the best you ever had
dan/carter. dan/carter/ofc. background dan/others.
17k words. nc17.
summary: Having sex in his ex-girlfriend's bed with someone who isn't her is definitely one of Dan's shadier decisions.
note: How did this even happen, you guys. Do you see how many words this is? It is literally just porn. I intended to write a brief Carter/Dan ficlet for no other reason than SebStan/Pfunk would be visually pleasing and look what I ended up with. It also took FOR FUCKIN EVER – almost an actual year, by my count. Set vaguely in the same universe as this fic which means nothing except this is an AU verse where everyone is normal and friends. If you want to read it all in one go, not broken into sections, it's also up on AO3.
Here, have this thing that literally no one asked for.
This is the backstory:
Going home with Serena is neither Dan's best idea nor his worst, but they're drunk enough that it doesn't make much of a difference either way. It's a thing they do sometimes, when Serena can't find anyone she likes and Dan is exceptionally morose. They get to have a nice nostalgic night, no stress and no strings.
Nate goes home alone that night, trying to be better; Blair is dating some horrible stockbroker, so she goes off with him; Dan is moody over Blair's horrible stockbroker, so he goes home with Serena; Serena is just trying to have a good time, which she usually does.
None of which explains Dan ending up in bed with Carter Baizen. But in his defense, it's a difficult thing to explain.
This is the start:
Dan is having a dream about sex, a sex dream, the kind where everything is impossibly clever and sweet, and the girl in his arms is no one he knows but everything he wants. What's clearest about it is the kissing, hot languid kissing that sweeps through him and settles in a knot right in his stomach. It's the kind of dream that feels real but heightened, his skin heating and fingers clenching with astonishing physicality for a dream. A hand slides teasingly over Dan's chest, a voice says –
A voice says: "Beautiful, it's almost eight. They called up with a car."
A male voice.
But what startles Dan awake more than that is Serena loudly exclaiming oh fuck and scrambling over him out of the bed like a very lovely and slightly ungainly cat. This is followed by laughter, male laughter, and Dan realizes a half-second before he opens his eyes that Carter is here.
Carter is often at Serena's in between stints in rehab and mysteriously funded jaunts to foreign countries. She seems to get a kick out of him, though Dan has personally never seen the appeal. He's learned to avoid her apartment when Carter's crashing on the couch, unless he wants to be teased mercilessly about basically everything.
Case in point: upon opening his eyes, Dan is immediately greeted by Carter's wicked grin. "Good morning, Brooklyn. Have a good time last night? It sounded real good from the living room. I had no idea you were so loud."
From the bathroom, Serena calls, "You be nice!"
"I'm being nice," Carter says, mildly offended.
He's tucked up along Dan's side where he crawled in to wake Serena and shows no sign of moving despite having completed his task. Dan wishes he could say it was the first time he woke up to Carter dropping into bed with them. It's probably closer to the fifth.
Carter drums his fingers on Dan's chest and is half-heartedly swatted away. "Were you having a sexy dream, Dan?"
Before Dan can reply in a sufficiently sarcastic manner, Serena re-emerges with her face pink and freshly washed, hair thrown up in a ballerina bun. She's somewhat haphazardly dressed in a sports bra and faux-paint splattered leggings. Carter wolf-whistles. Serena slingshots a hair band at him with surprisingly good aim. "Creep," she accuses. She starts rifling through her drawers for something. "If I'm late for another shoot, I'm going to be in so much trouble."
"No you're not," Carter says lazily, fingertips again tapping over Dan's chest. "You're Serena van der Woodsen. They're probably sitting around staring at the clock and waiting for you."
"That doesn't actually make me feel better." She pulls on a gray hoodie. "Okay. I am leaving now. Don't –"
"Invite anyone over, do any drugs, or set anything on fire," Carter recites. "Which, I might remind you, was both totally by accident and also kind of your fault."
Serena gives him an unconvinced look. "And don't be mean to Dan, alright?"
"I'm just teasing," Carter says, giving Dan's side a pinch. "I won't molest your boyfriend."
"He's not my boyfriend," Serena says just as Dan goes, "I'm not her boyfriend," which makes her laugh a little, declaring, "You owe me a Coke."
Serena takes another moment to survey the both of them, ensconced as they are in her pink bedsheets, which Dan is arranging rather purposefully around his hips while Carter lounges without a hint of discomfort. A curious, almost playful expression crosses her face. She looks right at Carter when she says, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do." And then she's off.
This leaves Dan and Carter behind in her very comfortable bed, which sits in a pool of early morning sunshine that makes it deliciously, invitingly warm. Dan is tired and just this side of hungover, but also very conscious of the fact that he's naked and a little hard whereas Carter is basically fully dressed, and also an asshole. It seems like a bad mix.
It is a bad mix.
"You were having a sexy dream, weren't you, Brooklyn?" Carter asks, voice open and even like he isn't trying to get a rise out of Dan. So to speak. "I could tell because you were moaning a little when I came in. Thought I was interrupting something good."
Indignant, Dan says, "I was not."
"Mm, you were." The fabric of Carter's t-shirt is old and soft against Dan's arm; it's full of holes too, gaps in the gray revealing tan skin. "I touched you by accident waking up Serena, and especially then –" Carter gives him an impression, a low and yearning moan.
Eloquently, Dan says, "Fuck off."
"I can also tell because you've got a hard-on," Carter adds, matter-of-fact. His gaze flicks down, and Dan rearranges the sheets, scowling.
"It's the morning," he grumbles.
Carter's fingernails are a dull, teasing scratch along Dan's ribs. "What were you dreaming about? Our gorgeous ex-girlfriend, perhaps? Reliving the night before the morning after? I can respect it. I mean, those tits alone. Impossible to get out of your head."
Thinking of Serena or Serena's tits is the opposite of helpful at a moment like this. Dan takes a breath. Carter's fingers follow the dip in his stomach.
"Must've been good to make you…" Carter's fingertips are at the edge of the pink sheet like maybe he's going to do something crazy, like push it away or slip his hand underneath. The thought sends a pulse of heat through Dan and really, the sheet isn't rumpled enough to provide much room for denial.
Dan's gaze rounds towards Carter, looking very out of place in this sun-filled, pastel enclave with his black jeans and dark gray shirt, hair rumpled in an on-purpose way, all of it conspiring to make him look as much the bad boy archetype as possible. It would be ridiculous, it would be hilarious, it would be a lot of things if Dan didn't have an erection he was trying to pretend wasn't happening.
Carter looks at him with a kind of teasing intent that makes Dan's skin prickle. "Say something, Brooklyn," he prods. "Did you think I was going to touch your dick?"
There's a beat and then Carter's mocking softens, twisting up Dan's insides. "I could, if you wanted…" His hand moves over Dan's skin so very lightly, hardly any contact but somehow all sensation. "I bet you've got a nice dick. Pretty. Bet it looks real good with those sharp, skinny hips…"
As wryly as he can manage with his mouth as dry as it is, Dan asks, "Are you always like this?"
It's just a jumbling of words. Dan might as well have said blue monkey umbrella tree? for all that his brain is actually processing the things coming out of his mouth.
"You think I'm fucking with you."
"Aren't you?"
Carter shrugs, tilts his head as though to say little bit. But, "Doesn't mean I wouldn't suck you off." He grins that little knife-grin, equally mean and entertained. "Most straight guys don't think that counts."
Dan sits up, grateful for the way the sheet pools in his lap. "Okay, alright, I get it – you're an asshole, you like to pull this kind of shit with me, I don't know if it's deep-seated Serena resentment or just run of the mill rich kid bullshit, but –"
As a general rule, Dan is not that way inclined. The gay way, that is. This is not without some flexibility, though Dan never really examined his sexuality or his feelings about it all that closely. He'd only ever fallen for girls. It didn't feel like something he had to think about.
But when Carter puts his hand flat on the center of Dan's chest and pushes him back against the bed, well. Dan thinks maybe he should've paid it some thought.
"You talk too much," Carter drawls.
"I've been told," Dan says. "Though I think people exaggerate."
The candy pink sheet is now riding dangerously low. If Dan was half-hard before, Carter pinning him down has effectively completed the process. The sheet isn't doing Dan any favors this time, caught under one hip and pulled tight across his lap, and he's clearly straining against it, an obvious outline. Carter's considering gaze sweeps over him. He wets his lips. Dan truly hopes his dick doesn't twitch or anything.
