crash and burn girl
dan/blair. serena. 11k words. s4 au.
w: abortion
summary: Blair is not prepared for the full force of Humphrey's affections.
note: A combination of rewatching s4 (why would I do this to myself) and being sort of gently inspired by Obvious Child/some other stuff. And also wanting to write Blair getting her shit together and DB being a normal couple. Wecouldhavehaditall.mp3.
One kiss turns into two and three and four, until Blair's arms are wrapped all the way around Dan's neck and the distance between them has closed completely. Somewhere in the middle of kiss number five she suddenly comes to her senses (maybe something to do with Dan's hand on her ass) and thrusts him violently away. Dan skids a little, looking as confused as she feels. His mouth is soft and blurry.
They look at each other for a protracted moment before Blair declares, "That was terrible." She turns for the stairs, waiting until she's climbed a few to add, "Are you coming?"
It only seems to compound his confusion, but he does follow her.
Blair had seen Dan at Film Forum sitting three rows ahead, Nénette on screen. He was taking up an obscene amount of space, sitting low with his legs edging over into the seat-space on either side, that obnoxious boy-sprawl that they do. He was eating popcorn. Blair only noticed him because there was a dense tumbleweed of hair blocking the screen directly in front of her and really, who else would it belong to?
Right then, it felt like sitting three rows behind Dan Humphrey in the cinema was the final nail in her holiday's coffin. Serena was on her road trip, Nate was with his grandfather, Eric was in Gstaad with that new boyfriend who had worse hair than Humphrey. Chuck was in New Zealand. Her mother and Cyrus were shopping for a new house in Aix. Even Dorota was on a little family vacation up in Vermont. Blair was stunningly alone, and stunningly lonely.
As the film went on, Blair found herself wishing she'd gone somewhere – though where would she even have gone, and with whom? No one invited her on a road trip or to look at houses. Once she'd had lots of friends on various tiers, a whole host of acquaintances, but it seemed like everyone had drifted away. Chuck demanded most of her attention until he didn't and now she found herself with an excess of time and nothing to fill it.
Some kind of kerfuffle drew her attention back to Dan. A group of teenagers was being noisy, cackling about the things teenagers found to cackle at during documentaries about French orangutans. And Dan muttered to himself loud enough to carry back towards Blair, "Fucking kids today."
Blair stifled a laugh. She pictured him at St. Jude's, probably muttering similar things to himself as snide people walked away unhearing; as she walked away. The thought made her smile but also made her incomprehensibly sad. For the first time she felt very aware of Dan as a person existing separate from her own life – not just the annoying boyfriend of a friend, the upstart boy from Brooklyn.
Without thinking it through, Blair got up and moved forward a few rows, dropping into the seat at the end of his aisle, two away from him. "That mop on your head is blocking my view," she said, not looking at him. She held out a hand. "Popcorn, Humphrey."
She could feel his eyes on her, huffy and disbelieving. Then he handed over the popcorn.
It has been a very long time since Blair has been with anyone besides – with anyone different. She tries to think back: there had been no one all summer in Paris, no one at Columbia (she'd never gone to bed with Boring Cameron), no one else freshman year. She thinks the last non-Chuck person she had sex with was Carter Baizen back in high school. She doesn't know how to feel about that.
At the top of the stairs Dan touches her again, just his hands curling around her waist and pulling her back against his chest. A shiver steals through her, low in her stomach and down to the tips of her fingers. It's surreal. The entire thing is surreal.
"Blair," he starts softly, and she expects any number of questions: are you sure about this, do you want to talk, are we still friends? But he just kisses the side of her neck. So Blair slips the straps of her dress off her shoulders, slides her arms out, and lets the dress fall.
She turns her face towards him a little, nervous and hating it. "Dan?"
He doesn't seem to notice or care about her lingerie, black mesh with jewel-bright blue embroidery, a matched set that cost her two hundred euros, which she's sure he would scoff at. She thought it was cheap, so cheap she almost didn't bother buying it. Dan's hands are smoothing over her stomach and sides now, mouth at the corner of her lips.
Maybe it's because it's been so long, but Blair finds herself oddly shy with Dan, unsure of what to do or how exactly to behave. Sometimes it feels like the things Chuck liked are the only things she knows how to do. What if Dan doesn't like any of that?
They finally make their way into her room, but Blair is struck by a new, horrible thought: what if it's terrible? What if their connection is simply intellectual and they were only meant to be friends, nothing more?
What if, afterwards, only one of them thinks that?
It's not until she finally turns to face Dan that she registers the same worries in his expression, the same trepidation in his eyes. It makes her feel better all at once – it makes her feel like she isn't alone.
In the morning she's disoriented, but only for a moment, long enough to register the weight of Dan's arm around her waist and for the night before to come rushing back.
Like, Dan sitting up against the headboard with her in his lap, the duvet puddled voluminously around them. The brush of his nose against hers as their lips met. Her arms draped around his shoulders and his fingertips digging into her spine. Being so horribly, awfully vulnerable.
Blair looks over at him now, dead asleep and breathing deeply. It's strange for him to be here in her bed. It's one thing to give into one's worst instincts in the middle of the night, but under the scrutiny of daylight –
Dan shifts in his sleep, turning towards her, and Blair thinks suddenly of his hot, open mouth against her collarbone. She commands herself not to regret this. She does not want to regret this. (A tiny voice in her head is saying you slept with Serena's boyfriend but she counters that he isn't Serena's boyfriend anymore, has not been that for years now.)
She slides out of bed without disturbing him, landing cat-like and quiet on her feet. She snatches her robe on the way into the bathroom, where she does her customary morning-after polishing without ending up too polished – not that Humphrey would be able to tell the difference, presumably. She hadn't taken off her makeup before falling asleep and she's embarrassed to see the patchiness of her foundation, the flakes of mascara under her eyes. She hopes she didn't leave any on the pillowcases, how mortifying.
Blair brushes her teeth and her hair, takes the quickest of showers, puts on perfume, and fills in her eyebrows lightly, dabs a lip stain onto her too-pale mouth. She puts on just a touch of brown mascara, for subtlety's sake. Then she goes back into the bedroom, shucks off the robe, and gets under the covers again, pretending to be asleep. It lasts about half a second before Dan goes, "You took forever in there. I thought you were going to sneak out through Serena's room and I'd have to walk of shame back to Brooklyn wondering if I made the whole night up."
Blair opens her eyes, fixing him with a disapproving glare. But he looks so rumpled and appealing that she can't even keep it up. God, she's a disaster. "Good morning to you too, Humphrey."
"Good morning," Dan says, almost playful, and leans in like he's going to kiss her but then doesn't. "I seem to remember you do know my first name. You said it very beautifully last night, in a variety of pitches –"
Her immediate instinct is to pinch him sharply, but she settles for a shove to the shoulder. "Shut up, Dan." He lifts his arm to wrap around her, Blair leaning into him with surprising ease. "I can still sneak out and leave you here."
He doesn't appear to believe her, if the smile is anything to go by.
She leans her cheek on his shoulder as both of them allow the quiet to stretch, presumably wondering who will be the first to bring up the big serious questions, what it all means. But Blair isn't interested in facing reality just yet.
