crash and burn girl
dan/blair. serena. 11k words. s4 au.
w: abortion
PART ONE
"She would do this," Blair says, trying to keep the wild note of hysteria out of her voice. "She would give me a single day's notice before showing up."
She's sitting on the floor in front of Dan's coffee table, textbooks and notes spread across its surface, laptop open, checklist bleeding red ink. She was supposed to have things together before her mother got back. She was supposed to be able to present Eleanor with another perfect GPA and a shiny new internship, a list of accomplishments. Not what she has: a GPA still recovering from her sleepless weeks, no job prospects in sight, nothing at all accomplished except a lot of sex in Brooklyn. Which has obviously led nowhere good.
"Have you eaten today?" Dan clucks like a mother hen, setting a bowl of chicken and rice next to her without waiting for a response.
Blair is sick to her stomach. "I don't need to be hovered over, thank you, Humphrey," she snaps.
"Ah, Humphrey again," Dan says with disappointment. He drags the book out of her hands and replaces it pointedly with the bowl of food. "I thought after the Serena thing going well, I might get upgraded to a first name full time."
Blair rolls her eyes and sets the food aside. "I'm not hungry, Brooklyn."
"You wound me," he calls on his way back into the kitchen.
She watches him move around, cleaning and loading the dishwasher, putting everything to rights. He would be a good father. It's not exactly revelatory, as revelations go, but it's the first time it might affect her.
"You know you should ask your mother."
Blair's lips tighten, nice thoughts vanishing in a puff of smoke. "No."
Dan looks up from where he's wiping down the counter, arching an eyebrow. "You should ask your mother," he repeats, as he has periodically in the last few weeks. "You cannot expect me to believe that Eleanor Waldorf doesn't have connections at any high-fashion magazines. Ask her for help."
"Leave me alone, Cabbage Patch," Blair says irritably.
"You're already a spoiled brat, might as well take advantage of it." He makes his way back over, leaning down to press a kiss into her hair. "It's not like you have no talent. You just need to get your foot in the door, so to speak."
"I can't believe the poster boy for middle class ingenuity is telling me to use my connections."
Dan drops into the nearest armchair, smile tugging at his lips. "Now that's a title I haven't had before," he says. "It's just that… Look. We both know you can do this on your own, but you've been killing yourself for months, and if Eleanor's help could make you slow down and breathe for five minutes, then I'm all for it."
Blair tilts her head, smiling a little despite herself. "So your pushiness is just your way of expressing concern?"
He ducks his head, sheepish. "Apparently."
"Lucky for you I'm familiar with that." She shifts over, laying her hands on his knees and then sliding them up his thighs. "It's sort of cute on you."
Dan's brows raise as one. "Your shifts in mood are impossible to predict."
Blair doesn't want to hear things like that, things that could be explained by words like hormones– but, more likely, just crazy. "Enjoy it while it lasts," she says, reaching for his belt buckle.
Dan sinks down in the armchair, doing that boy slouch, and when she looks up at him it's all sharp jaw, cheekbones. His head tips back enough to make his throat one long arc. He never grabs her hair unless she tells him to, which Blair appreciates, and even now his hands scrabble upwards for the back of the chair instead, sliding against upholstery, digging in.
Dan always smells very faintly of leather, the good kind, and paperbacks, Tom Ford cologne and the L'Occitane almond oil Blair keeps in his shower. He smells warm and homey, like falling asleep on his shoulder watching The Philadelphia Story, like someplace she could land without breaking.
He would be good, if.
Their first official outing as a couple would, of course, end up coinciding with an Eleanor Waldorf dinner party, just to cause Blair the maximum amount of stress at the worst time. Blair fusses beforehand, insisting on final wardrobe approval; she dithers for hours before settling on a cool gray suit, shirt pearl-gray and tie a darker slate, perfectly tailored but still looking a little out of sorts on a boy who prefers cardigans to tuxedos. He looks good when he wants to. Blair decides to match him in silver, thinking of it like armor, the two of them protected and prepared for the night ahead.
"If you adjust my tie any more you're going to strangle me," Dan says in the elevator, pushing her hands away.
"Don't give me ideas," Blair mutters darkly.
"Don't worry. Worst case scenario, she makes me tend bar again."
"She absolutely will not." As the doors open, Blair grabs his arm and pulls him out into the room, just catching his smile out of the corner of her eye.
It's still cocktail hour. The entire apartment has been transformed for the night, switched around so the living room can accommodate a long table glimmering faintly with candlelight and silver. Eleanor is holding court in the repurposed dining room, now home to a bar and a roving pack of middle-aged socialites and their balding husbands. It's mostly an older crowd, thank god, so Blair doesn't have to flash Dan around to all their peers yet. Though Serena should be here, somewhere – maybe still upstairs, putting on the finishing touches. Serena will be here.
Blair lets her hand slip into Dan's as they cross the room, fingers interlocking. This will be fine. This will be fine. This will be fine.
"Mother?" she ventures, interrupting a patter of laughter that followed Eleanor's latest dry witticism.
"Daughter," Eleanor returns. Her gaze, sharp and assessing as always, takes in Blair from head to toe, down to the tennis bracelet at her wrist, her hand in Dan's, and then Dan himself. Eleanor looks him over critically, as though she's never met him before. "And Serena's young man."