Carter leans in, leans down, and Dan's eyes fall closed as his lips part for a kiss that doesn't come. Instead Carter's mouth lands hot on his collarbone, up over his throat, down over his chest. Carter's lips part against Dan's ribs, trail over his stomach. Teeth appear unexpectedly, little nips and surprisingly hard bites interrupting the soft drag of his mouth. Dan doesn't know which will come next, a bite or a kiss, and it reminds him of his dream: all heat and utterly unreal.
Obnoxious to the end, Carter asks, "This a game you really wanna play, Danny?" His tongue flicks out over Dan's nipple.
"Not if you're gonna call me that," Dan breathes.
Carter smirks. "Alright, handsome," he says, and another wet bite leaves its momentary mark on Dan's skin. "Question still stands."
Perhaps surprising himself less than expected, Dan says, "Yeah. I want to." He says it clearly, without even a hitch.
Another slow smile crosses Carter's face before he says, "Okay," softly, almost soothingly, like he's not a total ass or something. Then he gets serious, hands curling around Dan's wrists so he can push them towards the quilted headboard. His fingertips trace the length of Dan's arms as they move all the way back down to his hips.
And then Carter pulls the sheet away.
The room feels hotter then, and that hitch Dan was missing before seems to have found its way into his throat. He is very naked, counterpoint to Carter who is essentially fully dressed and also subject to a whole lot baggage that is suddenly hitting Dan at once (naked) – like, Carter is another misbegotten love of Serena's life, Carter is a junkie, Carter is generally not a very nice person. He's also a guy, a guy looking down at Dan like he wants to cannibalize him. It's a series of revelations that aren't really revelations at all, and Dan kind of wishes he'd had them before the fooling around commenced.
Not that it would have made any difference. Dan likes to fuck disaster. He's done enough soul-searching to figure that one out.
He wonders why Carter isn't kissing him but is too embarrassed to ask.
Carter seems to be busy giving him an excruciatingly long once-over. "Looks like I guessed right," he says but does not clarify before his mouth is on Dan again, and Dan ceases to care about clarification.
Carter puts himself between Dan's legs so he can lick the jut of Dan's hipbone, sink teeth into Dan's thigh. Dan moans a little, sound slipping out before he can swallow it down, and he feels Carter smile.
"Straight boys are so easy," he says.
He doesn't touch Dan's dick at all, now so hard it curves up towards his stomach, but instead leaves flushed, mouth-shaped marks all over the inside of Dan's thighs; instead takes Dan's balls into his mouth for long, torturous minutes; instead moves lower, closer, curls his tongue briefly against contracting flesh but doesn't do more. Then he pulls away.
"Open your eyes," Carter tells him, so Dan does, meeting Carter's immediately. They're heavy-lidded, sleepy almost, and seem to glitter with dangerous invitation – that's how he looks pretty much all the time, predatory and sexual. But it's never been directed at Dan before now and that is…certainly something. "You've never been with a man?"
Dan pushes up on his elbows, feeling a sudden unexpected buzzing in his limbs when he does so, like his body is an appliance left running too long. "Nate and I hooked up once," he offers, but it was in a gross club bathroom and it never went anywhere, so it probably doesn't count.
Carter snorts. "Sounds like our Nathaniel. That's it?"
"That's it," Dan confirms before adding dryly, "I'm not really in the habit." Carter's hands are stroking up and down his thighs. Dan stamps down on the urge to fidget.
Carter surveys him thoughtfully. "So nobody's ever fucked you?"
"Well," Dan says, "That's a different question."
Georgina had a real thing about it, actually. She went in for the whole deal, strap-ons and everything, and Dan was mostly along for the ride. Not that he was exactly complaining.
Carter is bent double laughing by the time Dan finishes explaining. "Fucking hell. Always knew I liked that crazy bitch." He grins, straightening a little so he can lean over Dan. "Makes my job easier." His hand comes up to cup Dan's cheek, fingertips trailing over the shape of his mouth. "Suck."
Considering he's pretty much in it to win it at this point, Dan parts his lips and follows orders, letting his cheeks hollow as Carter's fingers slide wetly in and out of his mouth. He keeps his eyes on Carter.
"Fuck," Carter breathes. Then, like he can't wait another second, he bends to take Dan's dick into his mouth.
Dan had been over waiting too and the blunt, exquisite end to it makes him arch a little, head pressing back hard into the pillow. One hand clenches tight around nothing and he cups Carter's cheek with the other, thumb moving to feel the stretch of Carter's lips around his cock and fuck, fuck–
And Carter's damp finger is teasing, or threatening, massaging slow circles but doing little else.
Carter pulls off so he can look Dan in the eyes as his finger slides in. Dan's breath catches in his throat even as he tries to keep his body relaxed; it's always an oddly detached feeling at first, some part of someone else in him, but then Carter messily kisses his thigh and it is abruptly hot. Carter's pace is unhurried, though Dan wouldn't think to call it careful or gentle – methodical, maybe, designed to take Dan right to the edge and then leave him there.
Dan finds himself rocking down a little to meet Carter, asking for more without saying a word, and god it's been so long since someone did this to him. Sometimes girls got weird if he asked for it, and doing it to himself just wasn't the same.
"Do me a favor, huh, babe?" Carter murmurs. "Bedside drawer."
Dan barely has the motor skills to open a drawer right now but manages it anyway, finding a mess of girly ephemera like hair ties and lip glosses, Serena's secret stash of candy, and what he assumes Carter is after, a small bottle of lubricant with a bright pink label.
Having sex in his ex-girlfriend's bed with someone who isn't her is definitely one of Dan's shadier decisions, and using her stuff probably makes it worse. None of these moral distinctions prevent Dan from doing anything, though. Oh well.
"This is not my high point, ethically speaking," Dan says, because it should at least be said.
Carter pauses to slick his fingers up. "It's actually pretty good for me," he remarks, and then he's easing two in, giving Dan a very near roguish smirk.
He sucks Dan down again, lips almost meeting the base of Dan's cock, and then pulls up torturously slow. He does it a few times, takes Dan deep in his throat and swallows and then lets him slide out slow, dirty. He does it until Dan is practically clawing at the back of his neck, until Dan is good and flushed, until Dan is taking three fingers and making desperate, ridiculous noises. And then Carter says, "I want to fuck you."
It's not like Dan didn't know where this was going (though a small deluded part of him thought maybe the blowjob-with-extras might be the extent of it), but he didn't anticipate how hearing the words would feel. He's not proud of the sound that escapes him, somewhere between a moan and a hysterical laugh.
"Can I?" Carter's fingers move in and out, and he leans up to bite Dan's throat, his shoulder. "Let me fuck you, huh, handsome? Slide my cock into you. Fuck you so hard you don't remember your own name, just mine, and you scream it."
"Fuck," Dan groans.
Carter's mouth is on his jaw now. "Would you like that? If I was inside you, so deep you couldn't breathe?"
"Oh, shut up," Dan says, eyes shut tight again, and he doesn't know why Carter keeps not fucking kissing him.
"Do you want that?" Carter's lips move over Dan's cheek, his teeth tug Dan's earlobe. "Ask for what you want."
Dan's hands rub through Carter's hair and over his neck, clutch the fabric of his t-shirt. He can feel the muscles of Carter's back through it, solid and tensed. "Yeah," Dan says, crossing that final bridge into giving in. "That's what I want. Please."
He expects mocking but Carter must want it too bad. It's the business of it now, Dan going to get himself ready while Carter locates the condoms, and then they're back on the bed. Carter is impatient and hot as he tugs his shirt off, gets his jeans open. He turns Dan over roughly, pulls his hips back, pushes his shoulders down. It's sudden but Dan is impatient too, resting on one arm so he can use the other hand to stroke himself. He waits, he wants.
"Gonna fuck you into the mattress," Carter promises, voice low. Dan presses his forehead against his forearm, too far gone to feel embarrassment about the way he leans back restlessly. He feels the scrape of denim against the back of his thighs. He feels Carter's hands and then Carter's cock, nudging at him hotter than any silicone he's had in the past. Maybe it's dumb to think but he can't help it – this feels stupidly real, not something he can write off as a game, or something he got talked into. He's not attached enough to his claimed sexuality to have a crisis over this, but it still feels like A Thing, a very real thing.