She scratches her fingers idly through the hair on his chest. "I don't remember you looking like this," she says, and is embarrassed a moment later when his eyebrows lift.
"When exactly have you seen me without clothes on? Before last night, that is."
"Over the summer, once, maybe." Then she wiggles her eyebrows at him a bit. "I have snooped through Serena's phone in the past, also."
It might be the height of bad manners to mention Serena at a moment like this, but he's already said her name once and it's not like either of them forgot she existed. Dan only laughs, a light flush rising to his cheeks. "Well, whatever you saw there was likely very old."
"Uh-huh," Blair says with a smile, looking up at him, and then Dan does kiss her. There's that buzz through her hands again and her stomach does a funny flip, a feeling like being on a rollercoaster: excited and scared. Last night she'd wanted him to kiss her so badly but she hadn't let herself admit it until he did.
When they pull apart, the first words out of his mouth are, "We should talk."
Don't spoil it. "I know."
But before any talking can happen, both their phones go off at once, and Dan groans. "Shit. I'm supposed to be having a family brunch."
"Your family is too fond of brunches," Blair says crossly as she picks up her own phone, where a text from Serena reads: BEN LEFT CALL ME.
Blair keeps her expression blank even as she experiences several things in quick succession: relief at the end of Serena's latest ridiculous relationship, guilt at all the things she will certainly not be telling Serena about when they talk, and just a little bit of worry too – because whenever Serena's relationships end, Dan is usually the one to pick up the pieces.
She tosses the phone aside, watching Dan get hurriedly back into his clothes. Skip it and spend the day with me.
"I'll call you," he says, "I promise."
Blair must look a little forlorn sitting there holding the duvet against her chest, because when Dan leans in to kiss her goodbye, he presses both hands to her cheeks and lingers longer than is strictly necessary.
"I promise," he repeats, and the crazy thing is, Blair believes him.
Various obligations conspire to keep them apart for the entirety of the following week. Blair decides she is no longer interested in licking her wounds and starts sending out as many résumés as she is physically capable of sending, though the only response she seems to get in return is no thank you. Dan is tangled up in family problems thanks to Lily's legal trouble and, though they talk a few times, it's all surface. They are perhaps avoiding each other just a little.
It's a delightful surprise when Blair is finally rewarded for her efforts, receiving a call from Epperly offering her a job assisting on a photoshoot. She's even more surprised to find Dan there when she arrives.
"Humphrey," Blair says, lips pressed together and arms crossed. "You have got to stop trying to steal my job."
He holds up his hands defensively, appearing greatly entertained by the situation. "She needed two people." Smugly, he adds, "And after all, I was a big hit at W."
"If you're counting when you hit the floor," Blair says.
"That was terrible," Dan says. "Even for you, I know you love a pun, that was terrible."
Sniping comes naturally to them, so half the day passes before the awkwardness sets in. Blair isn't sure if she runs out of wordplay or Dan acquires sudden stores of patience, or if it's just that they have to start working together to get anything done. Once they have nothing left to hide behind they don't know how to act anymore.
Blair becomes aware of Dan looking at her in a different way than she's used to Dan looking at her, his eyes on her body with something knowing lurking in them. When he catches her catching him, he gets all flushed and tries to laugh it off, wry and self-deprecating in an attractive way, hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck.
"I keep thinking I know what you look like naked," he confesses, quiet so no one else will hear.
Blair sinks her nails into her palms. "How long did we get for lunch?"
He tilts his head. "Fifteen minutes. Why?"
They have rushed, spontaneous sex in the bathroom. Blair doesn't know how it happens. She drags him in by a fistful of sweater but it's not until she's hiking up her skirt with her back against the tiled wall that she realizes what she's doing. It's all so entirely beyond her control.
Dan, for his part, goes along with it beautifully, hauls her up in his arms and kisses her hard. He's self-assured in a way she doesn't expect from him. The same could be said of their last encounter (fancy that, sleeping with Humphrey enough times to notice patterns); Dan Humphrey's got her number and he's not afraid to let her know it. Blair comes embarrassingly fast. She has admittedly always been quick on the trigger, but it's discomfiting somehow for him to know that. She can't seem to stop giving herself away.
Dan's lips are on her throat and she can feel his smug grin blossoming against her skin, as though he knows just what she's thinking. It's right then Blair realizes she's crazy about him. That's going to be a problem for her.
"Maybe now you can concentrate on your work," Blair breathes, unlocking her fisted hands from his hair.
"If that was your goal," he murmurs, "then I can tell you it's a failure. I don't think I'll be able to concentrate ever again."
She suppresses a smile, relishing the flattery, as silly as it is. "Get off me, Brooklyn," she says without heat.
"Oh, so that's how it is." Dan lets her leg down gently, tugs her clothes to rights quickly and automatically. "Five minutes ago I was rocking your world."
He has rosy lipgloss smeared across his bottom lip that Blair reaches up to wipe away. "You hang out with your lame nineties dad too much if you think 'rocking your world' is a phrase people use anymore."
"What should I use then? 'Mind-blowing,' maybe? 'Life-changing'?"
"Shame-inducing," Blair says dryly. "Let's get back to work, hm? You have some English setters to wrangle."
Before they leave, probably a good five minutes late, he touches her elbow lightly. "Hey, uh, after – after we're done today, you wanna grab dinner? My treat."
Blair holds back a cheap barb. "Okay," she says simply. "Your treat."
Blair is not prepared for the full force of Humphrey's affections. One night she has a craving so he makes a stack of pancakes for her, and the one on top is shaped like a large letter B, riddled with chocolate chips. She thinks it's so stupid, it's so dumb, it's such a dumb thing for a person to do for another person.
She cuts it into a million tiny pieces so she doesn't have to look at it.
Another night she's sitting in bed rubbing lotion onto her arms, waiting for him to be done in the bathroom, when she notices a book on his bedside table. It's sandwiched between a fiction anthology and Train Dreams (which he's been bugging her about), but there it is: D.V., by Diana Vreeland.
Blair pulls it free and holds it in her hands, looking down at it.
"So, I know you like to sneak out at the crack of dawn because you wake up freakishly early," comes Dan's voice, growing closer and closer until he's over the threshold, "But there's this diner down the street where I have literally never been spotted by Gossip Girl, like ever, so I thought maybe we could go get breakfast like a normal – What is it?"
Blair arches an eyebrow and holds the book up.
Dan is a touch sheepish. "Oh. Well, I remembered you mentioned it."
He's also appointed himself reader of her various cover letters, offering critique she did not ask for in a way that is both annoying and needed, which makes it all the more annoying. It's mid-afternoon, a good time for them to steal time together, and Blair leans over his shoulder at his desk, frowning at the screen of his laptop.
"I don't see how you can make so many corrections in such a relatively short piece of writing," Blair huffs.
"They're not corrections," Dan insists. "Just – look, you have all the qualifications, right? It's just…sometimes an issue of tone."
Tone bordering on chilly, Blair says, "What is that supposed to mean?"
Dan rolls his eyes, turning slightly to pull her around and right down into his lap. It's highly patronizing but Blair sort of likes it anyway. "It means," he says patiently, also very patronizing, "that your competence can occasionally come off as arrogance instead."
"Am I not supposed to take pride in my achievements?"
