again and again and again
Dan, Serena, Blair.
4300 words. PG.
sequel/companion piece to dear so-and-so
Summary: You said the anger would come back just as the love did.
Note: For![]()
sing_song_sung for the summertime fic exchange. Just crossposting bc that's how I do.
In the winter the house looks made of gingerbread with snow like frosting topping the roof. Serena makes cookies shaped like stars for her children, because she knows how to do things like that now. Every year she and Dan stay up late on Christmas Eve wrapping gifts and drinking eggnog; it's her favorite tradition, one that started by accident because they always procrastinated on the wrapping. For years, Dan would kiss her under the mistletoe.
In the summer they keep all the windows open and drink lemonade on the green grass of the backyard. The dog sleeps in the shade of a deck chair. Serena constantly has to stop her infant son from eating daisies, and Dan teaches their daughter to ride her pink bike down the tree-lined street.
Serena's children have the kind of life she always wanted her children to have. They pick blackberries off brambles and take a yellow bus to school and their father would rather die than leave them.
It's enough. For a very long time, it's enough.
Their daughter's name is Annabelle. As soon as she's born Serena and Dan immediately become the worst kind of new parents. It's as though no one else in the world has ever had a baby before; to them, Annabelle is nuclear fusion, universal gravitation, the first light bulb. Serena instagrams baby feet until Blair sends her a cease and desist text (but then does a few more anyway, for good measure). Dan sends out mass emails practically every time Annabelle blinks. Sometimes they let her sleep right in the center of their king-sized bed, sitting side by side and watching her avidly, waiting for her to breathe or sneeze or clutch her tiny fingers in a fist.
They had the name picked out and stenciled on a wall of the nursery before she was born. Serena plucked it out of a baby book based purely on superficiality; it's a pretty name, a name with music in it. Serena likes that no one in her family was ever named Annabelle. There's something freeing about that.
Sometimes Serena finds herself murmuring it softly, like a lullaby, into her baby's ear as she rocks to sleep. Annabelle, Annabelle, Annabelle, a spell to calm fussy little girls before bed. Dan is more prolific, and his quiet, gentle recitation of Annabel Lee becomes something of a tradition too. Nothing puts Annabelle to sleep faster or sweeter, especially once she's a little older, especially after nightmares. Serena enjoys it too, drifting off to the faint rhythm of Dan's voice.
Annabelle is a daddy's girl from day one and Serena doesn't have it in her to be bothered by this – not at first, anyway. She's so happy her daughter can have that. All her life she knew if she ever had a daughter, she'd want her daughter to have that.
It's different when Annabelle is older. Serena has so many petty resentments then that daddy's girl isn't even the cherry topper.
Their son is named Scott. The choice is all Dan, the name snatched from between F. and Fitzgerald. Six years separate Scott from Annabelle, and she is determinedly responsible for him in a way that makes Serena smile. When they bring Scott home, all of three days old and teeny-tiny, Annabelle sits right down with him and commences trying to teach him to read.
"That's my girl," Dan says.
If Annabelle is Dan's, then Scott is Serena's.
Annabelle is always a head taller than the other kids in her class. Her hair is long and blonde and wild; her eyes are a deep dark blue. But if comparisons are to be made, that's where they end. Annabelle grows up to be reserved and sarcastic, poised and controlled. Scott is different. Scott is her baby. He's so quiet and kind that sometimes he reminds her of Eric as a kid; it's less easy to admit, but sometimes he reminds her of herself as a kid, before everything.
The last thing Serena wants is to become the everything that splits her children's lives into before and after. She would do anything before she let that happen.
Everyone always jokes that sex is the first thing to go, but with Serena and Dan, it's the conversation. They can go weeks without saying anything of value to each other. They rely instead on the old domestic script: who's going to get Annabelle from soccer, what are they going to have for dinner, see you later honey don't be too late!
After a while she begins to wonder what they used to talk about, but all she can think of are the things they were too afraid to say.
The only time she still feels close to him is in bed, pressing a kiss to his mouth that she's always afraid he won't return. But he does. Even with two tiny children and a house to take care of and a dog and Dan's work – even with all the little things that get in the way, they always make time to reach for each other in the dark of their bedroom. Or Serena reaches, and Dan doesn't turn away.
She never goes into his office or reads the notebook he keeps by the bed. She never snoops on his phone or his computer. She makes her trust in him a forceful, real thing by refusing to admit that there is any doubt at all in her heart or her mind. Dan doesn't give her a reason to worry. He's never late coming home. He never misses her calls. He doesn't even go on book tours because he doesn't want to be away from the kids that long.
Serena's mother likes to tell her that she's lucky, with a kind of wistfulness in her voice that Serena feels in her bones.
But Serena hasn’t forgotten the look on Dan's face when Blair got married.
There was a line in Inside that always stuck with Serena, even though she only read it once and tries not to think about it much. She's the kind of girl who never laughs, it said, only smiles – very carefully.