So panic flares in Dan's chest briefly and he tenses, his body and his brain no longer on quite the same page. He doesn't expect Carter to notice, but he does; to Dan's surprise, Carter pauses, hands running soothingly over Dan's sides as kisses are pressed to the nape of his neck, trailed along his back and shoulders.
"It's alright," Carter says. "You're alright. Aren't you?"
Dan takes a breath. He focuses on the feeling of Carter inside him – overwhelming in the best way and not an altogether alien sensation, just one he has to remember. "You gonna move or what?"
Carter gives him a little bit of a swat. "Try to be a fuckin' nice guy…" he mumbles, but Dan can hear the amusement in it. His hands curl around Dan's hips, firm and steady, and he seems to pointedly take his damn time. Gradually, he pulls out and eases back in, building the heat under Dan's skin until he can barely stand it. He starts to push back against Carter, cutting off each leisurely thrust, and Carter laughs, "Alright, alright," before finally giving it to him hard like Dan wants, hips snapping, pounding into him.
Carter's hand slides up Dan's spine to tangle tight in his hair, tugging his head back. It makes Dan moan, his throat feeling exposed, strained; then Carter's other arm wraps around his waist and hauls Dan up, back flush to Carter's chest. It's probably the most skin-to-skin contact they've had at once. Carter's hand is on Dan's cock over his own, moving fast. Dan is breathless, doesn't feel anything except Carter.
Dan had let Georgina fuck him enough times to get a taste for it but he's not sure he's ever felt this out of himself, this out of control. He barely knows Carter and barely likes him, but somehow he still decided to hand over this part of himself to Carter, for whatever reason.
Carter's rhythm is fast and persistent, roll of his hips driving him deeper each time. He lets Dan drop back down but stays pressed close – his hand over Dan's on the bed, his sweat-slicked skin hot against Dan, that rasp of denim along the back of Dan's thighs. Dan comes like that, spills over his hand and Carter's onto Serena's pink sheets.
Before he's even caught his breath, Carter has pulled out, turned him over, and slid back in again. Dan's moan is probably louder than it was when he came, and he grips Carter's shoulders, his hair, brings his legs up around Carter's waist.
It's not that sex usually ends when Dan comes – he's always a gentleman, ready to lend a helping hand afterwards if he happens to go first – just that he's never really been passive before. He's never experienced something like this, just lying here and canting his hips up for Carter. Just taking it. He's never done that.
So his hand runs the length of Carter's back and slides under the waistband of the jeans he is inexplicably still wearing, grabs his ass. Dan leans up a little to mouth at the line of Carter's throat, his own shoulders and neck straining. "Harder," he murmurs in Carter's ear, voice low, "I can still remember my name."
Carter huffs a laugh. "Criticizing my performance before the show's even over?"
His skin shines with sweat. His teeth sink into his lower lip in concentration. Again, Dan wants to kiss him, but again Dan doesn't do anything except let Carter press him into the mattress. The sensation of it is getting to be too much, that edge of too good that almost hurts. Dan's hip shift up as he moans Carter's name, throaty and trapped. He finds himself playing it up, urging, moaning Carter's name again and again until Carter puts a hand over his mouth with a low, breathless sound of his own.
Dan pushes the hand away so he can tilt up and lick the line of Carter's throat, suck gently on the edge of his jaw. "C'mon, Carter," he murmurs over and over, "Carter, Carter–"
A string of expletives leaves Carter's lips as he thrusts deep one last time, his tense muscles seeming to tighten all at once. It's pretty hot, actually, shoulders and arms and chest solid with more muscle than Dan's got, his lips parting and brow furrowing. Then he collapses heavily onto Dan, obnoxious to the end. Dan trails a hand up and down Carter's back, through his hair.
"Arrogant bastard," Dan says lightly. "You would come from the sound of your own name."
Carter snorts before rolling off Dan, avoiding the wet spot with a wrinkle of his nose. "You know, you're not a bad fuck for a straight guy."
"Gee, thanks."
Carter gives him a wry smile and pulls a crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offering one that Dan declines before lighting up himself.
After a minute, Dan says, "Don't tell Serena?" He hates how hesitant it sounds. "We'll just…clean up." He frowns down at the sheets. "That won't be at all suspicious."
Carter reaches over to pat his chest lightly. "Don't worry. I'll just tell her I brought home a vagrant."
This is what happens next:
It's been a month and a half since Dan's lapse in judgment and he's decided to forget it ever happened – a relatively easy thing to do, considering Carter took off for parts unknown not long after. Serena never said anything about it, so Dan can only assume Carter kept the whole thing to himself. As he should have.
So it's been almost two whole months and Dan is living in semi-blissful heterosexuality, though the only girl he's actually had sex with in that time is Serena, and most of that was her taking pity on him. He's out with her tonight – her and Nate and Nate's sort of girlfriend Autumn and Blair and Blair's stockbroker boyfriend Sean. It's not entirely terrible, despite Dan's mixed feelings about Sean's existence in all of their lives; in fact, it's a pretty nice night.
The bar is crowded and dark and loud like bars are but Dan is just intoxicated enough not to mind. He goes up to get the next round, trying not to lose patience with the throng of jostling young professionals, when he feels someone step up close behind him. Like, too close. A distinct personal bubble violation. And then a familiar voice in his ear purrs, "I want to suck you off." A pause. "Interested?"
Dan instantly remembers everything he'd pretended to forget.
Dan definitely does not lean back into Carter, despite how appealing the idea is, and definitely doesn't heat up when Carter's hand curls around his hip. It's just hot in the bar and hotter here and when did Dan get so gay, again?
It's a good thing the crowd is blocking them from view. Dan turns his head slightly. "Here?"
Carter grins like he's impressed but says, "How far's your place?"
They stay for another forty minutes so as not to raise any eyebrows. Dan watches Carter flirt with both Nate and Serena while simultaneously acting as though he and Dan have never so much as shaken hands. It's both gratifying and irritating.
Carter leaves first and Dan fifteen minutes later. No one looks suspicious except Blair. Maybe not suspicious – curious. Her eyes follow him all the way out the door, the back of his neck prickling under her gaze.
The bar is only a few blocks from Dan's apartment, a Lower East Side walk-up that he used to share with his ex-girlfriend Jane and can't really pay for on his own much longer. He'd like to migrate back to Brooklyn (if only to force his friends to go to Brooklyn) but moving depends on him ever selling another book, which seems unlikely these days.
Carter is waiting outside the building, a slim, black-clad figure against the red bricks with cigarette smoke obscuring his face. It's an undeniably good look for him. Carter has that effortlessly cool thing going that Dan still hasn't quite figured out. He makes himself walk over at a normal pace, since sprinting headfirst into a blowjob would not be his finest moment.
"Didn't mean to keep you waiting." Dan's keys are already in his hands; momentum is carrying him right past Carter and to the door of the building to unlock it.
Carter flicks his cigarette away and pushes off the wall. "Builds anticipation."
Unfortunately there isn't much time for sexy banter while rushing up a five-floor walk-up, and Dan is winded by the time they get to his door. He drops his keys twice, entire body on that too-eager knife-edge, making his movements awkward and stilted.
"Doing this once is fun, but twice is probably a pattern, right?" Dan jokes while he fiddles idiotically with the lock.
Carter steps up behind him, apparently undeterred by Dan's sudden turn into a complete doofus. His lips press against the back of Dan's neck, hands coming around to Dan's belt buckle. "Do you want some platitudes to bring you off the ledge, or should I just –" His fingers are deftly undoing Dan's jeans before slipping shamelessly into his briefs. "Distract you from the sexuality analysis?"
"Jesus." Dan's eyes close and he bites his lip. "I have neighbors."
"Then you better get that door open quick, huh?" Carter says, stroking slow and firm like he doesn't have a care in the world. He probably doesn't. What an asshole.
The lock finally clicks and they're inside, door slamming shut behind them and Carter shoving Dan up against it. His hands roam over Dan's chest, knuckles rubbing over his nipples through his shirt. Then Carter sinks to his knees.