In apparent reaction to the rising pitch of her voice, Dan kisses her shoulder. "No, but you do sometimes get in your own way."
"Attempting to be cute while you're being irritating does not actually negate the fact that you're being irritating."
Dan grins at her. "It does a little, though, doesn't it?"
It's Blair's turn to roll her eyes but then she kisses him on the mouth. "I know you're trying to help," she tells him, "but perhaps next time wait for help to be requested."
"Okay," he murmurs, kissing her back. "You got it."
The conversation gets away from Blair at that point. There's more kissing, and Dan Humphrey's hands under her Marc Jacobs – Blair finds that part of it has become appealing to her, the ostensible wrongness of giving it up to this particular boy here in Brooklyn. Doing something she shouldn't has always tasted a little too sweet to Blair.
She ends up facing away from him, her hands braced on the desk and panties simply tugged aside, Blair grateful she chose stockings instead of tights today. He presses kisses between her shoulder blades through the flimsy fabric of her blouse.
His name escapes her in a moan, fingers curling around the edge of the desk.
Perhaps she's not prepared for the full force of her affection for him.
The rather exceptional desk-sex (if Blair did say so herself) had been rather exceptionally interrupted, thanks to Dan's father and his awful timing. One minute she was relaxing against Dan's chest, shivering with aftershocks, and the next the sound of the door had them jumping up like they were electrocuted. Blair practically dove into the bathroom and then hid in there like a child until Dan was able to get rid of his father. It was an interminable twenty minutes.
They have now been avoiding a Relationship Talk for three straight days.
Blair tries to distract him by expounding on every other detail of her carefully planned future, ignoring the ways he does or does not factor in. "My three year plan," Blair recites with forceful pride injected into her voice. "Every moment is allotted for work, school, and personal obligations."
Dan looks over her color-coded plans with that same expression he had the one time she tried to make breakfast. Like he didn't want to crush her but he was going to have to tell her the egg was raw. "Your organizational skills are, as always, slightly terrifying."
Blair smiles, waiting.
"Did you schedule in time to eat, sleep, and breathe?"
And there it is. "Yes, Humphrey. After my W disaster, which I'm sure you can recall, I accepted that it was necessary to factor in basic human functions. I adjusted. That is why it's a three year plan now, instead of two."
He makes a little harrumphing noise and sets her planner aside. "The other day, when you told me to wait until you asked for help? I respect that, but I gotta say – don't be weird about asking. I'm not going to think any less of you."
Blair's smile is softer then, realer. "I can't actually promise not to be weird about it," she says. "But I will endeavor to try."
"Good." Dan gives her a kiss. "So, uh, what exactly counts as 'personal obligations'?"
As segues go, it is not one of his better attempts as getting her to talk about whatever it is that's going on between them. And as distractions go, Blair's isn't one of her better attempts either. "Hmm," she murmurs, leaning in to kiss him again, more firmly. "Maybe something like this?"
An hour and a half later he's too tired to talk at all. Instead they eat Indian food while cuddled on his couch, Blair buttoned into one of his flannels with a blanket across her bare legs. They're watching Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, and Dan is pretending to be awake even though he keeps dozing against her shoulder. It's all very cozy.
Then Blair feels a sudden rising spiral of nausea, eyes widening at the abruptness of it, and she shoves him off so she can race to the bathroom and spew out her tikka masala. Dan is next to her a moment later, reaching for her hair, sliding a palm over her back.
Blair sits back on the cool tile. She has that shaky feeling you get when you're not throwing up by choice and she wipes her mouth about a thousand times with the handful of tissue Dan provides.
She thinks his eyes are a little bit wary.
"I didn't do it on purpose," Blair snaps, annoyed. As if she'd do it in front of him. Not that she does it anymore.
Dan schools his expression, offering her a smile. "Guess that place is off the order rotation, huh?"
"You should have known not to get food from a restaurant located next to a laundromat."
"We'll know better next time," he says breezily, leaning up to grab a toothbrush for her. "I'm honestly impressed you even ate it."
"Well I'm glad you're impressed, because I'm paying for it now." Blair enjoys the sulkiness in the way that she has always enjoyed sulking, because it gets her things: like Dan taking care of her, making her mint tea and holding her all through the rest of the movie.
The next day Blair feels worse, if possible. She's back at her own place with the intention of getting some work done, finishing a few papers in advance to free her up later on, but she's filled with such an inexplicable lethargy that all she's capable of doing is laying in her bed watching old episodes of Project Runway. She must be getting the flu. That, or her period. Blair flicks her phone open to check. Then she stares stupidly at the dumb pink calendar for several long minutes.
She was supposed to have had her period two weeks ago.
That can't be right.
She's never been regular, exactly. For a while as a teenager she'd even stopped getting her period altogether, but it's been better the last few years and she hasn't missed one since junior year, not since –
Blair freezes, brain whirring. No, it isn't possible; it couldn't be. They always use something, always, because she's not on birth control right now and Dan knows that. The first time, she told him the very first time and he's been so good about it, even had a condom at the photoshoot and they hadn't even been regular then.
The only reason she's not on birth control is because the last one made her totally crazy and ten pounds heavier. She was taking time to figure out what to do next and it hadn't mattered because there hadn't been anyone for such a long time. Dan caught her in the wrong window of time.
They'd always used something, hadn't they?
Blair tries to remember if they ever skipped the condom even once but she can't. It hasn't been that long: four weeks, maybe five. She could probably still count the number of times they'd even been together. If she could still count the number of times they'd been together, it was much too soon for this.
Maybe they rushed it once or twice. They were still in a honeymoon phase, and Blair had a penchant for exhibitionism that Dan happily went along with. They must have slipped up, but it could only have been once, was that really enough to –
It is pregnancy brain that she can't remember anything, or is that panic?
She shakes her head, trying to take a breath and calm herself down. She's being crazy. She's overreacting.
But Dan had the same food she did and he didn't get sick. Iron stomach, he'd bragged.
Blair tricks Dorota into getting her a pregnancy test. With a brattiness that is at least fifty percent nerves, she snits, "Dorota, you're absolutely useless lately. The last time you were dragging this much it was because of that baby. Something you're not telling me?"
So Dorota is dispatched for a plethora of tests and when she returns, Blair absconds with one box.
She sticks it in the bottom of one of her bathroom drawers and then waits for Dorota to take her own tests – all of which, surprisingly, are positive. Surely it's gauche to be expecting concurrent with one's maid.
She congratulates and fake-smiles and magnanimously gives Dorota the afternoon off to go tell Vanya the good news. Then she drinks what feels like a gallon of water before going upstairs to pee on a stick.
Two, to be more specific. The box contains two tests.
While she waits the few minutes, sitting on the edge of her bathtub, her finger hovers over Dan's name in her phone's contact list. He would come over immediately. He would probably have wanted her to wait for him to take the test and he would probably hold her hand, be supportive, all those annoying Dan things he does.
Blair doesn't call him.
Both tests are positive.
Blair has plans with Dan that night, but she gets ready in a fugue, unable to stop thinking of the incriminating evidence crammed to the bottom of the bin. It must still be showing on her face when she steps over his threshold because he tips his head slightly and asks, "You okay?"