Serena remembers a Blair who got tipsy on mimosas and giggled with her face against Serena's collarbone. Serena remembers a Blair gasping with laughter in pillow fort in fourth grade. But Blair hasn't been that way in a very long time, and certainly not with Serena.
Once they went to a gala in New York as a favor to Nate. Serena was surprisingly happy to catch up with her old crowd, at least for a night, but at some point she looked up and saw Dan and Blair standing together by the bar. They didn't often speak these days; if Blair called and Dan picked up, he'd hand the phone over to Serena with barely a word. But they were talking then, very politely. Dan put his hand on Blair's lower back and said something and Blair laughed, her head just tipping back.
It felt like being punctured.
Serena could never quite forget that either.
Sometimes Serena and Dan spend summers in the city, a kind of backwards logic that appeals to them. They see their families, they make the rounds, and then they retreat back to their Connecticut cottage gulping huge breaths of relief. New York is dangerous ground for them, even if they'd never admit as much.
Serena makes Blair dismiss her nanny for a day and go to the park – the two of them, Annabelle, Scott, and Blair's daughter Nicolette. It's a good day, the kids all get along, and Serena is having a pretty good time. It's not like old times; it couldn't be. But it's okay, and that's all she needs these days.
Then a woman comes over and says to Blair, "Your children are beautiful. Are they twins?" She points to Scott and Nic, who are currently laughing as they chase each other around one of those painted horses stuck on massive springs.
Blair smiles, waving it off easily. "No, cousins," she says with a conspiratorial look at Serena. Serena smiles back, but inside she feels deeply cold.
Scott was born three days before Nicolette; Serena and Blair have some kind of timing. It had been a childish dream of sorts that they would grow up and have daughters together, but they kept getting the genders mixed up, Annabelle and Henry then Scott and Nic. And while Serena's children just tied her more deeply to Dan, Blair's seemed to push her and Chuck apart. Their marriage ended because of Nicolette, or at the very least it ended right before Nic was born.
The rumor is that Nicolette is the product of an affair, though as far as Serena knows, the contender for her father was never definitively determined. Chuck always had another girl in the wings, for all he pretended to be discrete, but there had never been a whisper about Blair before she got pregnant. Serena doesn't know the truth. She never asked. She doesn't ask Blair things like that anymore.
It seemed like confirmation enough when Nicolette was left out of the custody battle.
Serena finds herself watching Nic sometimes. That day at the park, after the woman went on her way, Serena's gaze kept being drawn to Blair's daughter running around with her son, thinking they very easily could be twins. They're same age, the same height, they have the same dark curly hair. It's difficult to tell because Nic looks just like Blair with her big brown doe eyes, her high cheekbones and pale skin like a little porcelain doll. She looks more like Scott's sister than Annabelle does.
Henry and Annabelle don't play well together (memorably, once, Annabelle became so irritated by him that she threw his teddy bear out the penthouse window. They'd punished her, but Serena imagined Dan was secretly very proud) but that isn't true of the rest of the children. Annabelle bosses the younger ones around with great satisfaction, but is especially protective of little Nicolette. They are best friends despite their age difference, sisters almost.
She would never say so, but sometimes Serena can't stand the sight of those two little girls together.
Serena has one affair, just one.
It lasts the better part of a year. It's not a year that differs from any other at first glance. Serena is not any more exhausted or any less loved, but the affair happens anyway, in the way things have often just happened to her.
His name is Ian and he's Annabelle's soccer coach. The first thing that strikes Serena is how very tall he is, much taller than her, so much so that she has to shade her eyes from the glare of the sun to look up at him. For Serena who is always taller than her boyfriends, five ten in flats and over six in her highest heels, this is strangely thrilling.
Ian has broad shoulders and wide, strong hands; he has forearms dotted with freckles that she'll later learn speckle his shoulders and chest too. His eyes are a cool, clear blue and his hair dark red that catches golden in the sunlight. All the moms have crushes on Ian and Serena is no exception.
Flirting is like stretching a long unused muscle. Once they know each other better, Ian teases her about the early days, the way she'd posed and preened. Serena always denies it, but she knows it's true. It is a heady thing to feel like that again, to feel careless and desperate and wanting. She had forgotten what it was like to crave someone like that.
Wanting Dan was different. Her desire for Dan always made her uncharacteristically shy, as though it was embarrassing or shameful to want such innocent things as hand-holding, first dates, flowers. Dan made her feel like a girl in a Norman Rockwell painting. He grounded her, gave her roots, made her real. He was a nice, normal boy who could make her nice and normal too just by loving her, just by deciding to give her his love.
Ian isn't exactly a bad boy or anything, but Serena fucking him in a pizzeria bathroom post soccer game is definitely a bad thing to do. She never thought she'd miss doing things like that, being the fuckup, but it's exciting. It's exciting to have a secret, to meet a beautiful man in covert locations and kiss him like the world's about to end. It's a little vindictive, no denying it, but it's hers.
Almost a year into it, Ian wants her to leave her husband so they can get married. Serena stops seeing him after that.