Carter tugs Dan's jeans and boxers down roughly before grabbing Dan by the hips to haul him forward a little, Dan's shoulders still flat to the wall. Carter gets one hand around Dan's cock again, stroking fast until Dan is hard, breathless. He couldn't look away from Carter even if he wanted to. His body is tense, attuned, waiting; Carter wets his lips and Dan sucks in a breath. Carter grins a little, glancing up.
"What did I say? Easy." And then his lips close around Dan.
Now that sex with Carter is apparently something Dan does, he's starting to get a handle on how Carter operates. He is not a time-waster, that much is certain, and not someone who shies away from stating what they want. For a bullshit artist, he doesn't seem to have much time for bullshit. And he reads Dan too well, or maybe it's just that their sexual interests align. Carter knows what he's doing and does it with the kind of expertise born of combined skill and enthusiasm.
It's pretty great, from where Dan's standing. Still morally fucked, but nevertheless pretty great.
There's no buildup, no easing into it: Carter is fast and unrelenting, mouth meeting the hand curled around Dan's dick over and over without pause. With every slide of his lips, he takes a little more, lets it go a little deeper, until his hand flattens against Dan's stomach and his lips touch the base of Dan's cock. Dan isn't even doing a damn thing but he can't seem to catch his breath, scratching at the wall behind him.
"Fuck," Dan breathes, end of it twisting into a groan. That seems to be the only word he's capable of saying, a soft repetition that speeds up when Carter does, gets plaintive every time it's just too much. It's the only sound in the apartment besides Carter's breathing, heavy through his nose.
Dan can't stop watching Carter but still gives a little start when Carter meets his gaze, upturned eyes very blue, all on-purpose faux-innocence. He hums a little around Dan's dick, and that's enough to rouse another sharply helpless fuck. Which seems to amuse Carter to no end.
It's then Dan notices that Carter's got his left hand on himself through his jeans. He realizes dumbly that he hasn't even really seen Carter's cock, because Dan has been the focus thus far, arranged and fucked with little active participation. He wants to see Carter, suddenly and acutely. He wants to touch Carter, wants to taste him, wants Carter between his lips.
"Should've – bed," is all he's able to get out before he has to squeeze his eyes shut and think of England lest the thought take him over the edge. It doesn't help much since he can see it all too clearly in his mind: Carter's mouth on him while his mouth is on Carter, both of them at once.
Carter pulls off briefly to say, "No time," with a painfully hot, hoarse voice. Then he's back at it, only this time he's encouraging Dan with a touch to move his hips, to thrust. A part of Dan kind of fractures and loses it, but the rest of him keeps it together; with one hand on the wall for balance and the other gripping Carter's hair tightly, he lets his dick slide in and out of Carter's wet, flushed lips. Carter lets him set the pace, lets him do what he wants, and he realizes belatedly that Carter has ceded some control only so he can start to jerk off.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Dan moans.
Carter comes first, spilling into his hand with a groan Dan can feel, not as distinctly as the humming but much more viscerally. Then he slams Dan back against the wall once again, holding his hips down as he takes him deep – and Dan is absolutely a goner, Dan comes like he's been jolted out of his skin.
Carter wipes his mouth before pulling himself to standing with a handful of Dan's shirt. He's very close again, their bodies pressed together, and once more Dan is very aware of being half-dressed and wrecked whereas Carter is already zipped up like nothing even happened.
"I wanted to do you," Dan murmurs.
"Not sure you would've had the strength," Carter jokes. "I seem to send you to pieces."
Dan is indeed exhausted, but he still says, "Delusions of grandeur. I could suck fifty dicks right now."
Carter half-smiles with something that might be legitimate warmth before he bends to press a slow kiss to the very center of Dan's throat, right below his Adam's apple. "Maybe you can prove it to me sometime," he murmurs, and then drops another kiss to Dan's cheek. "See you around, handsome."
"What? Already?" Dan's saying, but Carter's gone in a blink, door closing on him while Dan catches his breath, tugging his jeans back up.
His cat hops onto the table next to him and licks her paws, looking at Dan judgmentally.
"I know, I know," he says. "I have no idea what I'm doing."
Two weeks later, in the middle of the night, Dan's buzzer goes.
"It's a tall, dark stranger," comes the low rumble of Carter's voice. "Who wants to stick it in you."
"You're a regular Casanova," Dan says, and buzzes him up.
After a few weeks of radio silence and unreturned texts, Dan finds out from Serena that Carter has gone to Buenos Aires. It explains everything but is also immensely frustrating.
Dan is aware that fucking a few times does not mean Carter owes him anything, but he still thinks a once-every-few-weeks booty call deserves a little heads-up about out of town trips. It's just polite. Dan could really use the tension release this week, with his office job boring him out of his brain and his bookstore job more stressful than it rightly should be – and all those chapters he just doesn't have it in him to write.
It doesn't help that on Friday night Dan arrives at the bar to find both Serena and Nate have flaked, consigning Dan to an evening with Blair and her goddamn boyfriend.
Sean doesn't care for Dan because Dan is a total asshole to him pretty much all the time. He can't help it. Sean is just the kind of guy that it's impossible not to dislike because he's basically perfect, a robot made in a lab specifically for girls like Blair Waldorf.
Sean is four years older, a graduate of both Harvard and Stanford with degrees in business and finance. Blair met him through one of Nate's cousins; apparently Sean's family used to summer with them in Europe. He's filthy rich all on his own, not that it matters considering he's got an entire clan of filthy rich relatives WASPing around over in Connecticut.
Not to mention Sean is polite, thoughtful, good-looking, and athletic. He volunteers with underprivileged children in his spare time. His favorite hobby is kayaking. He spent a year in the Peace Corps. Dan absolutely, unreservedly hates him.
Blair chides him for it the next afternoon when they have a late breakfast tucked together in her bed. No funny business – Saturday afternoon brunch-in-bed is just a thing they do sometimes, a totally normal friend-thing that definitely doesn't mean anything at all.
"You're being ridiculous," Blair says. She leans against him, Dan's arm around her, with her eyes on the television across the way. Today it's Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve. "You never like any of my boyfriends."
The hand holding her coffee cup rests on Dan's stomach; he can feel the heat of it through his shirt. "You never like my girlfriends," he points out.
"That's because you have abysmal taste," Blair says. "Serena excepted."
Amused, Dan says, "I thought you didn't approve of that?"
"Sleeping with your high school girlfriend when you're sad isn't exactly the definition of healthy."
"Nope," Dan agrees. "But it sure is fun."
Blair shifts a little so she can lean more comfortably into his chest. "You're seeing someone now, though, aren't you?"
Dan pauses, and then laughs. "Why do you say that?"
"Because I'm not stupid," Blair says. "She's obviously someone you're too ashamed to even tell your friends about."
Dan takes her coffee from her so he can have a stalling sip. "Who's to say I'm not ashamed of you guys?"
Blair snorts, very ladylike, and stretches luxuriously like a cat about to pounce. Her pale pink robe slips from her shoulders. "Don't be ridiculous."
There are moments when Dan is sort of stupidly suffused with affection for Blair, but he tries to stamp it down and not, like, gaze at her or anything. "You intimidate them all, anyway. Do you know what Janie used to say about you?"
"'I wish I was as charming and stylish as Blair'?" she asks innocently.
"Funnily enough, no," Dan says. Jane actually had a lot to say on the topic of Blair, and Dan's relationship with Blair, and none of it was very complimentary. "She used to say, and I quote, 'the fact that you're friends with a girl like that makes me seriously wonder about you.'"
It's not unlike something Dan himself thought, once upon a time.
"There are plenty of things to wonder about with you, but I'm not sure how that's one of them," Blair says.
Dan's retort is cut off by the sound of his phone. It takes him a minute to find it in the fluffs of Blair's duvet and when he does, he sees it's a text from a number he doesn't know. It reads simply: I'm in town.
Ominous, Dan types back, trying to ignore the shiver of anticipation that slides down his spine.
"Who is it?" Blair demands, sitting up a little. "Is it your new girl?"
"No," Dan says, exasperated, and it's at least truth-adjacent. He puts the phone out of reach so she doesn't grab it. "And even if it was, you are aware that I'm a grownup and I don't need you to approve of the things I do, right?"
"You wouldn't if you could make appropriate choices," Blair shoots back. Which, point.
PART TWO
dan/carter. dan/carter/ofc. background dan/others.