The entire cab ride over she debated what she should say but she reached no conclusions. When she opens her mouth, she honestly has no idea what's going to come out of it. "I think we should tell Serena."
"Really?" He hadn't expected that, clearly, and there's a note of skepticism in his voice – though his expression teeters on the edge of warm openness. "Tell her what, exactly?"
"That we're involved. That you're my –" Blair sees him wanting her to say the word, sees how badly he wants to hear it because she's had that same look herself many times before. As soon as the word leaves her lips, it will be official. "Boyfriend," she finishes.
She watches Dan relax automatically before his shoulders tense up and his expression goes carefully blank. Blair doesn't think she's ever met a boy so eager to commit. She remembers thinking it was strange in high school too, chalking it up to another facet of the Serena magic: as soon as she'd decide to choose a boy, of course he'd be instantly devoted.
His eyebrows draw together just slightly and it's with concern that he asks, "Is that what you want?"
Blair thinks of a B-shaped pancake. She thinks of the comforting sweep of a hand over her back. She thinks of kisses trailed over her thighs. She doesn't let herself think of those two accusing plus signs. "Yes," Blair says. "That's what I want."
And she gives herself up for a kiss. The feeling in her chest is fluttery and strange.
Blair insists upon telling Serena on her own, despite Dan's willingness to do it with her. She feels it's something she has to do by herself, a brittle and potentially horrible encounter that has to be one on one. It can't be her and Dan sitting across from Serena like two people delivering a fatal diagnosis.
"If you're sure," Dan says, maybe a little doubtfully. "This isn't your asking for help issue rearing its head again, is it?"
"No," Blair says impatiently. "I'm confused, do you really want to be the one to tell Serena you've been secretly screwing her best friend for a month? It's not exactly a prime volunteer task."
"Yeah, that's why I don't get why you want to do it."
Petulant, Blair says, "Because. Because I just – I have to." Because you're her boyfriend and I'm stealing you away. "Can you not be obnoxious and let me do this please? Consider yourself spared."
Dan doesn't look like he considers himself spared, but he lets the issue lie. "Fine," he says. "But I'm picking the movie."
Blair doesn't argue. Still, the rest of the evening is edgy. She's almost glad to have the Serena debacle as an excuse for it, even as the headache pulsing against her temples seems to take on a rhythm: pregnant, pregnant, you got me pregnant. Tired, she slumps against his shoulder, knowing he'll comfort her even if he's annoyed.
It's dangerous, that she's learning to count on Dan.
"It'll be okay," he promises with a squeeze, unaware which worry he's assuaging.
I hope so, Blair thinks.
Blair sits in class tapping her pen against her blank notebook page, thwack thwack thwack. Her foot echoes the sound, Tory Burch flat hitting the carpeted floor with a muffled but consistent tapping. Every minute feels as though it's stretching out to hour proportions and Blair isn't sure how much longer she can sit still, little as she's looking forward to what's coming after this.
Namely, lunch plans with Serena.
Blair can't tell if her stifling nausea is part of the resultant anxiety or…other things. Normally she has a yogurt before class but today the smell made her gag so much she had to skip it. And every time she sees her phone light up with a text, secreted as it is in her half-open bag, her stomach clenches painfully.
She practices saying the words in her head, giving them a different inflection each time. Dan is her boyfriend. Dan is her boyfriend. Dan is her boyfriend.
She can't concentrate, but when the professor dismisses them twenty minutes later, Blair remains in her seat as long as is feasibly possible. She's actually in danger of being late by the time she steps into the little café where they'd agreed to meet; Serena is even there before her, an unprecedented turn of events.
"B," Serena says brightly, beaming. "You didn't answer any of my texts!" She gestures at the barista behind the counter. "I ordered you a latte."
"I was in class," Blair says, then changes her order to a decaf herbal tea. At Serena's raised eyebrow, Blair defends, "I'm doing a cleanse!"
"Uh-huh," Serena says with a little laugh. "Come on, let's sit; I have major Lily complaining to do."
Blair listens to Serena ramble on while attempting to dole out some thoughtful advice despite her scattered brain, despite the fact that she's barely listening. It's rude; Blair is not a stranger to rudeness. All she can think about is herself.
Blair thinks about standing in her bathroom, eyes shut tight, praying to something she barely believes in, praying to herself. I command myself not to be pregnant.
Finally the conversation falters, and Serena says, "You're being weirdly…nice."
Blair gapes at her. "When am I not nice?" But Serena only gives her a pointed look, so Blair sighs. "I have something to tell you."
Serena makes an ahh sound, like that explains everything, and folds her hands on the tabletop, waiting. "Okay."
"You might not like it," Blair warns. "It's very shocking."
There is a trace of prepared wariness in the set of Serena's mouth but her face is otherwise friendly, in good cheer. "Should I guess?" she teases. "Are you dropping out of Columbia to go to a state school and start wearing off the rack dresses? I actually really hope it's that."
"No," Blair mutters.
But Serena is enjoying her guessing. "Are you moving upstate to start an organic farm? Are you secretly in love with Penelope? Have you decided to make Vanessa your best friend instead of me? Are you taking up artisanal honey-making? Are you and Dan madly in love?"
There's a long beat a silence while Blair fidgets with the tag of her teabag. "I wouldn't say madly in love."
The humor fades from Serena's expression in increments. "What?"
Blair clears her throat, still looking anywhere but at her friend. "Dan and I are…involved. Romantically. We are romantically involved."
"You're kidding," Serena says. When Blair does not confirm this, she slumps back in her seat. "I can't even imagine you two together. You don't even – When do you even see him?"
When Serena wouldn't be around to see, of course – never at parties or brunches, only in very private, very singular spaces. A relationship off the record.
"It started when we were helping you with Juliet," Blair offers. "And then there was W and, well… It just happened."
"But…Dan?" Serena says. "Dan Humphrey?"
The inflection is enough to almost make Blair smile, but she doesn't. "Yes. That's the one."
"You don't even like Dan. You hate Dan."
"I don't," Blair says, though it still feels like a strange insistence to make. Who would have ever suspected that one day she'd want to be with Dan Humphrey? "We have a real connection. We talk about films and art and – well, lots of things."
"Okay." Serena takes a breath.
"I like being with him," Blair admits, cheeks pinking. She makes herself study the wet brown ring her cup has left on the paper napkin. "I don't know. I mean, I know he has faults, believe me, I do – no one does judgmental condescension quite like Dan, and he's stubborn and just such a know-it-all, but… He makes me feel like…"
Like something in her chest is blooming. But that's too embarrassing to say, so Blair doesn't.
After a moment, voice small, Serena says, "Like you matter."
And Blair is faintly annoyed to share that with her – that knowledge, that feeling. "I suppose that's a way of putting it."
They suffer through a few more swallows of their respective drinks before Serena finds an excuse to leave – reassuring Blair, of course, that she is fine and everything is fine– and Blair doesn't really blame her. The Serena-and-Nate-are-dating situation of last year had been more private realization than sit down chat, but Blair can imagine that she wouldn't have done well sitting through it.
As she gets up to go, Blair dismisses all the texts from Serena she hadn't answered before and notices for the first time one message from Dorota.
Miss B, it says, Mama coming home.
