mrs van der Woodsen says. It is impossible to tell if this is meant sarcastically or not. "I can't imagine what was going through her mind."

"I imagine she thought her family would support her," Dan says, regretting the statement instantaneously. Her narrowed eyes find him over the lip of her teacup.

"Whatever my family has done, Daniel – or, rather, suffered – we do not countenance divorce."

"Of course," he says apologetically. "I never meant to imply."

The history of the Rhodes family is one better belonging to the kind of silly novels Jenny likes to read. First there was the abandonment of Mrs Celia Rhodes by her husband before their children were even out of the cradle, though she had never crumbled, nor shown anything but the most noble and personal sorrow. She had kept her place in society by sheer strength of will if nothing else and did not supplement the sordid truth of her life with even a single additional rumor. His death, distant as it had been, brought her innumerable wealth with which she spoiled her ill-behaved daughters; the spotlessness of Mrs Celia Rhodes' reputation always made it seem as though the troubles in her life were mere flies buzzing around her, and nothing she had any hand in herself. Both Lily and Carol had married young to tragic ends: Carol suffered the death of her young husband in an accident, and Lily absconded with a man far below her station, the resulting elopement ending in annulment. Lily remarried twice more: to a second husband much older, who passed away, and finally to Serena's father. It is a wonder they are so conservative with Madame Grimaldi, who is only a footnote in a decades-spanning story, but the Rhodes clawed their way back to respectability with too much fervor to relinquish it completely. And of course, a countess has more cache than a spinster.

But Serena's mother is still speaking. "I only bring it up because it really is due entirely to you; her grandmother could do nothing with her, and neither could my husband. And you know Serena with her ridiculous ideas was there supporting it all the while." Dan blinks, for Serena had said nothing of the sort to him and he had merely assumed she backed her family on the matter. "In fact Blair said so herself: the changing of her mind was all your influence." Mrs van der Woodsen's gaze passes over Dan in such a way to make him acutely aware of all of his flaws and she adds, perhaps with disbelief, "It seems she has some admiration for you. Well. Anything to set her back on course… If only she had married Nate Archibald all those years ago, as had been planned."

"I believe he and his new wife are very happy," Dan says.

"Of course." Lily waves a dismissive hand. "Once I had thought if he were not to take Blair as a wife, perhaps…" She shrugs. "But no matter."

Dan's mother and sister are great believers in fate but he sees now that fate is only a word for the determinations parents make for children. They arrange and suggest and outright demand; sometimes the outcome is to their liking and sometimes it isn't, but the fault for any wrongdoing is somehow never theirs. They wanted Blair to marry well and she did, and now their plan cannot be deviated from even if it means she might end up Bass' mistress instead of some decent man's wife.

Though it is not entirely their doing, as Mrs van der Woodsen said. Blair's fate was shaped by him as well, because he did not act from his own heart and mind.

He wonders what Mrs van der Woodsen would do if were to say all that. The woman rarely reveals any shock or offense, no matter what she feels privately. He studies her in the wan afternoon light: the wrinkles just beginning at the corners of her pursed lips, the blonde hair threaded through with gray, and he realizes for the first time that she was probably very much like Serena, once. She might've picked flowers to put in her hair. She ran away to get married against her family's wishes. She might've had ridiculous ideas, too. But now here she is, pinched and stately, pretending all of those actions belonged to another girl entirely. Perhaps in a way they did.

He wonders if Serena will grow tired and humorless one day too.

"Moreover it shows you were thinking of this family," Mrs van der Woodsen says. "Of Serena."

"I'm always thinking of Serena," Dan says, and rises, effectively ending the conversation. There will be no use in talking to Mrs van der Woodsen of the wedding; he can see that now.





***





His week in St. Augustine is drawing to a close.

The week has been slow and languorous, the Florida warmth pleasantly stifling after chill, snow-covered New York. Dan had attempted to take solace in such tranquil surroundings, but he found little.

He and Serena spent their days together, Dan occupied with reading while she swam or sailed. She had not read any of the poems in the book he'd sent prior to his arrival, but she was learning by heart a poem of his own making, a gesture that both surprised Dan and filled him with tender affection. It was a short, silly poem he gave her early in their courtship – in fact, it was the first thing he had ever read to her. Sometimes when her family was being particularly irksome, Serena would tilt closer and recite a few words of it softly in his ear.

The day before he is to depart, Serena proposes that they walk out to an old orange-garden just beyond the town. The sky is a cool, unblemished blue just grazing the emerald treetops, which bear their brightly-colored fruit like weighty Christmas baubles. It is a stunning background for Serena to stand against with her sunny curls and deep blue eyes, a lively figure beside his more dour silhouette. He wants Serena as much as he wants to be like Serena, to be free as she is and not bound by his own dark thoughts.