17k words. nc17.
summary: Having sex in his ex-girlfriend's bed with someone who isn't her is definitely one of Dan's shadier decisions.
note: How did this even happen, you guys. Do you see how many words this is? It is literally just porn. I intended to write a brief Carter/Dan ficlet for no other reason than SebStan/Pfunk would be visually pleasing and look what I ended up with. It also took FOR FUCKIN EVER – almost an actual year, by my count. Set vaguely in the same universe as this fic which means nothing except this is an AU verse where everyone is normal and friends. If you want to read it all in one go, not broken into sections, it's also up on AO3.
Here, have this thing that literally no one asked for.
This is the backstory:
Going home with Serena is neither Dan's best idea nor his worst, but they're drunk enough that it doesn't make much of a difference either way. It's a thing they do sometimes, when Serena can't find anyone she likes and Dan is exceptionally morose. They get to have a nice nostalgic night, no stress and no strings.
Nate goes home alone that night, trying to be better; Blair is dating some horrible stockbroker, so she goes off with him; Dan is moody over Blair's horrible stockbroker, so he goes home with Serena; Serena is just trying to have a good time, which she usually does.
None of which explains Dan ending up in bed with Carter Baizen. But in his defense, it's a difficult thing to explain.
This is the start:
Dan is having a dream about sex, a sex dream, the kind where everything is impossibly clever and sweet, and the girl in his arms is no one he knows but everything he wants. What's clearest about it is the kissing, hot languid kissing that sweeps through him and settles in a knot right in his stomach. It's the kind of dream that feels real but heightened, his skin heating and fingers clenching with astonishing physicality for a dream. A hand slides teasingly over Dan's chest, a voice says –
A voice says: "Beautiful, it's almost eight. They called up with a car."
A male voice.
But what startles Dan awake more than that is Serena loudly exclaiming oh fuck and scrambling over him out of the bed like a very lovely and slightly ungainly cat. This is followed by laughter, male laughter, and Dan realizes a half-second before he opens his eyes that Carter is here.
Carter is often at Serena's in between stints in rehab and mysteriously funded jaunts to foreign countries. She seems to get a kick out of him, though Dan has personally never seen the appeal. He's learned to avoid her apartment when Carter's crashing on the couch, unless he wants to be teased mercilessly about basically everything.
Case in point: upon opening his eyes, Dan is immediately greeted by Carter's wicked grin. "Good morning, Brooklyn. Have a good time last night? It sounded real good from the living room. I had no idea you were so loud."
From the bathroom, Serena calls, "You be nice!"
"I'm being nice," Carter says, mildly offended.
He's tucked up along Dan's side where he crawled in to wake Serena and shows no sign of moving despite having completed his task. Dan wishes he could say it was the first time he woke up to Carter dropping into bed with them. It's probably closer to the fifth.
Carter drums his fingers on Dan's chest and is half-heartedly swatted away. "Were you having a sexy dream, Dan?"
Before Dan can reply in a sufficiently sarcastic manner, Serena re-emerges with her face pink and freshly washed, hair thrown up in a ballerina bun. She's somewhat haphazardly dressed in a sports bra and faux-paint splattered leggings. Carter wolf-whistles. Serena slingshots a hair band at him with surprisingly good aim. "Creep," she accuses. She starts rifling through her drawers for something. "If I'm late for another shoot, I'm going to be in so much trouble."
"No you're not," Carter says lazily, fingertips again tapping over Dan's chest. "You're Serena van der Woodsen. They're probably sitting around staring at the clock and waiting for you."
"That doesn't actually make me feel better." She pulls on a gray hoodie. "Okay. I am leaving now. Don't –"
"Invite anyone over, do any drugs, or set anything on fire," Carter recites. "Which, I might remind you, was both totally by accident and also kind of your fault."
Serena gives him an unconvinced look. "And don't be mean to Dan, alright?"
"I'm just teasing," Carter says, giving Dan's side a pinch. "I won't molest your boyfriend."
"He's not my boyfriend," Serena says just as Dan goes, "I'm not her boyfriend," which makes her laugh a little, declaring, "You owe me a Coke."
Serena takes another moment to survey the both of them, ensconced as they are in her pink bedsheets, which Dan is arranging rather purposefully around his hips while Carter lounges without a hint of discomfort. A curious, almost playful expression crosses her face. She looks right at Carter when she says, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do." And then she's off.
This leaves Dan and Carter behind in her very comfortable bed, which sits in a pool of early morning sunshine that makes it deliciously, invitingly warm. Dan is tired and just this side of hungover, but also very conscious of the fact that he's naked and a little hard whereas Carter is basically fully dressed, and also an asshole. It seems like a bad mix.
It is a bad mix.
"You were having a sexy dream, weren't you, Brooklyn?" Carter asks, voice open and even like he isn't trying to get a rise out of Dan. So to speak. "I could tell because you were moaning a little when I came in. Thought I was interrupting something good."
Indignant, Dan says, "I was not."
"Mm, you were." The fabric of Carter's t-shirt is old and soft against Dan's arm; it's full of holes too, gaps in the gray revealing tan skin. "I touched you by accident waking up Serena, and especially then –" Carter gives him an impression, a low and yearning moan.
Eloquently, Dan says, "Fuck off."
"I can also tell because you've got a hard-on," Carter adds, matter-of-fact. His gaze flicks down, and Dan rearranges the sheets, scowling.
"It's the morning," he grumbles.
Carter's fingernails are a dull, teasing scratch along Dan's ribs. "What were you dreaming about? Our gorgeous ex-girlfriend, perhaps? Reliving the night before the morning after? I can respect it. I mean, those tits alone. Impossible to get out of your head."
Thinking of Serena or Serena's tits is the opposite of helpful at a moment like this. Dan takes a breath. Carter's fingers follow the dip in his stomach.
"Must've been good to make you…" Carter's fingertips are at the edge of the pink sheet like maybe he's going to do something crazy, like push it away or slip his hand underneath. The thought sends a pulse of heat through Dan and really, the sheet isn't rumpled enough to provide much room for denial.
Dan's gaze rounds towards Carter, looking very out of place in this sun-filled, pastel enclave with his black jeans and dark gray shirt, hair rumpled in an on-purpose way, all of it conspiring to make him look as much the bad boy archetype as possible. It would be ridiculous, it would be hilarious, it would be a lot of things if Dan didn't have an erection he was trying to pretend wasn't happening.
Carter looks at him with a kind of teasing intent that makes Dan's skin prickle. "Say something, Brooklyn," he prods. "Did you think I was going to touch your dick?"
There's a beat and then Carter's mocking softens, twisting up Dan's insides. "I could, if you wanted…" His hand moves over Dan's skin so very lightly, hardly any contact but somehow all sensation. "I bet you've got a nice dick. Pretty. Bet it looks real good with those sharp, skinny hips…"
As wryly as he can manage with his mouth as dry as it is, Dan asks, "Are you always like this?"
It's just a jumbling of words. Dan might as well have said blue monkey umbrella tree? for all that his brain is actually processing the things coming out of his mouth.
"You think I'm fucking with you."
"Aren't you?"
Carter shrugs, tilts his head as though to say little bit. But, "Doesn't mean I wouldn't suck you off." He grins that little knife-grin, equally mean and entertained. "Most straight guys don't think that counts."
Dan sits up, grateful for the way the sheet pools in his lap. "Okay, alright, I get it – you're an asshole, you like to pull this kind of shit with me, I don't know if it's deep-seated Serena resentment or just run of the mill rich kid bullshit, but –"
As a general rule, Dan is not that way inclined. The gay way, that is. This is not without some flexibility, though Dan never really examined his sexuality or his feelings about it all that closely. He'd only ever fallen for girls. It didn't feel like something he had to think about.
But when Carter puts his hand flat on the center of Dan's chest and pushes him back against the bed, well. Dan thinks maybe he should've paid it some thought.
"You talk too much," Carter drawls.
"I've been told," Dan says. "Though I think people exaggerate."
The candy pink sheet is now riding dangerously low. If Dan was half-hard before, Carter pinning him down has effectively completed the process. The sheet isn't doing Dan any favors this time, caught under one hip and pulled tight across his lap, and he's clearly straining against it, an obvious outline. Carter's considering gaze sweeps over him. He wets his lips. Dan truly hopes his dick doesn't twitch or anything.