PART TWO
dan/blair. serena. 11k words. s4 au.
w: abortion
summary: Blair is not prepared for the full force of Humphrey's affections.
note: A combination of rewatching s4 (why would I do this to myself) and being sort of gently inspired by Obvious Child/some other stuff. And also wanting to write Blair getting her shit together and DB being a normal couple. Wecouldhavehaditall.mp3.
One kiss turns into two and three and four, until Blair's arms are wrapped all the way around Dan's neck and the distance between them has closed completely. Somewhere in the middle of kiss number five she suddenly comes to her senses (maybe something to do with Dan's hand on her ass) and thrusts him violently away. Dan skids a little, looking as confused as she feels. His mouth is soft and blurry.
They look at each other for a protracted moment before Blair declares, "That was terrible." She turns for the stairs, waiting until she's climbed a few to add, "Are you coming?"
It only seems to compound his confusion, but he does follow her.
Blair had seen Dan at Film Forum sitting three rows ahead, Nénette on screen. He was taking up an obscene amount of space, sitting low with his legs edging over into the seat-space on either side, that obnoxious boy-sprawl that they do. He was eating popcorn. Blair only noticed him because there was a dense tumbleweed of hair blocking the screen directly in front of her and really, who else would it belong to?
Right then, it felt like sitting three rows behind Dan Humphrey in the cinema was the final nail in her holiday's coffin. Serena was on her road trip, Nate was with his grandfather, Eric was in Gstaad with that new boyfriend who had worse hair than Humphrey. Chuck was in New Zealand. Her mother and Cyrus were shopping for a new house in Aix. Even Dorota was on a little family vacation up in Vermont. Blair was stunningly alone, and stunningly lonely.
As the film went on, Blair found herself wishing she'd gone somewhere – though where would she even have gone, and with whom? No one invited her on a road trip or to look at houses. Once she'd had lots of friends on various tiers, a whole host of acquaintances, but it seemed like everyone had drifted away. Chuck demanded most of her attention until he didn't and now she found herself with an excess of time and nothing to fill it.
Some kind of kerfuffle drew her attention back to Dan. A group of teenagers was being noisy, cackling about the things teenagers found to cackle at during documentaries about French orangutans. And Dan muttered to himself loud enough to carry back towards Blair, "Fucking kids today."
Blair stifled a laugh. She pictured him at St. Jude's, probably muttering similar things to himself as snide people walked away unhearing; as she walked away. The thought made her smile but also made her incomprehensibly sad. For the first time she felt very aware of Dan as a person existing separate from her own life – not just the annoying boyfriend of a friend, the upstart boy from Brooklyn.
Without thinking it through, Blair got up and moved forward a few rows, dropping into the seat at the end of his aisle, two away from him. "That mop on your head is blocking my view," she said, not looking at him. She held out a hand. "Popcorn, Humphrey."
She could feel his eyes on her, huffy and disbelieving. Then he handed over the popcorn.
It has been a very long time since Blair has been with anyone besides – with anyone different. She tries to think back: there had been no one all summer in Paris, no one at Columbia (she'd never gone to bed with Boring Cameron), no one else freshman year. She thinks the last non-Chuck person she had sex with was Carter Baizen back in high school. She doesn't know how to feel about that.
At the top of the stairs Dan touches her again, just his hands curling around her waist and pulling her back against his chest. A shiver steals through her, low in her stomach and down to the tips of her fingers. It's surreal. The entire thing is surreal.
"Blair," he starts softly, and she expects any number of questions: are you sure about this, do you want to talk, are we still friends? But he just kisses the side of her neck. So Blair slips the straps of her dress off her shoulders, slides her arms out, and lets the dress fall.
She turns her face towards him a little, nervous and hating it. "Dan?"
He doesn't seem to notice or care about her lingerie, black mesh with jewel-bright blue embroidery, a matched set that cost her two hundred euros, which she's sure he would scoff at. She thought it was cheap, so cheap she almost didn't bother buying it. Dan's hands are smoothing over her stomach and sides now, mouth at the corner of her lips.
Maybe it's because it's been so long, but Blair finds herself oddly shy with Dan, unsure of what to do or how exactly to behave. Sometimes it feels like the things Chuck liked are the only things she knows how to do. What if Dan doesn't like any of that?
They finally make their way into her room, but Blair is struck by a new, horrible thought: what if it's terrible? What if their connection is simply intellectual and they were only meant to be friends, nothing more?
What if, afterwards, only one of them thinks that?
It's not until she finally turns to face Dan that she registers the same worries in his expression, the same trepidation in his eyes. It makes her feel better all at once – it makes her feel like she isn't alone.
In the morning she's disoriented, but only for a moment, long enough to register the weight of Dan's arm around her waist and for the night before to come rushing back.
Like, Dan sitting up against the headboard with her in his lap, the duvet puddled voluminously around them. The brush of his nose against hers as their lips met. Her arms draped around his shoulders and his fingertips digging into her spine. Being so horribly, awfully vulnerable.
Blair looks over at him now, dead asleep and breathing deeply. It's strange for him to be here in her bed. It's one thing to give into one's worst instincts in the middle of the night, but under the scrutiny of daylight –
Dan shifts in his sleep, turning towards her, and Blair thinks suddenly of his hot, open mouth against her collarbone. She commands herself not to regret this. She does not want to regret this. (A tiny voice in her head is saying you slept with Serena's boyfriend but she counters that he isn't Serena's boyfriend anymore, has not been that for years now.)
She slides out of bed without disturbing him, landing cat-like and quiet on her feet. She snatches her robe on the way into the bathroom, where she does her customary morning-after polishing without ending up too polished – not that Humphrey would be able to tell the difference, presumably. She hadn't taken off her makeup before falling asleep and she's embarrassed to see the patchiness of her foundation, the flakes of mascara under her eyes. She hopes she didn't leave any on the pillowcases, how mortifying.
Blair brushes her teeth and her hair, takes the quickest of showers, puts on perfume, and fills in her eyebrows lightly, dabs a lip stain onto her too-pale mouth. She puts on just a touch of brown mascara, for subtlety's sake. Then she goes back into the bedroom, shucks off the robe, and gets under the covers again, pretending to be asleep. It lasts about half a second before Dan goes, "You took forever in there. I thought you were going to sneak out through Serena's room and I'd have to walk of shame back to Brooklyn wondering if I made the whole night up."
Blair opens her eyes, fixing him with a disapproving glare. But he looks so rumpled and appealing that she can't even keep it up. God, she's a disaster. "Good morning to you too, Humphrey."
"Good morning," Dan says, almost playful, and leans in like he's going to kiss her but then doesn't. "I seem to remember you do know my first name. You said it very beautifully last night, in a variety of pitches –"
Her immediate instinct is to pinch him sharply, but she settles for a shove to the shoulder. "Shut up, Dan." He lifts his arm to wrap around her, Blair leaning into him with surprising ease. "I can still sneak out and leave you here."
He doesn't appear to believe her, if the smile is anything to go by.
She leans her cheek on his shoulder as both of them allow the quiet to stretch, presumably wondering who will be the first to bring up the big serious questions, what it all means. But Blair isn't interested in facing reality just yet.