They take a seat on the grass, trees almost seeming to cocoon them on all sides. Serena releases herself from her hat, hair spilling loose again; though her mother often chides her for wearing her hair in such a way, Dan thinks it suits her best of all. She is like a nymph in a painting and her sylvan charm has never been so at home as in their current setting. Here is where she belongs, nestled in nature.

Being so truly alone is a rarity for them and they turn towards each other almost at once, Dan putting his arm about her as they meet in a kiss. It is the first kiss they've shared since Serena's abortive attempt in the Bass conservatory on the night of their engagement announcement and perhaps that is what leads to their becoming so ardent – or perhaps that is only how it will always go between them.

He knows Serena to be bold but had not suspected she would allow him such liberties, or that she would return his attentions so very eagerly. It would certainly be deemed indecent were they caught kissing as they are in the open air of the orange-garden but that's hardly an indictment to cease. His hands sink into all her lustrous hair as they press closer to one another and he feels Serena's gloved hands curl against his chest a moment before she pushes him back.

She seems almost shaken, which Dan supposes is not unsurprising for a girl who is new to things such as this. "I'm sorry," he begins, "I didn't intend to make you unco–"

"No," Serena says. "No, it isn't that."

His arm slides about her waist once more. "It's only all this waiting that is driving us both so mad," he says, seizing upon the opportunity to plead his case once more. "Don't you understand how I want you for my wife?"

Serena makes a sound of frustration and stands, her arms crossing to wrap around herself. "I'm not sure if I do understand," she says. "Is it – Could it be that you're not certain of continuing to care for me?"

Dan stares at her with astonishment writ upon his features. "How could you ask such a question? I only find it foolish to dream away another year when we could be happy in mere weeks."

Serena's conflicted expression does not change. But then her back straightens and her arms drop to her side; she seems to grow in dignity and determination. "I know the affections of men are not always so honest," she says, rushed and low. "Is it only desire binding you to me?"

Dan is so startled to hear her speak in such a way that he can only stutter, "I – I don't know."

She seems so steady and still, standing there tall with her shoulders thrown back. "If that is so – is there someone else?"

"Someone else?" he repeats, now truly lost. "Someone else between you and me?"

Uncertainty must audibly tinge his voice, for Serena goes on, "Let us speak frankly, as we have not before. Lately I have felt a difference in you, particularly since our engagement has been announced." When Dan starts to protest, she cuts him off with a simple raised hand. "It won't hurt us to talk about it. In fact, I believe we must."

Finally Dan finds his voice. "If any of this were true, would I be imploring you to hasten our marriage? Would I drop all to come and see you?"

For a passive, silent moment she observes him. "You might," she says. "It is one way to settle the question, after all."

As Dan very nearly gapes at her, truly at a loss as to how they came to this during what was otherwise a very nice afternoon, he begins to notice the small fissures in her resolute façade. Perhaps her cheek is a little paler than usual, or her fingers tremble slightly; it is clear she is in some distress, and all he could hope to do is allay her fears.

"You can't think me insensible to my surroundings," Serena says. "Long before you told me that you cared for me, I'd known there was someone else; everyone was talking about it at the time. I remember how sad I felt for her when she was sent away, how sad I felt for you both to think you'd lost a chance at happiness."

Relief courses through him so as to make him dizzy. To think she was afraid because of his old affair with Rachel Carr –

He rises to join her, reaching tentatively for her hands. "Was that it? My dear, that – it was only a mistake of youth, that's all. It was a mistake."

"Mistakes are easy to make," she murmurs. She does not appear comforted. "You are certain? For I couldn't have my happiness made out of a wrong – an unfairness – to somebody else. I want to believe it would be the same for you."

"Of course," Dan says gently, daring to take her fingers more firmly in his. "What sort of life could we build on such foundations?"

Something in the words lets loose a fresh round of agitation and Serena pulls away once more, almost seeming to crumble with emotion. "Dan, I – There is something I have wanted to say for a very long time, though I have been counseled against it. The last thing I would want is to deceive you, or breed secrecy between us as I see between my mother and my father. I fear after I speak you will be finished with me, but I cannot marry you unless you know all."

It is now Dan's turn to feel ill-at-ease. "I promise nothing you could say would result in anything of the sort."

Serena looks at him with doubt. "You know that – that years ago Blair was engaged to Nate Archibald when it broke off very suddenly, and she married the Count. I know the common story is that it was Blair who broke it for that reason, but – but it isn't so. Their engagement broke off because of me."

"Because of you?" Dan echoes slowly.