Once after the divorce, Serena asks Dan if he ever slept with anyone else. "No judging," she adds, more for him than her.
"Nope," he says with a careless shrug. "I didn't."
She levels him with a dubious look. "Never? Not once?"
Dan gives her an odd look in return and says, "No, Serena, not once. Not once in the fourteen years we were married did I cheat on you."
Serena could argue that, but she doesn't. Instead she takes a slow sip of beer and sets her empty bottle back down. "Then I guess that makes you a saint," she says.
The thing Serena misses the most about Blair is Blair.
It's bizarre to stand next to someone who used to live in your skin and think of them as a stranger. It's worse than any lover she's ever lost, worse even than the distance that exists between her and Dan. At least she's still privy to Dan's life; at least she still shares his experiences if not his heart. Blair is foreign where she used to be best beloved, like one of those science fiction stories where an alien takes up residence in someone's body. Serena looks into Blair's eyes now and has no idea at all what is going on behind them. She can't tell the difference between Blair's bullshit and Blair's truth anymore.
She knows she is at least partially responsible for the situation as it is now, which is why the guilt hits her so acutely sometimes. Her guilt lets her be talked into things like traveling to New York for charity galas, or going on expensive joint vacations. She never thinks it's a good idea but she does it anyway out of some kind of misplaced loyalty to the Blair-who-was. And Blair's family is so small now, just her and Nic, that Serena can't help wanting to share hers, misguided as it may be.
So they all go to Spain for three weeks in July not long after Annabelle's twelfth birthday. The kids are crazy excited, but the amount of convincing needed to get Dan on board takes most of the wind out of Serena's sails. He gives her this look while they're arguing, a look that seems to break the fourth wall to say do you have any idea what you're doing?
But Serena does not break character, and she pretends not to know. Eventually Dan gives in and Serena gets Eric and his husband to come along, hoping that might smooth things over a little.
For most of trip Dan and Blair treat each other like ghosts, but near the beginning of the third week they get into a huge fight. Serena is not technically supposed to know about it. Eric and Matt took the kids for the day, so Serena treated herself to a luxurious afternoon nap and woke to the shouting. There was a shatter that indicted Blair must've thrown something but it was impossible to make out anything they were saying. Then silence. Serena lay unmoving in her bed, heart beating very fast, straining for sounds. Eventually Dan came back into the bedroom all huffy and she pretended to be asleep.
The most unsettling part is that the next morning they're almost friendly. Dan is already gone by the time Serena gets up, and she goes downstairs to find him and Blair and the kids having breakfast, planning the day. Nicolette is sitting in his lap explaining something with a very serious look on her small face and a decapitated Barbie in one small hand. Scott listens along intently. Blair has abandoned her plate to work Annabelle's long hair into a braid, lecturing her all the while about proper split end prevention. Annabelle, devoted to her aunt, will probably take each ridiculous word to heart more than she would half of Serena's advice.
Nothing about the picture of them all together should really bother Serena. If anything she should be glad that the trip didn't end in disaster. But even if she won't let the thought form in her mind, her unease is reflected in her body in the lump in her throat, the nervous flutter in her stomach.
Late that night Serena sleeplessly wanders into the kitchen to eat olives or maybe have some wine, anything to distract herself from the low discomfort she's felt all day, and she sees the light is on in Blair's room. The door is half-open and she hears Blair talking quietly, maybe on the phone. Unwillingly, Serena is drawn in.
Blair holds a finger to her lips when Serena enters and continues with her phone conversation. Serena perches on the edge of the bed, drawing her knees up and her robe tight around her. Nicolette is sprawled asleep on one half of the bed, her face completely hidden beneath an unmanageable haze of curls. Serena swallows.
Blair hangs up. "The office is just lost without me," she says, smiling, something charming and light in her voice that only serves to unsettle Serena more deeply.
She opens her mouth to respond in kind, since by now they have small talk down to an impersonal art, but what she blurts out, without meaning to at all, is, "Is Dan Nic's father?"
Blair stares at her. "What?"
"Dan." Now it's surer, more biting, accusatory. "Is he Nicolette's father?"
Blair is still staring at her, and her brows draw together in what appears to be genuine confusion. She wets her lips, says clearly, "Chuck is Nicolette's father."
It's Serena's turn to be struck dumb. Chuck acts like Nicolette doesn't even exist.
Blair's gaze turns towards her sleeping daughter briefly before returning to Serena. "I just – I said Chuck wasn't. So he wouldn't take her away from me." It's practically imperceptible, but there's a little crack in Blair's voice. "Like Henry."
Before Serena can speak, Blair continues, "I was under the impression you knew that."
"No," Serena breathes, a touch helplessly.
"Yes, I see that now," Blair says. She studies Serena. "You really think I would do that? Have your husband's baby and never say a word about it?"
That's the thing: Serena doesn't know what Blair would do, not anymore.
"I just thought…" Serena says, but falters.
"I am aware of what you thought." Blair arches an eyebrow. "I'm not proud of most of the things I've done. But that's not something I would do. Ever."