She scratches her fingers idly through the hair on his chest. "I don't remember you looking like this," she says, and is embarrassed a moment later when his eyebrows lift.
"When exactly have you seen me without clothes on? Before last night, that is."
"Over the summer, once, maybe." Then she wiggles her eyebrows at him a bit. "I have snooped through Serena's phone in the past, also."
It might be the height of bad manners to mention Serena at a moment like this, but he's already said her name once and it's not like either of them forgot she existed. Dan only laughs, a light flush rising to his cheeks. "Well, whatever you saw there was likely very old."
"Uh-huh," Blair says with a smile, looking up at him, and then Dan does kiss her. There's that buzz through her hands again and her stomach does a funny flip, a feeling like being on a rollercoaster: excited and scared. Last night she'd wanted him to kiss her so badly but she hadn't let herself admit it until he did.
When they pull apart, the first words out of his mouth are, "We should talk."
Don't spoil it. "I know."
But before any talking can happen, both their phones go off at once, and Dan groans. "Shit. I'm supposed to be having a family brunch."
"Your family is too fond of brunches," Blair says crossly as she picks up her own phone, where a text from Serena reads: BEN LEFT CALL ME.
Blair keeps her expression blank even as she experiences several things in quick succession: relief at the end of Serena's latest ridiculous relationship, guilt at all the things she will certainly not be telling Serena about when they talk, and just a little bit of worry too – because whenever Serena's relationships end, Dan is usually the one to pick up the pieces.
She tosses the phone aside, watching Dan get hurriedly back into his clothes. Skip it and spend the day with me.
"I'll call you," he says, "I promise."
Blair must look a little forlorn sitting there holding the duvet against her chest, because when Dan leans in to kiss her goodbye, he presses both hands to her cheeks and lingers longer than is strictly necessary.
"I promise," he repeats, and the crazy thing is, Blair believes him.
Various obligations conspire to keep them apart for the entirety of the following week. Blair decides she is no longer interested in licking her wounds and starts sending out as many résumés as she is physically capable of sending, though the only response she seems to get in return is no thank you. Dan is tangled up in family problems thanks to Lily's legal trouble and, though they talk a few times, it's all surface. They are perhaps avoiding each other just a little.
It's a delightful surprise when Blair is finally rewarded for her efforts, receiving a call from Epperly offering her a job assisting on a photoshoot. She's even more surprised to find Dan there when she arrives.
"Humphrey," Blair says, lips pressed together and arms crossed. "You have got to stop trying to steal my job."
He holds up his hands defensively, appearing greatly entertained by the situation. "She needed two people." Smugly, he adds, "And after all, I was a big hit at W."
"If you're counting when you hit the floor," Blair says.
"That was terrible," Dan says. "Even for you, I know you love a pun, that was terrible."
Sniping comes naturally to them, so half the day passes before the awkwardness sets in. Blair isn't sure if she runs out of wordplay or Dan acquires sudden stores of patience, or if it's just that they have to start working together to get anything done. Once they have nothing left to hide behind they don't know how to act anymore.
Blair becomes aware of Dan looking at her in a different way than she's used to Dan looking at her, his eyes on her body with something knowing lurking in them. When he catches her catching him, he gets all flushed and tries to laugh it off, wry and self-deprecating in an attractive way, hand coming up to scratch at the back of his neck.
"I keep thinking I know what you look like naked," he confesses, quiet so no one else will hear.
Blair sinks her nails into her palms. "How long did we get for lunch?"
He tilts his head. "Fifteen minutes. Why?"
They have rushed, spontaneous sex in the bathroom. Blair doesn't know how it happens. She drags him in by a fistful of sweater but it's not until she's hiking up her skirt with her back against the tiled wall that she realizes what she's doing. It's all so entirely beyond her control.
Dan, for his part, goes along with it beautifully, hauls her up in his arms and kisses her hard. He's self-assured in a way she doesn't expect from him. The same could be said of their last encounter (fancy that, sleeping with Humphrey enough times to notice patterns); Dan Humphrey's got her number and he's not afraid to let her know it. Blair comes embarrassingly fast. She has admittedly always been quick on the trigger, but it's discomfiting somehow for him to know that. She can't seem to stop giving herself away.
Dan's lips are on her throat and she can feel his smug grin blossoming against her skin, as though he knows just what she's thinking. It's right then Blair realizes she's crazy about him. That's going to be a problem for her.
"Maybe now you can concentrate on your work," Blair breathes, unlocking her fisted hands from his hair.
"If that was your goal," he murmurs, "then I can tell you it's a failure. I don't think I'll be able to concentrate ever again."
She suppresses a smile, relishing the flattery, as silly as it is. "Get off me, Brooklyn," she says without heat.
"Oh, so that's how it is." Dan lets her leg down gently, tugs her clothes to rights quickly and automatically. "Five minutes ago I was rocking your world."
He has rosy lipgloss smeared across his bottom lip that Blair reaches up to wipe away. "You hang out with your lame nineties dad too much if you think 'rocking your world' is a phrase people use anymore."
"What should I use then? 'Mind-blowing,' maybe? 'Life-changing'?"
"Shame-inducing," Blair says dryly. "Let's get back to work, hm? You have some English setters to wrangle."
Before they leave, probably a good five minutes late, he touches her elbow lightly. "Hey, uh, after – after we're done today, you wanna grab dinner? My treat."
Blair holds back a cheap barb. "Okay," she says simply. "Your treat."
Blair is not prepared for the full force of Humphrey's affections. One night she has a craving so he makes a stack of pancakes for her, and the one on top is shaped like a large letter B, riddled with chocolate chips. She thinks it's so stupid, it's so dumb, it's such a dumb thing for a person to do for another person.
She cuts it into a million tiny pieces so she doesn't have to look at it.
Another night she's sitting in bed rubbing lotion onto her arms, waiting for him to be done in the bathroom, when she notices a book on his bedside table. It's sandwiched between a fiction anthology and Train Dreams (which he's been bugging her about), but there it is: D.V., by Diana Vreeland.
Blair pulls it free and holds it in her hands, looking down at it.
"So, I know you like to sneak out at the crack of dawn because you wake up freakishly early," comes Dan's voice, growing closer and closer until he's over the threshold, "But there's this diner down the street where I have literally never been spotted by Gossip Girl, like ever, so I thought maybe we could go get breakfast like a normal – What is it?"
Blair arches an eyebrow and holds the book up.
Dan is a touch sheepish. "Oh. Well, I remembered you mentioned it."
He's also appointed himself reader of her various cover letters, offering critique she did not ask for in a way that is both annoying and needed, which makes it all the more annoying. It's mid-afternoon, a good time for them to steal time together, and Blair leans over his shoulder at his desk, frowning at the screen of his laptop.
"I don't see how you can make so many corrections in such a relatively short piece of writing," Blair huffs.
"They're not corrections," Dan insists. "Just – look, you have all the qualifications, right? It's just…sometimes an issue of tone."
Tone bordering on chilly, Blair says, "What is that supposed to mean?"
Dan rolls his eyes, turning slightly to pull her around and right down into his lap. It's highly patronizing but Blair sort of likes it anyway. "It means," he says patiently, also very patronizing, "that your competence can occasionally come off as arrogance instead."
"Am I not supposed to take pride in my achievements?"