"Because I allowed…" She clears her throat. "Because Nate and I engaged in…intimacies that were meant to wait for marriage." Before he can react to this, she continues swiftly, "It was nothing I set out to do, it only – it felt as though – as though it were a kind of natural extension of our friendship, though I realize with what poor judgment I acted. Blair's heart was broken. She did not forgive me for many years and in a way I fear she never will entirely –"

"It appears," Dan starts, though he takes a stagnant pause, so truly caught off guard that he doesn't have the faintest idea what to say, "that I ought to be asking you if there is someone else."

"There isn't," Serena says insistently, hands now reaching for his numb ones. "I could never – My mother, when she discovered the truth, wanted us to marry but I couldn't, I had already hurt Blair so much, I couldn't take that from her also."

"Years have passed," Dan says. "A divorce would go against public opinion, surely, but if you feel yourself in any way pledged to Nate, don't give him up on my account."

The words visibly wound her and she flinches. "There is no pledge," she says. "No obligation – Such cases don't always present themselves so simply. It was –" Her voice seems to catch. "It was lust. It was only that. Besides, it was not –" And now her face is growing redder, her eyes shining wetly. "It was not only Nate. In the intervening years, my time abroad…" She trails off but when no response from Dan is forthcoming, she goes on. "My mother told me no good man would ever want me after all I've done but you're so truly good, Dan, and you do – or I hope you still do."

Even in the fog of this revelation, Dan feels a thread of revulsion for Lily van der Woodsen. To condemn a girl as genuine and sweet as Serena, especially having lived as Lily herself had –

It occurs to Dan that this is most likely why it took so long for Serena to marry and why he was even considered for her at all, if her family thinks as she says. But Dan had never heard an unkind word against her and, though there were sometimes comments on her supposed flirtatiousness, such claims as she is making certainly never circulated amongst the gossipers. Serena is much beloved, so if there was any hint of disreputable behavior, New York would have feasted upon it.

At the thought, the seed of revulsion takes root: how do any of them have any right, really, to cast aspersions? To some degree or other, they are all guilty of behavior that violates a set of rules put in place by – well, by who? By God? By all those ancient families? Dan doesn't know the source of their implicit code, only that he has found it contemptible his entire life and that ought not to change now; if anything, it should be cemented. Serena's virtues are not diminished for having behaved like any of the young men of Dan's set – for having behaved as Dan himself had.

He only wonders that Nate never revealed a hint of this. If any trust is to suffer after today, it may well be Dan's trust in Nate.

"Please, Dan," she says. "Tell me if you're finished with me."

"I am not finished with you," he says quietly. "As I told you I would not be."

Hope swells in her eyes. "You forgive me?"

"There is nothing to forgive," Dan says. "I cannot pretend I am not shocked, however…the injury is not mine. I hope not to be a hypocrite by castigating you when I have long expressed belief in each woman's right to her liberty. You know I have no great love for conventionalities." Though he bows to them again and again.

Serena flushes now with joy but still hesitates beside him, so Dan bends to kiss her once more in consolation. On her lips he tastes her silently-shed tears and it takes a moment for her to relax in his arms. This embrace does not possess the passion of the first and Serena ends up pressing her face to his neck as she releases a small, relieved sob. He runs a hand lightly over her hair.

"There," he says. "If there's no one and nothing between us, let us no longer delay; marry me, Serena, marry me quickly."

But conversation has been effectively exhausted for the afternoon, so her only reply is a tightening of her arms around him.





***





Upon arriving home, Dan scarcely has time to remove his coat before Jenny is bounding up to announce, "The Countess called on us while you were away!"

Dan sets his hat down. "Oh?"

Jenny nods with restrained excitement. Having any gossip to relay simply thrills her. "She had on a black velvet basque with jet buttons and a green muff and green feathers in her hat." Dan notes that today Jenny is wearing her green velvet dress and she has tucked a cluster of black feathers into the sweep of her hair. "She came alone on Sunday; even Dad was home, and of course we weren't expecting anyone – it was pure luck the fire was even lit in the drawing-room! Somehow she had the idea you were ill, though we all told her you were away."

Jenny watches him expectantly for some reaction or explanation but Dan only asks, "Is that the reason she called?"

He doesn't wait for her to answer before he goes into the sitting-room, where their Mother is alone at her reading. Jenny follows doggedly.

"No, she said she wanted to know us because you'd been so kind to her," Jenny says. "Do you know she even remembered the dress I wore to the masque she hosted all those years ago –"

Dan takes a seat beside his mother, interrupting Jenny's chatter to ask, "What did you think of her?"

His mother is not one for quick judgments, which sets her apart from the rest of the family, and she takes a long moment to make a pronouncement now. "I found her a little cold," she admits. "But I suppose I was expecting someone more in the mold of dear Serena."

"Ah," he says, "they're not alike."