"I know," Serena says, which sounds absurd, so she amends, "Now."
"I always knew he was yours." Blair pulls away physically now, shifting on the bed until she's closer to Nic, turning away from Serena. It seems like an odd, disconnected statement and she follows it up with another, equally disjointed. "You're a good mother. A much better mother than I am. I was always jealous of that."
Automatically, Serena protests, "B, that's not true."
"Yes it is," Blair says. "You'd never let someone take your child away, would you?"
Serena doesn't know how to answer that.
Serena has always loved her engagement ring, an art deco style vintage ring with an ice blue stone in silver filigree. It probably wasn't very expensive and doesn't stand up next to the icebergs the country club moms all had, but it reminds Serena of her and Dan, so she loves it.
Towards the end, during a fight, she rips it off and throws it at him. It disappears into the land lost things go, never to be found until the day Serena finally moves out of the Connecticut house. She sits there on the floor of what was their master bedroom holding the ring in her hand and cries, more than she probably did in their entire fourteen years together.
They say a lot of awful things to each other in the end. It is like their marriage was an open wound hastily stitched and at some point all the blood and guts came seeping out. She's never sure what tipped their impasse over into all-out war, only that once they started hurling accusations they couldn't seem to stop.
She remembers standing in their room trembling with anger, her hands in tight fists, looking at the man she gave her whole life to. "Why don't you just say it," she says, her voice sounding oddly flat and removed, "Just admit that you still keep that torch burning for her."
Dan sighs with the weight of the world in it. "I was with Blair for three months," he says. "I've been with you since I was sixteen years old. When is it enough?"
Quick, breathless, she answers, "It's not that simple and you know it."
"You think because I had feelings for Blair I was checked out of our marriage the entire time," he says slowly, as though he's waiting for her to correct him. "And I wasn't. That's not true. I love you and the kids, to pretend like I – it's like you don’t respect anything we had –"
"Don't," Serena says, turning away.
"I gave you everything you wanted," Dan says, a mixture of frustration and desperation. "Everything you wanted me to do, I did it. And you're still not happy."
You should be happy is what she hears.
When she doesn't respond, Dan sinks heavily onto the end of the bed. "I can't take this anymore."
Her shoulders draw up, spine tensing. "What does that mean?"
Dan doesn't say anything for a minute, but then sighs. "It means I think we should get a lawyer."
For some reason she never thought it would come to that. However bad things got, she never thought they'd just give up. And hearing him say that –
"Sometimes I really hate you," Serena says, quick and almost a gasp, her knuckles coming up against her mouth, which is twisted in a miserable grimace. She does not want to cry. She would do anything right now if it meant she wouldn't cry.
"Serena," Dan murmurs with a gentleness that makes her want to hit him. "Serena, do you even remember the last time you were happy? Because I don't. I really don't."
A little sob does escape her then. If pressed, Serena could dig up all kind of happiness, brief moments of unmatched perfection that dotted the expanse of their time together, and Dan can't even give her that right now. "So, what, it was all a mistake?"
"That's not what I'm saying." He's trying to be patient, she can tell, but it comes out snappish. He sighs. "I'm sorry. I don't mean that. I only mean – I only mean it hasn't been right for a while and we shouldn't put ourselves through this."
That doesn't make her feel any better. Here it is: the moment it breaks. Annabelle is already growing short with Serena and now she'll definitely hate her. Scott is so young, still a baby, and he'll grow up without the kind of family Serena needs him to have.
"Serena." Dan touches her back softly, his familiar hand sliding up to press comfortingly against the nape of her neck. His other hand finds her wrist to pull her closer. "Serena, I'm so sorry."
"No you're not," Serena says and except for the slight trembling, it's without emotion. She shuts her eyes to take a calming breath, thinks again no you're not, and then turns to kiss him hard, her arms going around his neck. Dan is utterly still for a moment before he gives in, kisses back, holds her close.
She wants to hurt him, somehow. She wants to sink her nails into his skin and draw blood; she wants to break his heart with well-chosen words. But Serena has always been better at hurting herself than hurting others, so all she does is grasp him and kiss him and crave him, one more time if never again.
They end up on her vanity table, all its cluttered miscellany getting knocked over or pushed away. Dan kisses her deeply, pulling at her clothes like maybe he means it. Serena wonders if he has actually loved her since they were sixteen years old, but the thought makes her want to cry again so she pushes it away. Her teeth are near ferocious on his skin, leaving all kinds of marks, but Dan always did like that.
She comes with a shiver like breaking apart, and Dan doesn't come at all. He holds a tight fistful of her hair, says low in her ear, "You never trusted me, you know that, you never did."
Her pulse is still thundering around her body. The injustice of that statement is startling, but then she thinks: no, I never did. He never gave her a reason to.
"I loved you anyway," she says. She grips the back of his shirt so tight, wraps her legs around him. She has never been good at letting go of Dan.
"I know," he says. "I loved you anyway, too."
Serena leaves behind the little house in Connecticut that turns gingerbread in winter and paradise in summer.