In apparent reaction to the rising pitch of her voice, Dan kisses her shoulder. "No, but you do sometimes get in your own way."
"Attempting to be cute while you're being irritating does not actually negate the fact that you're being irritating."
Dan grins at her. "It does a little, though, doesn't it?"
It's Blair's turn to roll her eyes but then she kisses him on the mouth. "I know you're trying to help," she tells him, "but perhaps next time wait for help to be requested."
"Okay," he murmurs, kissing her back. "You got it."
The conversation gets away from Blair at that point. There's more kissing, and Dan Humphrey's hands under her Marc Jacobs – Blair finds that part of it has become appealing to her, the ostensible wrongness of giving it up to this particular boy here in Brooklyn. Doing something she shouldn't has always tasted a little too sweet to Blair.
She ends up facing away from him, her hands braced on the desk and panties simply tugged aside, Blair grateful she chose stockings instead of tights today. He presses kisses between her shoulder blades through the flimsy fabric of her blouse.
His name escapes her in a moan, fingers curling around the edge of the desk.
Perhaps she's not prepared for the full force of her affection for him.
The rather exceptional desk-sex (if Blair did say so herself) had been rather exceptionally interrupted, thanks to Dan's father and his awful timing. One minute she was relaxing against Dan's chest, shivering with aftershocks, and the next the sound of the door had them jumping up like they were electrocuted. Blair practically dove into the bathroom and then hid in there like a child until Dan was able to get rid of his father. It was an interminable twenty minutes.
They have now been avoiding a Relationship Talk for three straight days.
Blair tries to distract him by expounding on every other detail of her carefully planned future, ignoring the ways he does or does not factor in. "My three year plan," Blair recites with forceful pride injected into her voice. "Every moment is allotted for work, school, and personal obligations."
Dan looks over her color-coded plans with that same expression he had the one time she tried to make breakfast. Like he didn't want to crush her but he was going to have to tell her the egg was raw. "Your organizational skills are, as always, slightly terrifying."
Blair smiles, waiting.
"Did you schedule in time to eat, sleep, and breathe?"
And there it is. "Yes, Humphrey. After my W disaster, which I'm sure you can recall, I accepted that it was necessary to factor in basic human functions. I adjusted. That is why it's a three year plan now, instead of two."
He makes a little harrumphing noise and sets her planner aside. "The other day, when you told me to wait until you asked for help? I respect that, but I gotta say – don't be weird about asking. I'm not going to think any less of you."
Blair's smile is softer then, realer. "I can't actually promise not to be weird about it," she says. "But I will endeavor to try."
"Good." Dan gives her a kiss. "So, uh, what exactly counts as 'personal obligations'?"
As segues go, it is not one of his better attempts as getting her to talk about whatever it is that's going on between them. And as distractions go, Blair's isn't one of her better attempts either. "Hmm," she murmurs, leaning in to kiss him again, more firmly. "Maybe something like this?"
An hour and a half later he's too tired to talk at all. Instead they eat Indian food while cuddled on his couch, Blair buttoned into one of his flannels with a blanket across her bare legs. They're watching Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, and Dan is pretending to be awake even though he keeps dozing against her shoulder. It's all very cozy.
Then Blair feels a sudden rising spiral of nausea, eyes widening at the abruptness of it, and she shoves him off so she can race to the bathroom and spew out her tikka masala. Dan is next to her a moment later, reaching for her hair, sliding a palm over her back.
Blair sits back on the cool tile. She has that shaky feeling you get when you're not throwing up by choice and she wipes her mouth about a thousand times with the handful of tissue Dan provides.
She thinks his eyes are a little bit wary.
"I didn't do it on purpose," Blair snaps, annoyed. As if she'd do it in front of him. Not that she does it anymore.
Dan schools his expression, offering her a smile. "Guess that place is off the order rotation, huh?"
"You should have known not to get food from a restaurant located next to a laundromat."
"We'll know better next time," he says breezily, leaning up to grab a toothbrush for her. "I'm honestly impressed you even ate it."
"Well I'm glad you're impressed, because I'm paying for it now." Blair enjoys the sulkiness in the way that she has always enjoyed sulking, because it gets her things: like Dan taking care of her, making her mint tea and holding her all through the rest of the movie.
The next day Blair feels worse, if possible. She's back at her own place with the intention of getting some work done, finishing a few papers in advance to free her up later on, but she's filled with such an inexplicable lethargy that all she's capable of doing is laying in her bed watching old episodes of Project Runway. She must be getting the flu. That, or her period. Blair flicks her phone open to check. Then she stares stupidly at the dumb pink calendar for several long minutes.
She was supposed to have had her period two weeks ago.
That can't be right.
She's never been regular, exactly. For a while as a teenager she'd even stopped getting her period altogether, but it's been better the last few years and she hasn't missed one since junior year, not since –
Blair freezes, brain whirring. No, it isn't possible; it couldn't be. They always use something, always, because she's not on birth control right now and Dan knows that. The first time, she told him the very first time and he's been so good about it, even had a condom at the photoshoot and they hadn't even been regular then.
The only reason she's not on birth control is because the last one made her totally crazy and ten pounds heavier. She was taking time to figure out what to do next and it hadn't mattered because there hadn't been anyone for such a long time. Dan caught her in the wrong window of time.
They'd always used something, hadn't they?
Blair tries to remember if they ever skipped the condom even once but she can't. It hasn't been that long: four weeks, maybe five. She could probably still count the number of times they'd even been together. If she could still count the number of times they'd been together, it was much too soon for this.
Maybe they rushed it once or twice. They were still in a honeymoon phase, and Blair had a penchant for exhibitionism that Dan happily went along with. They must have slipped up, but it could only have been once, was that really enough to –
It is pregnancy brain that she can't remember anything, or is that panic?
She shakes her head, trying to take a breath and calm herself down. She's being crazy. She's overreacting.
But Dan had the same food she did and he didn't get sick. Iron stomach, he'd bragged.
Blair tricks Dorota into getting her a pregnancy test. With a brattiness that is at least fifty percent nerves, she snits, "Dorota, you're absolutely useless lately. The last time you were dragging this much it was because of that baby. Something you're not telling me?"
So Dorota is dispatched for a plethora of tests and when she returns, Blair absconds with one box.
She sticks it in the bottom of one of her bathroom drawers and then waits for Dorota to take her own tests – all of which, surprisingly, are positive. Surely it's gauche to be expecting concurrent with one's maid.
She congratulates and fake-smiles and magnanimously gives Dorota the afternoon off to go tell Vanya the good news. Then she drinks what feels like a gallon of water before going upstairs to pee on a stick.
Two, to be more specific. The box contains two tests.
While she waits the few minutes, sitting on the edge of her bathtub, her finger hovers over Dan's name in her phone's contact list. He would come over immediately. He would probably have wanted her to wait for him to take the test and he would probably hold her hand, be supportive, all those annoying Dan things he does.
Blair doesn't call him.
Both tests are positive.
Blair has plans with Dan that night, but she gets ready in a fugue, unable to stop thinking of the incriminating evidence crammed to the bottom of the bin. It must still be showing on her face when she steps over his threshold because he tips his head slightly and asks, "You okay?"