For a moment he considers waiting until Jenny has gone to sleep and telling his mother what Serena spoke of to him in the orange-grove – for though it was the truth when he spoke of his belief in her liberty, the admission is still weighing on him. He doesn't fear recrimination from his mother but all the same, the idea of breaking Serena's confidence is abhorrent to him. So he only smiles and bids goodnight to both women, citing his own exhaustion as reason enough to disappear into his study.

The following night finds him passing by the club on his way home from work instead of going inside, afraid or just unwilling of meeting Nate inside.

He knows Nate would have married Serena had she been willing. Perhaps that is what bothers him most of all: how altered the outcome of his life might be had things progressed differently.

Almost a week into Dan's return, he finally brings himself to visit Mrs Celia Rhodes. He has been entrusted with several familial messages to relay to her but found himself faltering when it came time to call, unable to do so without tasting hypocrisy like something sour in the back of his throat. How to look her in the eyes now, this iron-willed matriarch with her charming dishonesty? How to be funny and pleasant when he is more aware than ever before of the duplicity of everyone in his life?

But the visit is something he simply has to do, and Dan is quickly becoming an expert at the things one must do regardless of one's personal wishes. In the end it is not altogether difficult, for Mrs Rhodes is entertaining and personable, and seems to like him for no reason Dan will ever understand. His sympathy is also sparked by how much frailer the old woman appears each time he sees her: she is a mere wisp of a woman lost in a swath of expensive skirts and luxurious jewels – though her eyes are sharp as ever, observing all with supreme amusement.

"I pleaded my case once more but feel I made no progress," Dan admits to her. "Serena's mother still doesn't wish us to be married in April, and I still don't see the use of wasting another year."

Mrs Rhodes purses her lips in something resembling a tiny smile. "My Lily is ruled by decades-old pettiness," she says, "Though I shan't elaborate for fear of spilling all our secrets… They want so badly to pretend they were never young and in a hurry – all my children are terribly impetuous and they all try to deny it. I used to think not one of them took after me but my dear Blair, though she's proven herself susceptible to the old family ways in the end." She doesn't seem particularly critical, though, and it seems clear she still favors Blair for the girl she used to be, the one who was almost as good at playing the game as Celia Rhodes herself. But then, with a malicious little twinkle in her eye, the old lady asks irrelevantly, "Now, why in the world didn't you marry my little Blair?"

Dan laughs. "For one thing, she wasn't there to be married."

"No, to be sure; more's the pity. And now it's too late – her life is finished." And that was pure dismissal, pure carelessness; he has seen how far affection stretches when reputation is on the line.

Grown suddenly uncomfortable, Dan clears his throat and presses, "Can't I persuade you to use your influence with the van der Woodsens, Mrs Rhodes? I wasn't made for long engagements."

She gives him another wry smile but before she can reply, there is a rustle at the doorway and Madame Grimaldi enters, removing her hat as she does. Something about the way she looks sets loose a wave of nostalgia in Dan. Perhaps it is the playfulness of her outfit, which is more in line with the fashions of her youth than she has dressed of late. She wears a white polonaise patterned with deep yellow polka dots over the torso and stripes at the sleeves and collar. A matching velvet bow curls festively at her throat, and the same yellow ochre is echoed in her underskirt. It's a color that sets her off wonderfully, drawing out the warmth in her brown eyes and hair. There is something about that color on her.

"My dear, you look just like springtime," Mrs Rhodes exclaims with pleasure. "Does she not, Mr Humphrey?"

"Indeed," Dan agrees with a nod, accepting Madame Grimaldi's hand as she passes him to kiss her grandmother's cheek. She looks pretty and gay, utterly unfettered.

"Do you know what I was just saying to Mr. Humphrey, my darling?" Mrs Rhodes continues, "I said to him: 'Now why didn't you marry my little Blair?'"

Blair is smiling when she looks at Dan, but there is something vacuous about it, a smile that telegraphs nothing more than politeness. "And what did he answer?"

"I leave you to find that out!" the old woman laughs. "He's been down to Florida to see his sweetheart."

Madame Grimaldi nods. "Yes; I called on your mother to ask where you'd gone. I sent a note that you didn't answer and I was afraid you were ill."

There is nothing to glean from her tone except civility. Dan apologizes, explaining that he left in quite a rush and intended to write from St. Augustine. This makes her laugh.

"And of course once you were there you never thought of me again!"

No, Dan realizes, it is not civility – it is indifference, cool and calculated. If she still needed him, she was determined not to let him see it. For some reason the thought stings and he loses his words, no confirmation or denial of her statement leaving his lips. He had not thought of her, and he had thought of her all the while.

"Someone thought of you, my dear," Mrs Rhodes interjects, that same malicious twinkle back in her eyes. "Do look at the card attached to the flowers there."

Madame Grimaldi turns, seeming to notice for the first time an impressively large bouquet of crimson roses and purple pansies beaming from the sideboard. At once her demeanor changes, though it is difficult to pinpoint how, exactly: she seems to become taller, her limbs tight with tension and resolve.