All good things come to an end.
Dan, Serena, Blair.
4300 words. PG.
sequel/companion piece to dear so-and-so
Summary: You said the anger would come back just as the love did.
Note: For
sing_song_sung for the summertime fic exchange. Just crossposting bc that's how I do.In the winter the house looks made of gingerbread with snow like frosting topping the roof. Serena makes cookies shaped like stars for her children, because she knows how to do things like that now. Every year she and Dan stay up late on Christmas Eve wrapping gifts and drinking eggnog; it's her favorite tradition, one that started by accident because they always procrastinated on the wrapping. For years, Dan would kiss her under the mistletoe.
In the summer they keep all the windows open and drink lemonade on the green grass of the backyard. The dog sleeps in the shade of a deck chair. Serena constantly has to stop her infant son from eating daisies, and Dan teaches their daughter to ride her pink bike down the tree-lined street.
Serena's children have the kind of life she always wanted her children to have. They pick blackberries off brambles and take a yellow bus to school and their father would rather die than leave them.
It's enough. For a very long time, it's enough.
Their daughter's name is Annabelle. As soon as she's born Serena and Dan immediately become the worst kind of new parents. It's as though no one else in the world has ever had a baby before; to them, Annabelle is nuclear fusion, universal gravitation, the first light bulb. Serena instagrams baby feet until Blair sends her a cease and desist text (but then does a few more anyway, for good measure). Dan sends out mass emails practically every time Annabelle blinks. Sometimes they let her sleep right in the center of their king-sized bed, sitting side by side and watching her avidly, waiting for her to breathe or sneeze or clutch her tiny fingers in a fist.
They had the name picked out and stenciled on a wall of the nursery before she was born. Serena plucked it out of a baby book based purely on superficiality; it's a pretty name, a name with music in it. Serena likes that no one in her family was ever named Annabelle. There's something freeing about that.
Sometimes Serena finds herself murmuring it softly, like a lullaby, into her baby's ear as she rocks to sleep. Annabelle, Annabelle, Annabelle, a spell to calm fussy little girls before bed. Dan is more prolific, and his quiet, gentle recitation of Annabel Lee becomes something of a tradition too. Nothing puts Annabelle to sleep faster or sweeter, especially once she's a little older, especially after nightmares. Serena enjoys it too, drifting off to the faint rhythm of Dan's voice.
Annabelle is a daddy's girl from day one and Serena doesn't have it in her to be bothered by this – not at first, anyway. She's so happy her daughter can have that. All her life she knew if she ever had a daughter, she'd want her daughter to have that.
It's different when Annabelle is older. Serena has so many petty resentments then that daddy's girl isn't even the cherry topper.
Their son is named Scott. The choice is all Dan, the name snatched from between F. and Fitzgerald. Six years separate Scott from Annabelle, and she is determinedly responsible for him in a way that makes Serena smile. When they bring Scott home, all of three days old and teeny-tiny, Annabelle sits right down with him and commences trying to teach him to read.
"That's my girl," Dan says.
If Annabelle is Dan's, then Scott is Serena's.
Annabelle is always a head taller than the other kids in her class. Her hair is long and blonde and wild; her eyes are a deep dark blue. But if comparisons are to be made, that's where they end. Annabelle grows up to be reserved and sarcastic, poised and controlled. Scott is different. Scott is her baby. He's so quiet and kind that sometimes he reminds her of Eric as a kid; it's less easy to admit, but sometimes he reminds her of herself as a kid, before everything.
The last thing Serena wants is to become the everything that splits her children's lives into before and after. She would do anything before she let that happen.
Everyone always jokes that sex is the first thing to go, but with Serena and Dan, it's the conversation. They can go weeks without saying anything of value to each other. They rely instead on the old domestic script: who's going to get Annabelle from soccer, what are they going to have for dinner, see you later honey don't be too late!
After a while she begins to wonder what they used to talk about, but all she can think of are the things they were too afraid to say.
The only time she still feels close to him is in bed, pressing a kiss to his mouth that she's always afraid he won't return. But he does. Even with two tiny children and a house to take care of and a dog and Dan's work – even with all the little things that get in the way, they always make time to reach for each other in the dark of their bedroom. Or Serena reaches, and Dan doesn't turn away.
She never goes into his office or reads the notebook he keeps by the bed. She never snoops on his phone or his computer. She makes her trust in him a forceful, real thing by refusing to admit that there is any doubt at all in her heart or her mind. Dan doesn't give her a reason to worry. He's never late coming home. He never misses her calls. He doesn't even go on book tours because he doesn't want to be away from the kids that long.
Serena's mother likes to tell her that she's lucky, with a kind of wistfulness in her voice that Serena feels in her bones.
But Serena hasn’t forgotten the look on Dan's face when Blair got married.
There was a line in Inside that always stuck with Serena, even though she only read it once and tries not to think about it much. She's the kind of girl who never laughs, it said, only smiles – very carefully.