The entire cab ride over she debated what she should say but she reached no conclusions. When she opens her mouth, she honestly has no idea what's going to come out of it. "I think we should tell Serena."
"Really?" He hadn't expected that, clearly, and there's a note of skepticism in his voice – though his expression teeters on the edge of warm openness. "Tell her what, exactly?"
"That we're involved. That you're my –" Blair sees him wanting her to say the word, sees how badly he wants to hear it because she's had that same look herself many times before. As soon as the word leaves her lips, it will be official. "Boyfriend," she finishes.
She watches Dan relax automatically before his shoulders tense up and his expression goes carefully blank. Blair doesn't think she's ever met a boy so eager to commit. She remembers thinking it was strange in high school too, chalking it up to another facet of the Serena magic: as soon as she'd decide to choose a boy, of course he'd be instantly devoted.
His eyebrows draw together just slightly and it's with concern that he asks, "Is that what you want?"
Blair thinks of a B-shaped pancake. She thinks of the comforting sweep of a hand over her back. She thinks of kisses trailed over her thighs. She doesn't let herself think of those two accusing plus signs. "Yes," Blair says. "That's what I want."
And she gives herself up for a kiss. The feeling in her chest is fluttery and strange.
Blair insists upon telling Serena on her own, despite Dan's willingness to do it with her. She feels it's something she has to do by herself, a brittle and potentially horrible encounter that has to be one on one. It can't be her and Dan sitting across from Serena like two people delivering a fatal diagnosis.
"If you're sure," Dan says, maybe a little doubtfully. "This isn't your asking for help issue rearing its head again, is it?"
"No," Blair says impatiently. "I'm confused, do you really want to be the one to tell Serena you've been secretly screwing her best friend for a month? It's not exactly a prime volunteer task."
"Yeah, that's why I don't get why you want to do it."
Petulant, Blair says, "Because. Because I just – I have to." Because you're her boyfriend and I'm stealing you away. "Can you not be obnoxious and let me do this please? Consider yourself spared."
Dan doesn't look like he considers himself spared, but he lets the issue lie. "Fine," he says. "But I'm picking the movie."
Blair doesn't argue. Still, the rest of the evening is edgy. She's almost glad to have the Serena debacle as an excuse for it, even as the headache pulsing against her temples seems to take on a rhythm: pregnant, pregnant, you got me pregnant. Tired, she slumps against his shoulder, knowing he'll comfort her even if he's annoyed.
It's dangerous, that she's learning to count on Dan.
"It'll be okay," he promises with a squeeze, unaware which worry he's assuaging.
I hope so, Blair thinks.
Blair sits in class tapping her pen against her blank notebook page, thwack thwack thwack. Her foot echoes the sound, Tory Burch flat hitting the carpeted floor with a muffled but consistent tapping. Every minute feels as though it's stretching out to hour proportions and Blair isn't sure how much longer she can sit still, little as she's looking forward to what's coming after this.
Namely, lunch plans with Serena.
Blair can't tell if her stifling nausea is part of the resultant anxiety or…other things. Normally she has a yogurt before class but today the smell made her gag so much she had to skip it. And every time she sees her phone light up with a text, secreted as it is in her half-open bag, her stomach clenches painfully.
She practices saying the words in her head, giving them a different inflection each time. Dan is her boyfriend. Dan is her boyfriend. Dan is her boyfriend.
She can't concentrate, but when the professor dismisses them twenty minutes later, Blair remains in her seat as long as is feasibly possible. She's actually in danger of being late by the time she steps into the little café where they'd agreed to meet; Serena is even there before her, an unprecedented turn of events.
"B," Serena says brightly, beaming. "You didn't answer any of my texts!" She gestures at the barista behind the counter. "I ordered you a latte."
"I was in class," Blair says, then changes her order to a decaf herbal tea. At Serena's raised eyebrow, Blair defends, "I'm doing a cleanse!"
"Uh-huh," Serena says with a little laugh. "Come on, let's sit; I have major Lily complaining to do."
Blair listens to Serena ramble on while attempting to dole out some thoughtful advice despite her scattered brain, despite the fact that she's barely listening. It's rude; Blair is not a stranger to rudeness. All she can think about is herself.
Blair thinks about standing in her bathroom, eyes shut tight, praying to something she barely believes in, praying to herself. I command myself not to be pregnant.
Finally the conversation falters, and Serena says, "You're being weirdly…nice."
Blair gapes at her. "When am I not nice?" But Serena only gives her a pointed look, so Blair sighs. "I have something to tell you."
Serena makes an ahh sound, like that explains everything, and folds her hands on the tabletop, waiting. "Okay."
"You might not like it," Blair warns. "It's very shocking."
There is a trace of prepared wariness in the set of Serena's mouth but her face is otherwise friendly, in good cheer. "Should I guess?" she teases. "Are you dropping out of Columbia to go to a state school and start wearing off the rack dresses? I actually really hope it's that."
"No," Blair mutters.
But Serena is enjoying her guessing. "Are you moving upstate to start an organic farm? Are you secretly in love with Penelope? Have you decided to make Vanessa your best friend instead of me? Are you taking up artisanal honey-making? Are you and Dan madly in love?"
There's a long beat a silence while Blair fidgets with the tag of her teabag. "I wouldn't say madly in love."
The humor fades from Serena's expression in increments. "What?"
Blair clears her throat, still looking anywhere but at her friend. "Dan and I are…involved. Romantically. We are romantically involved."
"You're kidding," Serena says. When Blair does not confirm this, she slumps back in her seat. "I can't even imagine you two together. You don't even – When do you even see him?"
When Serena wouldn't be around to see, of course – never at parties or brunches, only in very private, very singular spaces. A relationship off the record.
"It started when we were helping you with Juliet," Blair offers. "And then there was W and, well… It just happened."
"But…Dan?" Serena says. "Dan Humphrey?"
The inflection is enough to almost make Blair smile, but she doesn't. "Yes. That's the one."
"You don't even like Dan. You hate Dan."
"I don't," Blair says, though it still feels like a strange insistence to make. Who would have ever suspected that one day she'd want to be with Dan Humphrey? "We have a real connection. We talk about films and art and – well, lots of things."
"Okay." Serena takes a breath.
"I like being with him," Blair admits, cheeks pinking. She makes herself study the wet brown ring her cup has left on the paper napkin. "I don't know. I mean, I know he has faults, believe me, I do – no one does judgmental condescension quite like Dan, and he's stubborn and just such a know-it-all, but… He makes me feel like…"
Like something in her chest is blooming. But that's too embarrassing to say, so Blair doesn't.
After a moment, voice small, Serena says, "Like you matter."
And Blair is faintly annoyed to share that with her – that knowledge, that feeling. "I suppose that's a way of putting it."
They suffer through a few more swallows of their respective drinks before Serena finds an excuse to leave – reassuring Blair, of course, that she is fine and everything is fine– and Blair doesn't really blame her. The Serena-and-Nate-are-dating situation of last year had been more private realization than sit down chat, but Blair can imagine that she wouldn't have done well sitting through it.
As she gets up to go, Blair dismisses all the texts from Serena she hadn't answered before and notices for the first time one message from Dorota.
Miss B, it says, Mama coming home.
PART TWO