"This is not my home," she says carefully, but there is danger lurking in her tone, "Why would flowers be sent to me here?"

"Perhaps someone did not know where to find you," Mrs Rhodes remarks blithely. "Or thought they might have more luck this way!"

Blair gravitates towards the roses, picks up the card, and scans it absently before tearing it to pieces. "Who is ridiculous enough to send me a bouquet?" she snaps. "I am not going to a ball; I am not engaged to be married. I suppose some people are always ridiculous."

She grips the vase and exits in a great hurry, calling for the maid impatiently. Dan watches the incident with bemusement, but before he can inquire as to the source of her displeasure, Mrs Rhodes says, "We do owe you do much for your part in deterring Blair from her ridiculous divorce."

Dan wishes people would stop thanking him for that. "I simply gave her a legal opinion, as she asked me to," he says stiffly.

She smiles again; it appears less pleasant each time. "Little did you know that at that very moment I was being appealed to from the other side of the Atlantic! The Count himself asks me to speak on his behalf; he wants to take her back, though of course only on her own terms."

Dan can only stare at her with horror, though she greets it with her typical humor.

"Don't look so scandalized, Mr. Humphrey! I don't defend poor Louis; he doesn't defend himself. He casts himself at her feet. He has been writing me these last weeks, utterly desolate."

"Writing you?" Dan repeats blankly. "I – Has the Countess seen the letters?"

She shakes her head. "It will take time. You know my Blair as well as I – she can be haughty, intractable, unforgiving."

Appalled, Dan says flatly, "To forgive is one thing, but to return to that hell –"

"Ah, yes, so she describes it, the sensitive girl," Mrs Rhodes says, gaze drifting towards the door Blair had left through. "But in my description of her I neglected something important, wouldn't you agree, Daniel? Since her youth, she has been a great connoisseur of beautiful things, a devotee to luxury; do you know what she is giving up? Those roses are mere trifles – the Count has acres of them in his terraced gardens at Nice! Jewels – historic pearls, the Sobieski emeralds – sables, gowns. She was simply surrounded by art and beauty – pictures, priceless furniture, music, conversation. I myself have seen the opulence in which she lived and there's no equal to it here, no comparison! She tells me she is not thought handsome in New York – her portrait has been painted nine times; the greatest artists in Europe have begged for the privilege. Are these things nothing? Not to mention the remorse of an adoring husband."

Again Dan seems to taste something sour, though perhaps the word for it now is akin to resentment. Things, things, things, always things; always he is reminded of things and their cost, things that he himself could never afford, signs of status that only count when purchased with money older than death. Dan had grown up wanting only some books, and comfort for his family; now acquired, his wealth will still never be equal to that which came long before it.

Blair did once crave all of those things. He sees that her family assumes she will be easily tempted again.

"She knows nothing yet of all of this?" he asks.

Mrs Rhodes touches a finger to her lips. "Nothing directly – but does she suspect? I bring it to you because we all know Blair admires you, listens to your opinions. You ask for my support with Serena, and I hope that in return it would be possible to count on your support here, with Blair, once more."

"To convince her to go back?" he says, and hears in his own voice the dangerous tension there was in Blair's.

"Marriage is still marriage," Mrs Rhodes answers lightly. "My granddaughter is still a wife."

"I would never advise her to do such a thing," he says tersely and then takes his leave, though he runs into a returning Madame Grimaldi in the entrance hall. Anger has lent color to her face, but she appears otherwise calmed.

"What do you think of me in a temper?" she muses, then, "Are you going?"

He wants to say that in a temper she is so reminiscent of her old self that it could be no time has passed; somehow the thought comforts him. Instead he asks, "When can I see you?"

She gives him a studied, inscrutable look. "Whenever you like," she says finally. "But it must be soon if you want to see the little house again. I'm moving next week."

A pang shoots through Dan. He has grown inexpressibly fond of the little house, seeing it as something of a bridge from his past to his present. He had spent only a few brief hours there but they felt so important, so distinct. "Tomorrow evening, then?"

"Tomorrow evening," she agrees. "But early; I'm going out."

The picture of her in her yellow-and-white dress is fixed in his mind's eye as he makes his way home. It stirs something in him (her temper, her anger-flushed cheeks, the golden ochre of her gown), a fleeting memory of older days.

A ball. He had been fifteen, perhaps; it was hard to recall. The Humphreys' newfound wealth had made Dan into something of a novelty, but his tongue-tied uncertainty took the varnish right off and most everybody tired of his conversation quickly. The only person who had danced with him was Serena, but she danced with everyone.