Serena remembers a Blair who got tipsy on mimosas and giggled with her face against Serena's collarbone. Serena remembers a Blair gasping with laughter in pillow fort in fourth grade. But Blair hasn't been that way in a very long time, and certainly not with Serena.
Once they went to a gala in New York as a favor to Nate. Serena was surprisingly happy to catch up with her old crowd, at least for a night, but at some point she looked up and saw Dan and Blair standing together by the bar. They didn't often speak these days; if Blair called and Dan picked up, he'd hand the phone over to Serena with barely a word. But they were talking then, very politely. Dan put his hand on Blair's lower back and said something and Blair laughed, her head just tipping back.
It felt like being punctured.
Serena could never quite forget that either.
Sometimes Serena and Dan spend summers in the city, a kind of backwards logic that appeals to them. They see their families, they make the rounds, and then they retreat back to their Connecticut cottage gulping huge breaths of relief. New York is dangerous ground for them, even if they'd never admit as much.
Serena makes Blair dismiss her nanny for a day and go to the park – the two of them, Annabelle, Scott, and Blair's daughter Nicolette. It's a good day, the kids all get along, and Serena is having a pretty good time. It's not like old times; it couldn't be. But it's okay, and that's all she needs these days.
Then a woman comes over and says to Blair, "Your children are beautiful. Are they twins?" She points to Scott and Nic, who are currently laughing as they chase each other around one of those painted horses stuck on massive springs.
Blair smiles, waving it off easily. "No, cousins," she says with a conspiratorial look at Serena. Serena smiles back, but inside she feels deeply cold.
Scott was born three days before Nicolette; Serena and Blair have some kind of timing. It had been a childish dream of sorts that they would grow up and have daughters together, but they kept getting the genders mixed up, Annabelle and Henry then Scott and Nic. And while Serena's children just tied her more deeply to Dan, Blair's seemed to push her and Chuck apart. Their marriage ended because of Nicolette, or at the very least it ended right before Nic was born.
The rumor is that Nicolette is the product of an affair, though as far as Serena knows, the contender for her father was never definitively determined. Chuck always had another girl in the wings, for all he pretended to be discrete, but there had never been a whisper about Blair before she got pregnant. Serena doesn't know the truth. She never asked. She doesn't ask Blair things like that anymore.
It seemed like confirmation enough when Nicolette was left out of the custody battle.
Serena finds herself watching Nic sometimes. That day at the park, after the woman went on her way, Serena's gaze kept being drawn to Blair's daughter running around with her son, thinking they very easily could be twins. They're same age, the same height, they have the same dark curly hair. It's difficult to tell because Nic looks just like Blair with her big brown doe eyes, her high cheekbones and pale skin like a little porcelain doll. She looks more like Scott's sister than Annabelle does.
Henry and Annabelle don't play well together (memorably, once, Annabelle became so irritated by him that she threw his teddy bear out the penthouse window. They'd punished her, but Serena imagined Dan was secretly very proud) but that isn't true of the rest of the children. Annabelle bosses the younger ones around with great satisfaction, but is especially protective of little Nicolette. They are best friends despite their age difference, sisters almost.
She would never say so, but sometimes Serena can't stand the sight of those two little girls together.
Serena has one affair, just one.
It lasts the better part of a year. It's not a year that differs from any other at first glance. Serena is not any more exhausted or any less loved, but the affair happens anyway, in the way things have often just happened to her.
His name is Ian and he's Annabelle's soccer coach. The first thing that strikes Serena is how very tall he is, much taller than her, so much so that she has to shade her eyes from the glare of the sun to look up at him. For Serena who is always taller than her boyfriends, five ten in flats and over six in her highest heels, this is strangely thrilling.
Ian has broad shoulders and wide, strong hands; he has forearms dotted with freckles that she'll later learn speckle his shoulders and chest too. His eyes are a cool, clear blue and his hair dark red that catches golden in the sunlight. All the moms have crushes on Ian and Serena is no exception.
Flirting is like stretching a long unused muscle. Once they know each other better, Ian teases her about the early days, the way she'd posed and preened. Serena always denies it, but she knows it's true. It is a heady thing to feel like that again, to feel careless and desperate and wanting. She had forgotten what it was like to crave someone like that.
Wanting Dan was different. Her desire for Dan always made her uncharacteristically shy, as though it was embarrassing or shameful to want such innocent things as hand-holding, first dates, flowers. Dan made her feel like a girl in a Norman Rockwell painting. He grounded her, gave her roots, made her real. He was a nice, normal boy who could make her nice and normal too just by loving her, just by deciding to give her his love.
Ian isn't exactly a bad boy or anything, but Serena fucking him in a pizzeria bathroom post soccer game is definitely a bad thing to do. She never thought she'd miss doing things like that, being the fuckup, but it's exciting. It's exciting to have a secret, to meet a beautiful man in covert locations and kiss him like the world's about to end. It's a little vindictive, no denying it, but it's hers.
Almost a year into it, Ian wants her to leave her husband so they can get married. Serena stops seeing him after that.
Once after the divorce, Serena asks Dan if he ever slept with anyone else. "No judging," she adds, more for him than her.