Carter leans in, leans down, and Dan's eyes fall closed as his lips part for a kiss that doesn't come. Instead Carter's mouth lands hot on his collarbone, up over his throat, down over his chest. Carter's lips part against Dan's ribs, trail over his stomach. Teeth appear unexpectedly, little nips and surprisingly hard bites interrupting the soft drag of his mouth. Dan doesn't know which will come next, a bite or a kiss, and it reminds him of his dream: all heat and utterly unreal.
Obnoxious to the end, Carter asks, "This a game you really wanna play, Danny?" His tongue flicks out over Dan's nipple.
"Not if you're gonna call me that," Dan breathes.
Carter smirks. "Alright, handsome," he says, and another wet bite leaves its momentary mark on Dan's skin. "Question still stands."
Perhaps surprising himself less than expected, Dan says, "Yeah. I want to." He says it clearly, without even a hitch.
Another slow smile crosses Carter's face before he says, "Okay," softly, almost soothingly, like he's not a total ass or something. Then he gets serious, hands curling around Dan's wrists so he can push them towards the quilted headboard. His fingertips trace the length of Dan's arms as they move all the way back down to his hips.
And then Carter pulls the sheet away.
The room feels hotter then, and that hitch Dan was missing before seems to have found its way into his throat. He is very naked, counterpoint to Carter who is essentially fully dressed and also subject to a whole lot baggage that is suddenly hitting Dan at once (naked) – like, Carter is another misbegotten love of Serena's life, Carter is a junkie, Carter is generally not a very nice person. He's also a guy, a guy looking down at Dan like he wants to cannibalize him. It's a series of revelations that aren't really revelations at all, and Dan kind of wishes he'd had them before the fooling around commenced.
Not that it would have made any difference. Dan likes to fuck disaster. He's done enough soul-searching to figure that one out.
He wonders why Carter isn't kissing him but is too embarrassed to ask.
Carter seems to be busy giving him an excruciatingly long once-over. "Looks like I guessed right," he says but does not clarify before his mouth is on Dan again, and Dan ceases to care about clarification.
Carter puts himself between Dan's legs so he can lick the jut of Dan's hipbone, sink teeth into Dan's thigh. Dan moans a little, sound slipping out before he can swallow it down, and he feels Carter smile.
"Straight boys are so easy," he says.
He doesn't touch Dan's dick at all, now so hard it curves up towards his stomach, but instead leaves flushed, mouth-shaped marks all over the inside of Dan's thighs; instead takes Dan's balls into his mouth for long, torturous minutes; instead moves lower, closer, curls his tongue briefly against contracting flesh but doesn't do more. Then he pulls away.
"Open your eyes," Carter tells him, so Dan does, meeting Carter's immediately. They're heavy-lidded, sleepy almost, and seem to glitter with dangerous invitation – that's how he looks pretty much all the time, predatory and sexual. But it's never been directed at Dan before now and that is…certainly something. "You've never been with a man?"
Dan pushes up on his elbows, feeling a sudden unexpected buzzing in his limbs when he does so, like his body is an appliance left running too long. "Nate and I hooked up once," he offers, but it was in a gross club bathroom and it never went anywhere, so it probably doesn't count.
Carter snorts. "Sounds like our Nathaniel. That's it?"
"That's it," Dan confirms before adding dryly, "I'm not really in the habit." Carter's hands are stroking up and down his thighs. Dan stamps down on the urge to fidget.
Carter surveys him thoughtfully. "So nobody's ever fucked you?"
"Well," Dan says, "That's a different question."
Georgina had a real thing about it, actually. She went in for the whole deal, strap-ons and everything, and Dan was mostly along for the ride. Not that he was exactly complaining.
Carter is bent double laughing by the time Dan finishes explaining. "Fucking hell. Always knew I liked that crazy bitch." He grins, straightening a little so he can lean over Dan. "Makes my job easier." His hand comes up to cup Dan's cheek, fingertips trailing over the shape of his mouth. "Suck."
Considering he's pretty much in it to win it at this point, Dan parts his lips and follows orders, letting his cheeks hollow as Carter's fingers slide wetly in and out of his mouth. He keeps his eyes on Carter.
"Fuck," Carter breathes. Then, like he can't wait another second, he bends to take Dan's dick into his mouth.
Dan had been over waiting too and the blunt, exquisite end to it makes him arch a little, head pressing back hard into the pillow. One hand clenches tight around nothing and he cups Carter's cheek with the other, thumb moving to feel the stretch of Carter's lips around his cock and fuck, fuck–
And Carter's damp finger is teasing, or threatening, massaging slow circles but doing little else.
Carter pulls off so he can look Dan in the eyes as his finger slides in. Dan's breath catches in his throat even as he tries to keep his body relaxed; it's always an oddly detached feeling at first, some part of someone else in him, but then Carter messily kisses his thigh and it is abruptly hot. Carter's pace is unhurried, though Dan wouldn't think to call it careful or gentle – methodical, maybe, designed to take Dan right to the edge and then leave him there.
Dan finds himself rocking down a little to meet Carter, asking for more without saying a word, and god it's been so long since someone did this to him. Sometimes girls got weird if he asked for it, and doing it to himself just wasn't the same.
"Do me a favor, huh, babe?" Carter murmurs. "Bedside drawer."
Dan barely has the motor skills to open a drawer right now but manages it anyway, finding a mess of girly ephemera like hair ties and lip glosses, Serena's secret stash of candy, and what he assumes Carter is after, a small bottle of lubricant with a bright pink label.
Having sex in his ex-girlfriend's bed with someone who isn't her is definitely one of Dan's shadier decisions, and using her stuff probably makes it worse. None of these moral distinctions prevent Dan from doing anything, though. Oh well.
"This is not my high point, ethically speaking," Dan says, because it should at least be said.
Carter pauses to slick his fingers up. "It's actually pretty good for me," he remarks, and then he's easing two in, giving Dan a very near roguish smirk.
He sucks Dan down again, lips almost meeting the base of Dan's cock, and then pulls up torturously slow. He does it a few times, takes Dan deep in his throat and swallows and then lets him slide out slow, dirty. He does it until Dan is practically clawing at the back of his neck, until Dan is good and flushed, until Dan is taking three fingers and making desperate, ridiculous noises. And then Carter says, "I want to fuck you."
It's not like Dan didn't know where this was going (though a small deluded part of him thought maybe the blowjob-with-extras might be the extent of it), but he didn't anticipate how hearing the words would feel. He's not proud of the sound that escapes him, somewhere between a moan and a hysterical laugh.
"Can I?" Carter's fingers move in and out, and he leans up to bite Dan's throat, his shoulder. "Let me fuck you, huh, handsome? Slide my cock into you. Fuck you so hard you don't remember your own name, just mine, and you scream it."
"Fuck," Dan groans.
Carter's mouth is on his jaw now. "Would you like that? If I was inside you, so deep you couldn't breathe?"
"Oh, shut up," Dan says, eyes shut tight again, and he doesn't know why Carter keeps not fucking kissing him.
"Do you want that?" Carter's lips move over Dan's cheek, his teeth tug Dan's earlobe. "Ask for what you want."
Dan's hands rub through Carter's hair and over his neck, clutch the fabric of his t-shirt. He can feel the muscles of Carter's back through it, solid and tensed. "Yeah," Dan says, crossing that final bridge into giving in. "That's what I want. Please."
He expects mocking but Carter must want it too bad. It's the business of it now, Dan going to get himself ready while Carter locates the condoms, and then they're back on the bed. Carter is impatient and hot as he tugs his shirt off, gets his jeans open. He turns Dan over roughly, pulls his hips back, pushes his shoulders down. It's sudden but Dan is impatient too, resting on one arm so he can use the other hand to stroke himself. He waits, he wants.
"Gonna fuck you into the mattress," Carter promises, voice low. Dan presses his forehead against his forearm, too far gone to feel embarrassment about the way he leans back restlessly. He feels the scrape of denim against the back of his thighs. He feels Carter's hands and then Carter's cock, nudging at him hotter than any silicone he's had in the past. Maybe it's dumb to think but he can't help it – this feels stupidly real, not something he can write off as a game, or something he got talked into. He's not attached enough to his claimed sexuality to have a crisis over this, but it still feels like A Thing, a very real thing.