Serena was the belle of the night, as she usually was, in a glittering golden dress dripping tinsel. She looked like a fairy queen, like she had been touched by Midas; every light she passed beneath caught in all that gold, illuminating her impossible beauty. She smiled at Dan as they danced but her gaze pulled elsewhere. The warmth of her hand in his burned him. He loved her then. With one touch, he loved her.

After their dance, Dan lingered at the edges of the room. He was a spectator, as always, and it was only as a spectator that he could enjoy these people and their world. He could enjoy them as he did one of his father's shows: as artificial and costumed performers merely imitating real life. None of them understood a thing about reality, Dan felt certain. But still, there amongst them, included and excluded at once, he felt a kind of yearning. He would not recognize it at envy for many years, so it only made him angry, and impotent in his anger.

Blair had been Serena's pale echo. Ochre had been the color of her gown, deep dull yellow embroidered with gold thread, and though it warmed her fair skin, it didn't set her aflame like Serena. Blair was mere candlelight, appropriate and pretty but not set apart. She did not wear Nate Archibald's ring, not yet.

A boy their age asked her to dance and Blair laughed at him, said something cutting with cruelty glittering in her eyes. Nearby, Dan's jaw had tensed. It was a genuine surprise that she noticed.

"Do you disapprove?" Blair called. "I thought it my right to refuse whoever I wanted."

"I don't dispute your freedom, Miss Waldorf," Dan said. "Only your tone."

"Ah," she said. "Then I don't argue your judgment, just your choice of tie."

His frown deepened. "Does your expensive education not include etiquette?"

She laughed, but he thought, as he always thought in her presence, that there was something very mean about it. That was her most definitive quality in his eyes: she was far from kind. "How scathing, Mr. –" She paused. "My apologies, I have absolutely no idea who you are."

"Humphrey," he said shortly. "Scathing – what a paradoxical comment coming from you."

She rolled her eyes. "Mr. Humphrey, if you insist upon being so sour at every dance, perhaps you ought not to come at all. It seems to me that you spend a good deal of your time at events you disapprove of."

"It's not the place I take issue with," Dan muttered. "It's the treatment."

"What does that mean?"

"Surely you're intelligent enough to figure it out."

She smiled, again rather meanly. "Ah, don't ask me. I don't speak your language."





***





As it had the last time, the Countess' neighborhood fills Dan with an unreachable nostalgia. It is not the place where he grew up but it is close enough to both the age-tinted memory and the future he once thought he might have that it pains him a little to walk the streets. It seems sweeter to him than the home he knows he will have, chosen for him and Serena by her parents and paid for by them too. Here he can taste a certain kind of freedom – one of choice – and he understands why the Countess might've decided to come her, antithetical as it might seem to her former tastes.

Wisteria hangs prettily over her doorway and Dan reaches up spontaneously to break off a little sprig and tuck it into his pocket. Tonight he feels odd and restless. It occurs to him that it is not only tonight; he has felt this way for a very long time.

As before, Dorota ushers him in to an empty sitting room. "Dressing," she explains, waving towards the upper floors before excusing herself. Dan is rather glad for the moment alone to familiarize himself with the little room, which he has grown so fond of and will not see again after tonight.

"Dan?"

At her voice, Dan turns, finding Blair standing in the doorway with the very slightest of smiles. "Mr. Humphrey," she amends, stepping into the room and holding out a hand for his. For the second time that week, he is reminded of the long-ago ball; even now she is reminiscent of it in a dress that glimmers gently like the flickering candles decorating the room. Her hair is a little softer than she usually wears it and the whole image altogether is both subdued and mature. She is a woman, no longer the arrogant girl she once was, though that girl is there too if one looks to see her, there in the way Blair carries herself: shoulders set and head high, the way she used to challenge rooms full of rivals.

"Countess," he says in answer. The atmosphere feels very hushed suddenly.

They sit and share cigarettes, making pointless small talk for a few minutes until Dan says, "May I ask you a question?"

"If it's a good one," she says.

Dan is not in a particularly humorous mood, though he likes to see it on her. "Your grandmother…" but then he falters.

"Ah, I knew she'd said something about me," Blair says. "Well?"

"It's only…" Again, he hesitates. "I only wondered if she is always truthful."

Blair considers this. "In almost everything she says, there's something true and something untrue," she says, and half-smiles again. "I believe I learned that from her. Why do you ask?"

It is difficult for him to be so blunt about this particular topic, but he is very conscious of how short their evening is; any minute her carriage will arrive to carry her away. Dan wonders where she is going tonight. He hadn't asked, and now the time is too short for such trivial questions. He often wonders how she occupies her time. "The other day, she said – she intimated that Count Grimaldi has asked her to – well, to persuade you to return to him."

Her lips purse, but aside from that she does not react.

"You knew, then?"

Still silent, she takes a long, slow drag and then taps some ash onto a little dish. "Granny had hinted… It is to be expected."