"Nope," he says with a careless shrug. "I didn't."
She levels him with a dubious look. "Never? Not once?"
Dan gives her an odd look in return and says, "No, Serena, not once. Not once in the fourteen years we were married did I cheat on you."
Serena could argue that, but she doesn't. Instead she takes a slow sip of beer and sets her empty bottle back down. "Then I guess that makes you a saint," she says.
The thing Serena misses the most about Blair is Blair.
It's bizarre to stand next to someone who used to live in your skin and think of them as a stranger. It's worse than any lover she's ever lost, worse even than the distance that exists between her and Dan. At least she's still privy to Dan's life; at least she still shares his experiences if not his heart. Blair is foreign where she used to be best beloved, like one of those science fiction stories where an alien takes up residence in someone's body. Serena looks into Blair's eyes now and has no idea at all what is going on behind them. She can't tell the difference between Blair's bullshit and Blair's truth anymore.
She knows she is at least partially responsible for the situation as it is now, which is why the guilt hits her so acutely sometimes. Her guilt lets her be talked into things like traveling to New York for charity galas, or going on expensive joint vacations. She never thinks it's a good idea but she does it anyway out of some kind of misplaced loyalty to the Blair-who-was. And Blair's family is so small now, just her and Nic, that Serena can't help wanting to share hers, misguided as it may be.
So they all go to Spain for three weeks in July not long after Annabelle's twelfth birthday. The kids are crazy excited, but the amount of convincing needed to get Dan on board takes most of the wind out of Serena's sails. He gives her this look while they're arguing, a look that seems to break the fourth wall to say do you have any idea what you're doing?
But Serena does not break character, and she pretends not to know. Eventually Dan gives in and Serena gets Eric and his husband to come along, hoping that might smooth things over a little.
For most of trip Dan and Blair treat each other like ghosts, but near the beginning of the third week they get into a huge fight. Serena is not technically supposed to know about it. Eric and Matt took the kids for the day, so Serena treated herself to a luxurious afternoon nap and woke to the shouting. There was a shatter that indicted Blair must've thrown something but it was impossible to make out anything they were saying. Then silence. Serena lay unmoving in her bed, heart beating very fast, straining for sounds. Eventually Dan came back into the bedroom all huffy and she pretended to be asleep.
The most unsettling part is that the next morning they're almost friendly. Dan is already gone by the time Serena gets up, and she goes downstairs to find him and Blair and the kids having breakfast, planning the day. Nicolette is sitting in his lap explaining something with a very serious look on her small face and a decapitated Barbie in one small hand. Scott listens along intently. Blair has abandoned her plate to work Annabelle's long hair into a braid, lecturing her all the while about proper split end prevention. Annabelle, devoted to her aunt, will probably take each ridiculous word to heart more than she would half of Serena's advice.
Nothing about the picture of them all together should really bother Serena. If anything she should be glad that the trip didn't end in disaster. But even if she won't let the thought form in her mind, her unease is reflected in her body in the lump in her throat, the nervous flutter in her stomach.
Late that night Serena sleeplessly wanders into the kitchen to eat olives or maybe have some wine, anything to distract herself from the low discomfort she's felt all day, and she sees the light is on in Blair's room. The door is half-open and she hears Blair talking quietly, maybe on the phone. Unwillingly, Serena is drawn in.
Blair holds a finger to her lips when Serena enters and continues with her phone conversation. Serena perches on the edge of the bed, drawing her knees up and her robe tight around her. Nicolette is sprawled asleep on one half of the bed, her face completely hidden beneath an unmanageable haze of curls. Serena swallows.
Blair hangs up. "The office is just lost without me," she says, smiling, something charming and light in her voice that only serves to unsettle Serena more deeply.
She opens her mouth to respond in kind, since by now they have small talk down to an impersonal art, but what she blurts out, without meaning to at all, is, "Is Dan Nic's father?"
Blair stares at her. "What?"
"Dan." Now it's surer, more biting, accusatory. "Is he Nicolette's father?"
Blair is still staring at her, and her brows draw together in what appears to be genuine confusion. She wets her lips, says clearly, "Chuck is Nicolette's father."
It's Serena's turn to be struck dumb. Chuck acts like Nicolette doesn't even exist.
Blair's gaze turns towards her sleeping daughter briefly before returning to Serena. "I just – I said Chuck wasn't. So he wouldn't take her away from me." It's practically imperceptible, but there's a little crack in Blair's voice. "Like Henry."
Before Serena can speak, Blair continues, "I was under the impression you knew that."
"No," Serena breathes, a touch helplessly.
"Yes, I see that now," Blair says. She studies Serena. "You really think I would do that? Have your husband's baby and never say a word about it?"
That's the thing: Serena doesn't know what Blair would do, not anymore.
"I just thought…" Serena says, but falters.
"I am aware of what you thought." Blair arches an eyebrow. "I'm not proud of most of the things I've done. But that's not something I would do. Ever."