So panic flares in Dan's chest briefly and he tenses, his body and his brain no longer on quite the same page. He doesn't expect Carter to notice, but he does; to Dan's surprise, Carter pauses, hands running soothingly over Dan's sides as kisses are pressed to the nape of his neck, trailed along his back and shoulders.
"It's alright," Carter says. "You're alright. Aren't you?"
Dan takes a breath. He focuses on the feeling of Carter inside him – overwhelming in the best way and not an altogether alien sensation, just one he has to remember. "You gonna move or what?"
Carter gives him a little bit of a swat. "Try to be a fuckin' nice guy…" he mumbles, but Dan can hear the amusement in it. His hands curl around Dan's hips, firm and steady, and he seems to pointedly take his damn time. Gradually, he pulls out and eases back in, building the heat under Dan's skin until he can barely stand it. He starts to push back against Carter, cutting off each leisurely thrust, and Carter laughs, "Alright, alright," before finally giving it to him hard like Dan wants, hips snapping, pounding into him.
Carter's hand slides up Dan's spine to tangle tight in his hair, tugging his head back. It makes Dan moan, his throat feeling exposed, strained; then Carter's other arm wraps around his waist and hauls Dan up, back flush to Carter's chest. It's probably the most skin-to-skin contact they've had at once. Carter's hand is on Dan's cock over his own, moving fast. Dan is breathless, doesn't feel anything except Carter.
Dan had let Georgina fuck him enough times to get a taste for it but he's not sure he's ever felt this out of himself, this out of control. He barely knows Carter and barely likes him, but somehow he still decided to hand over this part of himself to Carter, for whatever reason.
Carter's rhythm is fast and persistent, roll of his hips driving him deeper each time. He lets Dan drop back down but stays pressed close – his hand over Dan's on the bed, his sweat-slicked skin hot against Dan, that rasp of denim along the back of Dan's thighs. Dan comes like that, spills over his hand and Carter's onto Serena's pink sheets.
Before he's even caught his breath, Carter has pulled out, turned him over, and slid back in again. Dan's moan is probably louder than it was when he came, and he grips Carter's shoulders, his hair, brings his legs up around Carter's waist.
It's not that sex usually ends when Dan comes – he's always a gentleman, ready to lend a helping hand afterwards if he happens to go first – just that he's never really been passive before. He's never experienced something like this, just lying here and canting his hips up for Carter. Just taking it. He's never done that.
So his hand runs the length of Carter's back and slides under the waistband of the jeans he is inexplicably still wearing, grabs his ass. Dan leans up a little to mouth at the line of Carter's throat, his own shoulders and neck straining. "Harder," he murmurs in Carter's ear, voice low, "I can still remember my name."
Carter huffs a laugh. "Criticizing my performance before the show's even over?"
His skin shines with sweat. His teeth sink into his lower lip in concentration. Again, Dan wants to kiss him, but again Dan doesn't do anything except let Carter press him into the mattress. The sensation of it is getting to be too much, that edge of too good that almost hurts. Dan's hip shift up as he moans Carter's name, throaty and trapped. He finds himself playing it up, urging, moaning Carter's name again and again until Carter puts a hand over his mouth with a low, breathless sound of his own.
Dan pushes the hand away so he can tilt up and lick the line of Carter's throat, suck gently on the edge of his jaw. "C'mon, Carter," he murmurs over and over, "Carter, Carter–"
A string of expletives leaves Carter's lips as he thrusts deep one last time, his tense muscles seeming to tighten all at once. It's pretty hot, actually, shoulders and arms and chest solid with more muscle than Dan's got, his lips parting and brow furrowing. Then he collapses heavily onto Dan, obnoxious to the end. Dan trails a hand up and down Carter's back, through his hair.
"Arrogant bastard," Dan says lightly. "You would come from the sound of your own name."
Carter snorts before rolling off Dan, avoiding the wet spot with a wrinkle of his nose. "You know, you're not a bad fuck for a straight guy."
"Gee, thanks."
Carter gives him a wry smile and pulls a crushed pack of cigarettes from his pocket, offering one that Dan declines before lighting up himself.
After a minute, Dan says, "Don't tell Serena?" He hates how hesitant it sounds. "We'll just…clean up." He frowns down at the sheets. "That won't be at all suspicious."
Carter reaches over to pat his chest lightly. "Don't worry. I'll just tell her I brought home a vagrant."
This is what happens next:
It's been a month and a half since Dan's lapse in judgment and he's decided to forget it ever happened – a relatively easy thing to do, considering Carter took off for parts unknown not long after. Serena never said anything about it, so Dan can only assume Carter kept the whole thing to himself. As he should have.
So it's been almost two whole months and Dan is living in semi-blissful heterosexuality, though the only girl he's actually had sex with in that time is Serena, and most of that was her taking pity on him. He's out with her tonight – her and Nate and Nate's sort of girlfriend Autumn and Blair and Blair's stockbroker boyfriend Sean. It's not entirely terrible, despite Dan's mixed feelings about Sean's existence in all of their lives; in fact, it's a pretty nice night.
The bar is crowded and dark and loud like bars are but Dan is just intoxicated enough not to mind. He goes up to get the next round, trying not to lose patience with the throng of jostling young professionals, when he feels someone step up close behind him. Like, too close. A distinct personal bubble violation. And then a familiar voice in his ear purrs, "I want to suck you off." A pause. "Interested?"
Dan instantly remembers everything he'd pretended to forget.
Dan definitely does not lean back into Carter, despite how appealing the idea is, and definitely doesn't heat up when Carter's hand curls around his hip. It's just hot in the bar and hotter here and when did Dan get so gay, again?
It's a good thing the crowd is blocking them from view. Dan turns his head slightly. "Here?"
Carter grins like he's impressed but says, "How far's your place?"
They stay for another forty minutes so as not to raise any eyebrows. Dan watches Carter flirt with both Nate and Serena while simultaneously acting as though he and Dan have never so much as shaken hands. It's both gratifying and irritating.
Carter leaves first and Dan fifteen minutes later. No one looks suspicious except Blair. Maybe not suspicious – curious. Her eyes follow him all the way out the door, the back of his neck prickling under her gaze.
The bar is only a few blocks from Dan's apartment, a Lower East Side walk-up that he used to share with his ex-girlfriend Jane and can't really pay for on his own much longer. He'd like to migrate back to Brooklyn (if only to force his friends to go to Brooklyn) but moving depends on him ever selling another book, which seems unlikely these days.
Carter is waiting outside the building, a slim, black-clad figure against the red bricks with cigarette smoke obscuring his face. It's an undeniably good look for him. Carter has that effortlessly cool thing going that Dan still hasn't quite figured out. He makes himself walk over at a normal pace, since sprinting headfirst into a blowjob would not be his finest moment.
"Didn't mean to keep you waiting." Dan's keys are already in his hands; momentum is carrying him right past Carter and to the door of the building to unlock it.
Carter flicks his cigarette away and pushes off the wall. "Builds anticipation."
Unfortunately there isn't much time for sexy banter while rushing up a five-floor walk-up, and Dan is winded by the time they get to his door. He drops his keys twice, entire body on that too-eager knife-edge, making his movements awkward and stilted.
"Doing this once is fun, but twice is probably a pattern, right?" Dan jokes while he fiddles idiotically with the lock.
Carter steps up behind him, apparently undeterred by Dan's sudden turn into a complete doofus. His lips press against the back of Dan's neck, hands coming around to Dan's belt buckle. "Do you want some platitudes to bring you off the ledge, or should I just –" His fingers are deftly undoing Dan's jeans before slipping shamelessly into his briefs. "Distract you from the sexuality analysis?"
"Jesus." Dan's eyes close and he bites his lip. "I have neighbors."
"Then you better get that door open quick, huh?" Carter says, stroking slow and firm like he doesn't have a care in the world. He probably doesn't. What an asshole.
The lock finally clicks and they're inside, door slamming shut behind them and Carter shoving Dan up against it. His hands roam over Dan's chest, knuckles rubbing over his nipples through his shirt. Then Carter sinks to his knees.