What a thing to expect! "She believes you will go back," he says, almost angry – angry that Mrs Rhodes would think such a thing, and angry that Blair expects such a thing to be thought.

The Countess looks at him with a restrained expression that he cannot read. "Many cruel things have been believed of me," she says. "Some of them were true."

"Blair…" he says (has he said her name since he left her at Skuytercliff? Had he allowed himself to?).

"I suspect Granny feels I am to blame in the whole thing," she muses. "Perhaps I am. My husband believed I loved him, but I wanted his title and his money and his admiration. I thought all of those things together were next to love, but I was mistaken." She arches an eyebrow. "You're shocked."

"At your candor."

She gives a small, heartless shrug. "I deceived him, and myself too," she says. "Did I deserve his cruelty then?"

"No," Dan says with firm immediacy. "And anyone who would seek to return you to such a situation is a fool, and a callous one at that."

Blair studies him for a long moment during which Dan does not look away, as though to further convince her of his conviction. "You are kind, Mr. Humphrey," she says finally. "Serena is lucky. And I know she adores you – I was surprised you couldn't convince her about the wedding. Serena is the last person to be slave to such rules and superstitions."

There is a faint, twisting irony in her voice. Dan cannot source it.

Agitation courses through him once more and he rises to stand at the mantle, hand curling over one of the little porcelain figures there. He is so very conscious of their numbered minutes, and how fast those minutes are slipping away.

"When I went to see her – to see Serena, we had a frank talk," he says. "Our first. She confessed a great many things to me. She thinks my impatience a bad sign. Due to some – some events in her history, it led her to think that I…that perhaps I want to marry her at once to get away from someone that I care for more."

He can feel Blair's gaze on him but he doesn't turn to meet it. "If she thinks that, then why isn't she in a hurry too? I would be, in her place."

Dan shakes his head slightly. "She wants time, to give me time to –"

"Time to give her up for the other woman?"

"If I want to."

A breath of silence. Blair says, "How noble."

He imagines he can hear the irony in her voice again. "Yes, but it's ridiculous."

"Because you don't care for anyone else," she says evenly.

"Because I don't mean to marry anyone else," Dan corrects.

There is another long interval, so long that Dan finally turns and, catching his eye, Blair says, "This other woman, does she love you?"

"There's no other woman," he says impatiently. "At least not who she was thinking of –"

There is the clatter of horses' hooves on cobblestones; her carriage is here. Blair straightens, reaching for her fan and gloves mechanically. Her absent eyes seek the window but she does not stand. "I suppose I must be going."

"To Mrs. Dickens'?"

"Yes." She gives him another smile, the one that doesn't show in her eyes. "I must go where I am invited, or I should be too lonely."

Their time together has run out but that only makes Dan more desperate to extend it. He wants to keep her here just another moment, another hour; he eyes the gloves and fan she holds as though he could compel her to drop them.

"Serena guessed the truth," he says quietly. "There is another woman – just not the one she thought."

Blair is very still, her face turned so he can only see her profile against the pale blue silk wall. After a moment he sits down beside her and takes her hand, uncurling her fingers so the gloves and fan fall from them. That seems to jolt her into action, for she finally does stand, putting the width of the room between them.

"Don't make love to me," she rebukes. "Too many people have done that."

Dan flushes, standing too. "I'm not," he says. "I never have. But you are the woman I would have married if it had been possible for either of us."

"Possible?" she repeats with a sudden, astonished laugh. And again, this time scoffing, "Possible? You say that when it's you who has made it impossible?"

Dan stares at her. "I've made it impossible?"

Clawing through her cool disbelief is deep, passionate outrage. "You!" she accuses again. "You made me give up divorcing – you spoke to me of sacrificing myself to spare my family the scandal! And because you were to be my family, for your sake – your sake and Serena's, I did what you asked!" Hand on her mouth as that mirthless laughter sparks again, "I've made no secret of having done it for you!"

The air between them has never before felt quite so thick. Dan is nearly gaping at her. "The things in your husband's letter –"

"I had nothing to fear from that letter!" she snaps. "I have experienced the whole sweep of it, I have nothing left to fear – except bringing more scandal on my family – on you and Serena."

Lost and unable to speak, Dan only looks at her. Color is high in her cheeks; anger has brightened her countenance, and tears shine in her eyes. The silence seems to ring in Dan's ears and he doesn't know what to say.

But then she buries her face in her hands, a small sob tearing its way from her throat, and Dan is spurred into action. He's at her side immediately, briefly uncertain before he draws her into an embrace.

"Blair," he murmurs, hand curving around the back of her head. "Nothing's done that can't be undone. I'm still free, and you're going to be."