"I know," Serena says, which sounds absurd, so she amends, "Now."
"I always knew he was yours." Blair pulls away physically now, shifting on the bed until she's closer to Nic, turning away from Serena. It seems like an odd, disconnected statement and she follows it up with another, equally disjointed. "You're a good mother. A much better mother than I am. I was always jealous of that."
Automatically, Serena protests, "B, that's not true."
"Yes it is," Blair says. "You'd never let someone take your child away, would you?"
Serena doesn't know how to answer that.
Serena has always loved her engagement ring, an art deco style vintage ring with an ice blue stone in silver filigree. It probably wasn't very expensive and doesn't stand up next to the icebergs the country club moms all had, but it reminds Serena of her and Dan, so she loves it.
Towards the end, during a fight, she rips it off and throws it at him. It disappears into the land lost things go, never to be found until the day Serena finally moves out of the Connecticut house. She sits there on the floor of what was their master bedroom holding the ring in her hand and cries, more than she probably did in their entire fourteen years together.
They say a lot of awful things to each other in the end. It is like their marriage was an open wound hastily stitched and at some point all the blood and guts came seeping out. She's never sure what tipped their impasse over into all-out war, only that once they started hurling accusations they couldn't seem to stop.
She remembers standing in their room trembling with anger, her hands in tight fists, looking at the man she gave her whole life to. "Why don't you just say it," she says, her voice sounding oddly flat and removed, "Just admit that you still keep that torch burning for her."
Dan sighs with the weight of the world in it. "I was with Blair for three months," he says. "I've been with you since I was sixteen years old. When is it enough?"
Quick, breathless, she answers, "It's not that simple and you know it."
"You think because I had feelings for Blair I was checked out of our marriage the entire time," he says slowly, as though he's waiting for her to correct him. "And I wasn't. That's not true. I love you and the kids, to pretend like I – it's like you don’t respect anything we had –"
"Don't," Serena says, turning away.
"I gave you everything you wanted," Dan says, a mixture of frustration and desperation. "Everything you wanted me to do, I did it. And you're still not happy."
You should be happy is what she hears.
When she doesn't respond, Dan sinks heavily onto the end of the bed. "I can't take this anymore."
Her shoulders draw up, spine tensing. "What does that mean?"
Dan doesn't say anything for a minute, but then sighs. "It means I think we should get a lawyer."
For some reason she never thought it would come to that. However bad things got, she never thought they'd just give up. And hearing him say that –
"Sometimes I really hate you," Serena says, quick and almost a gasp, her knuckles coming up against her mouth, which is twisted in a miserable grimace. She does not want to cry. She would do anything right now if it meant she wouldn't cry.
"Serena," Dan murmurs with a gentleness that makes her want to hit him. "Serena, do you even remember the last time you were happy? Because I don't. I really don't."
A little sob does escape her then. If pressed, Serena could dig up all kind of happiness, brief moments of unmatched perfection that dotted the expanse of their time together, and Dan can't even give her that right now. "So, what, it was all a mistake?"
"That's not what I'm saying." He's trying to be patient, she can tell, but it comes out snappish. He sighs. "I'm sorry. I don't mean that. I only mean – I only mean it hasn't been right for a while and we shouldn't put ourselves through this."
That doesn't make her feel any better. Here it is: the moment it breaks. Annabelle is already growing short with Serena and now she'll definitely hate her. Scott is so young, still a baby, and he'll grow up without the kind of family Serena needs him to have.
"Serena." Dan touches her back softly, his familiar hand sliding up to press comfortingly against the nape of her neck. His other hand finds her wrist to pull her closer. "Serena, I'm so sorry."
"No you're not," Serena says and except for the slight trembling, it's without emotion. She shuts her eyes to take a calming breath, thinks again no you're not, and then turns to kiss him hard, her arms going around his neck. Dan is utterly still for a moment before he gives in, kisses back, holds her close.
She wants to hurt him, somehow. She wants to sink her nails into his skin and draw blood; she wants to break his heart with well-chosen words. But Serena has always been better at hurting herself than hurting others, so all she does is grasp him and kiss him and crave him, one more time if never again.
They end up on her vanity table, all its cluttered miscellany getting knocked over or pushed away. Dan kisses her deeply, pulling at her clothes like maybe he means it. Serena wonders if he has actually loved her since they were sixteen years old, but the thought makes her want to cry again so she pushes it away. Her teeth are near ferocious on his skin, leaving all kinds of marks, but Dan always did like that.
She comes with a shiver like breaking apart, and Dan doesn't come at all. He holds a tight fistful of her hair, says low in her ear, "You never trusted me, you know that, you never did."
Her pulse is still thundering around her body. The injustice of that statement is startling, but then she thinks: no, I never did. He never gave her a reason to.
"I loved you anyway," she says. She grips the back of his shirt so tight, wraps her legs around him. She has never been good at letting go of Dan.
"I know," he says. "I loved you anyway, too."
Serena leaves behind the little house in Connecticut that turns gingerbread in winter and paradise in summer.
All good things come to an end.