Carter tugs Dan's jeans and boxers down roughly before grabbing Dan by the hips to haul him forward a little, Dan's shoulders still flat to the wall. Carter gets one hand around Dan's cock again, stroking fast until Dan is hard, breathless. He couldn't look away from Carter even if he wanted to. His body is tense, attuned, waiting; Carter wets his lips and Dan sucks in a breath. Carter grins a little, glancing up.
"What did I say? Easy." And then his lips close around Dan.
Now that sex with Carter is apparently something Dan does, he's starting to get a handle on how Carter operates. He is not a time-waster, that much is certain, and not someone who shies away from stating what they want. For a bullshit artist, he doesn't seem to have much time for bullshit. And he reads Dan too well, or maybe it's just that their sexual interests align. Carter knows what he's doing and does it with the kind of expertise born of combined skill and enthusiasm.
It's pretty great, from where Dan's standing. Still morally fucked, but nevertheless pretty great.
There's no buildup, no easing into it: Carter is fast and unrelenting, mouth meeting the hand curled around Dan's dick over and over without pause. With every slide of his lips, he takes a little more, lets it go a little deeper, until his hand flattens against Dan's stomach and his lips touch the base of Dan's cock. Dan isn't even doing a damn thing but he can't seem to catch his breath, scratching at the wall behind him.
"Fuck," Dan breathes, end of it twisting into a groan. That seems to be the only word he's capable of saying, a soft repetition that speeds up when Carter does, gets plaintive every time it's just too much. It's the only sound in the apartment besides Carter's breathing, heavy through his nose.
Dan can't stop watching Carter but still gives a little start when Carter meets his gaze, upturned eyes very blue, all on-purpose faux-innocence. He hums a little around Dan's dick, and that's enough to rouse another sharply helpless fuck. Which seems to amuse Carter to no end.
It's then Dan notices that Carter's got his left hand on himself through his jeans. He realizes dumbly that he hasn't even really seen Carter's cock, because Dan has been the focus thus far, arranged and fucked with little active participation. He wants to see Carter, suddenly and acutely. He wants to touch Carter, wants to taste him, wants Carter between his lips.
"Should've – bed," is all he's able to get out before he has to squeeze his eyes shut and think of England lest the thought take him over the edge. It doesn't help much since he can see it all too clearly in his mind: Carter's mouth on him while his mouth is on Carter, both of them at once.
Carter pulls off briefly to say, "No time," with a painfully hot, hoarse voice. Then he's back at it, only this time he's encouraging Dan with a touch to move his hips, to thrust. A part of Dan kind of fractures and loses it, but the rest of him keeps it together; with one hand on the wall for balance and the other gripping Carter's hair tightly, he lets his dick slide in and out of Carter's wet, flushed lips. Carter lets him set the pace, lets him do what he wants, and he realizes belatedly that Carter has ceded some control only so he can start to jerk off.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Dan moans.
Carter comes first, spilling into his hand with a groan Dan can feel, not as distinctly as the humming but much more viscerally. Then he slams Dan back against the wall once again, holding his hips down as he takes him deep – and Dan is absolutely a goner, Dan comes like he's been jolted out of his skin.
Carter wipes his mouth before pulling himself to standing with a handful of Dan's shirt. He's very close again, their bodies pressed together, and once more Dan is very aware of being half-dressed and wrecked whereas Carter is already zipped up like nothing even happened.
"I wanted to do you," Dan murmurs.
"Not sure you would've had the strength," Carter jokes. "I seem to send you to pieces."
Dan is indeed exhausted, but he still says, "Delusions of grandeur. I could suck fifty dicks right now."
Carter half-smiles with something that might be legitimate warmth before he bends to press a slow kiss to the very center of Dan's throat, right below his Adam's apple. "Maybe you can prove it to me sometime," he murmurs, and then drops another kiss to Dan's cheek. "See you around, handsome."
"What? Already?" Dan's saying, but Carter's gone in a blink, door closing on him while Dan catches his breath, tugging his jeans back up.
His cat hops onto the table next to him and licks her paws, looking at Dan judgmentally.
"I know, I know," he says. "I have no idea what I'm doing."
Two weeks later, in the middle of the night, Dan's buzzer goes.
"It's a tall, dark stranger," comes the low rumble of Carter's voice. "Who wants to stick it in you."
"You're a regular Casanova," Dan says, and buzzes him up.
After a few weeks of radio silence and unreturned texts, Dan finds out from Serena that Carter has gone to Buenos Aires. It explains everything but is also immensely frustrating.
Dan is aware that fucking a few times does not mean Carter owes him anything, but he still thinks a once-every-few-weeks booty call deserves a little heads-up about out of town trips. It's just polite. Dan could really use the tension release this week, with his office job boring him out of his brain and his bookstore job more stressful than it rightly should be – and all those chapters he just doesn't have it in him to write.
It doesn't help that on Friday night Dan arrives at the bar to find both Serena and Nate have flaked, consigning Dan to an evening with Blair and her goddamn boyfriend.
Sean doesn't care for Dan because Dan is a total asshole to him pretty much all the time. He can't help it. Sean is just the kind of guy that it's impossible not to dislike because he's basically perfect, a robot made in a lab specifically for girls like Blair Waldorf.
Sean is four years older, a graduate of both Harvard and Stanford with degrees in business and finance. Blair met him through one of Nate's cousins; apparently Sean's family used to summer with them in Europe. He's filthy rich all on his own, not that it matters considering he's got an entire clan of filthy rich relatives WASPing around over in Connecticut.
Not to mention Sean is polite, thoughtful, good-looking, and athletic. He volunteers with underprivileged children in his spare time. His favorite hobby is kayaking. He spent a year in the Peace Corps. Dan absolutely, unreservedly hates him.
Blair chides him for it the next afternoon when they have a late breakfast tucked together in her bed. No funny business – Saturday afternoon brunch-in-bed is just a thing they do sometimes, a totally normal friend-thing that definitely doesn't mean anything at all.
"You're being ridiculous," Blair says. She leans against him, Dan's arm around her, with her eyes on the television across the way. Today it's Barbara Stanwyck in The Lady Eve. "You never like any of my boyfriends."
The hand holding her coffee cup rests on Dan's stomach; he can feel the heat of it through his shirt. "You never like my girlfriends," he points out.
"That's because you have abysmal taste," Blair says. "Serena excepted."
Amused, Dan says, "I thought you didn't approve of that?"
"Sleeping with your high school girlfriend when you're sad isn't exactly the definition of healthy."
"Nope," Dan agrees. "But it sure is fun."
Blair shifts a little so she can lean more comfortably into his chest. "You're seeing someone now, though, aren't you?"
Dan pauses, and then laughs. "Why do you say that?"
"Because I'm not stupid," Blair says. "She's obviously someone you're too ashamed to even tell your friends about."
Dan takes her coffee from her so he can have a stalling sip. "Who's to say I'm not ashamed of you guys?"
Blair snorts, very ladylike, and stretches luxuriously like a cat about to pounce. Her pale pink robe slips from her shoulders. "Don't be ridiculous."
There are moments when Dan is sort of stupidly suffused with affection for Blair, but he tries to stamp it down and not, like, gaze at her or anything. "You intimidate them all, anyway. Do you know what Janie used to say about you?"
"'I wish I was as charming and stylish as Blair'?" she asks innocently.
"Funnily enough, no," Dan says. Jane actually had a lot to say on the topic of Blair, and Dan's relationship with Blair, and none of it was very complimentary. "She used to say, and I quote, 'the fact that you're friends with a girl like that makes me seriously wonder about you.'"
It's not unlike something Dan himself thought, once upon a time.
"There are plenty of things to wonder about with you, but I'm not sure how that's one of them," Blair says.
Dan's retort is cut off by the sound of his phone. It takes him a minute to find it in the fluffs of Blair's duvet and when he does, he sees it's a text from a number he doesn't know. It reads simply: I'm in town.
Ominous, Dan types back, trying to ignore the shiver of anticipation that slides down his spine.
"Who is it?" Blair demands, sitting up a little. "Is it your new girl?"
"No," Dan says, exasperated, and it's at least truth-adjacent. He puts the phone out of reach so she doesn't grab it. "And even if it was, you are aware that I'm a grownup and I don't need you to approve of the things I do, right?"
"You wouldn't if you could make appropriate choices," Blair shoots back. Which, point.
PART TWO