Her crying is soft and noiseless but he can feel it in her body, the way her shoulders shake. His fingers press to her wet cheek and his lips follow, a small alleviating kiss that she turns unexpectedly to meet. If Dan thought the room airless before, he was mistaken; there is nothing except the sweetness of her mouth against his, the convulsive grip of her fingers in his coat. It amazes him that they have not kissed before this moment. He understands now why she is always keeping the length of the room between them, though distance only breeds complications and touching her has made everything so simple.

But then Blair pushes him aside, moving past him to perch on the edge of the sofa. He puts a hand to his lips.

"You know this doesn't alter things," she says with resignation. "Not in the least."

"It alters everything for me," he says incredulously. "Do you see me marrying Serena after this?"

"You say that because that is what one says in situations like this, not because it's true. In truth, it's too late to do anything but what we have both already decided on."

"We've no right to lie to other people, or to ourselves," he says with certainty. Then, "Serena is ready to give me up."

It's Blair's turn to be incredulous. "What, three days after you entreated her on your knees to hasten your marriage?"

Dan presses his lips together. "She confessed a great many things to me," he says. "I know I'm not the first she – loved. She would understand better than any –"

"Ah," Blair interrupts softly, looking away. "Now am I to do to her what she did to me? There was a time when I would have done exactly that, and just for that reason. But not now."

"I don't understand you," he says.

Dan thinks he now recognizes the expression on her face when she looks at him: a kind of wry affection shot through with sadness. "I know," she says. "You don't understand because you haven't yet guessed how you've changed things for me. I hadn't even known all you'd done, not until Granny blurted it out one day. I was – I was perfectly unconscious of just how much I was disliked, it seems people refused to even meet me at dinner. I found out afterwards how you'd made your mother speak to Cyrus Rose on my behalf; and how you'd insisted on announcing your engagement at the Basses' ball so I would have two families standing behind me instead of one. New York, to me, was simply coming home. I thought things would be just as they were, as they had been once. It was naïve, but…" She gives a slight shrug. "And you… You see, once I had been so very good at all of this, at being one of them. But even before I learned of their distaste for me, I found it hard to slip into old ways. It's like an old dance whose steps I remember but cannot make my feet perform. And you, better than anyone, you knew that. You knew because I treated you once how they treat me now. You knew because you were not born into this world. You understood me. You could see the disloyalty and cruelty and injustice of the world and you hated the things it asks of one. You hated the manipulations and the dishonesty. That was what I'd never known before."

Her speech calms her, bringing back the new composure she returned to New York with, the composure of a woman who has nothing left to fear. He sits beside her and slips his hand into hers; Blair covers his hand with both of her own, entreating him with a gaze so warm that it's a wonder anyone could ever think her cold.

"Don't let us undo what you've done," she says, softly urging. "I can't go back now to that other way of thinking. I can't love you unless I give you up."

His only thoughts are juvenile and selfish. He wants to take her in his arms again and sweep away her arguments with a kiss but the space between them is once again impassable. He bends to press his mouth to her knuckles, the cool metal of her ring beneath his lips.

The sound of the bell startles them both and they release each other, turning to the door for the cause of this new interruption. After a moment Dorota enters; Blair dismisses her carriage for the evening, saying she will not go out; Dorota nods and hands Blair a telegram that must have just arrived. Blair reads it quickly, expressionless, and then hands it to Dan.

It is dated from St. Augustine.

It reads: Granny's telegram successful! Papa and Mama agree marriage after Easter. Am telegraphing Dan. Too happy for words and love you dearly. Your Serena.

Half an hour later Dan finds a similar yellow envelope waiting for him in the hall table of his home. The message inside is similar but he reads it again and again in the dim hall light until he becomes distracted by Jenny's loitering figure on the stairs. No item of his correspondence is safe from Jenny.

"I waited up on purpose," Jenny says. "I hope there's no bad news?"

He seems to see her through a fog.

"Dan," she says, "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," he says finally. For some strange reason he laughs. "Nothing's the matter, except I'm going to be married in a month."

Jenny nearly jumps and, with an exclamation of happiness, darts down the stairs to throw her arms around him. "Oh Dan, how wonderful! I'm so glad! It's just as you wanted! But, Dan, why do you keep on laughing? Do hush, or you'll wake the house!"

F I C
and sometimes she loved me too :: gossip girl, dan/blair. post s5 au.
with the cruelest of intentions :: gossip girl, blair/serena/dan. cruel intentions au.
the age of dissonance (4/9) :: gossip girl, dan/blair, dan/serena. the age of innocence au.


M I X E S
call me royal blue :: nate archibald
pretty on the inside :: georgina sparks


U P D A T E S
• be my heater, be my loverwill no longer be updated
• considering holding a fic exchange!!!

Hello my darlings. Since my poll generated a nice amount of interest, welcome to:



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this is a placeholder but also another chance for me to peer pressure people into signing up

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