Blair bites the inside of her cheek, but without so much as a twitch or bat of an eyelash, Dan holds out his hand for Eleanor to shake. "Your daughter's, actually," he says. "C'mon, Mrs. Waldorf, I know you remember my name."
Against all odds, Eleanor smirks just slightly. "And I know you remember my drink order," she says. "Off you go, Mr. Humphrey."
He gives Blair an apologetic look, squeezing her fingers before leaving her to her mother.
"So that's new," Eleanor says. "Isn't it?"
"I suppose," Blair says, waving a fidgety hand. "How's the new house? I can't wait to see it."
It's the right thing to say; her mother launches into a fresh round of complaints about the house, the renovations, the neighbors. Blair tries to nod along attentively but finds her attention straying. Cyrus has intercepted Dan and appears to be telling a grand story if the hand gestures are any indication.
Eleanor, of course, notices. "Are you going to tell me how this started?"
"How it usually does," Blair says. "Went on a few dates, went on a few more."
Eleanor scoffs, but with that distinct twist of humor that is her hallmark. "Are you sure this is wise, Blair?"
"No," Blair says, squashing a smile as Dan shoots her a wide-eyed help me expression. "But I'm going to do it all the same."
She walks away before her mother can say anything to that, sliding her arm through Dan's and happily giving in to Cyrus' relentless positivity for once. He gives her at least three hugs, as per usual, and on the last one stage whispers, "I like him," just loud enough for Dan to hear.
It's grotesquely embarrassing in a way Blair does not exactly mind.
The dinner goes rather well, if only because Blair avoids her mother entirely and Dan is good at entertaining her, murmuring a slightly mean and very funny commentary in her ear throughout the evening. Serena ultimately doesn't show; it fills Blair with mingled relief and queasiness.
Towards the end of the night, Blair leans heavily into his shoulder. "Verdict?"
"We're together, everyone knows, and the world didn't end. I'm calling it, it's a win." Dan pauses. "Wait, has anyone told Nate?"
Blair smiles, trying to ignore the roiling in her stomach. She had to escape dinner once already for not-only-morning sickness, feeling her mother's eyes on her back the entire time. Despite her best efforts, it must show in her face.
"Want me to stay?" Dan asks, brushing her hair back. "I can sneak out really early, dodge your parents and everything."
Blair had spent the last three days at Dan's, hadn't stepped foot in her own home once and hardly missed it. She's beginning to worry about it a bit. She feels vulnerable and clingy, especially with her mother home, and in the past that has only been a precursor to disappearing. She slides away from him, leaning back into her chair. "I'll survive," she tells him.
"But will I?" Dan teases, and something pleasant swims through Blair's chest. Idiot, she thinks, but couldn't say if she meant him or herself.
In the morning Blair shuffles downstairs to find only Eleanor at the breakfast table. Everything has already been returned to its rightful place, the apartment as spotless as if it had never seen a party at all. Blair is exhausted despite a near seven hours of sleep and she's cranky, resentful. Her stomach rebels at the prepared spread so she settles on some green tea and very dry toast.
"Hungover?" Eleanor asks, peering at Blair over her glasses, newspaper open between her hands.
Blair wishes. Instead of answering, she says, "The dinner seemed to be a success."
"Mm." She lifts her coffee to her lips, turns a page. "I take it Mr. Humphrey didn't stay the night."
"You can call him Dan, Mother," Blair says, exasperated. "If I learned to, surely anyone can." Eleanor merely gives her a very flat look, so Blair is compelled to add, "No, he did not stay. That would hardly be appropriate."
"Hardly," Eleanor agrees. "Especially with Serena asleep on the other side of the door."
Blair frowns. In her hands her toast becomes a pile of crumbs. Serena knows, she wants to say. This isn't any of your business. No one cared when Serena went out with my boyfriend. Dan is funny, isn't he, and smart and handsome, isn't that enough? When is it enough?
"I meant with you and Cyrus here," Blair says.
Blair imagines telling Eleanor about the stick turning pink, unplanned and unexpected as it is. It's a thought that had crossed her mind before, back in high school, and she imagines the reaction then or now would be much the same. There is rarely any real comfort coming from Eleanor, just criticism, just disappointment, just do better.
Finally Eleanor folds her paper and pushes her glasses onto her head, standing with her cup in one hand. "I like him more than the last one," she says. "You like him?"
Blair looks up at her. "Obviously, Mother."
Eleanor nods a little and smoothes a hand over Blair's hair before moving towards the staircase, but she doesn't say anything else.
Blair isn't sure what to call it. With her mother, somehow wins usually feel like losses anyway.
Blair sees Serena across a courtyard at Columbia and it's startling for a moment, like Serena is a too-familiar stranger. It's a moment of unknowing, seeing a tall blonde girl and realizing half a second later it's someone important to her. They haven't spoken in two weeks, maybe. Blair's been busy.
Eleanor and Cyrus have taken up residence in New York for the foreseeable future, which means Blair has been spending even more time at Dan's in an effort to avoid her mother's semi-watchful eye. Though there had been an official boyfriend-meets-the-family brunch where Dan had the honor of fielding both Cyrus' well-meaning inquiries and Eleanor's less well-meaning interrogation.
Afterwards, Blair offered, "Over the summer, you can meet Daddy," and made sure not to look at Dan as she said it. She wouldn't let herself take it back either, not when Dan was trying so hard to appear as though he wasn't pleased, muttering something about bringing her up to Hudson.
But that had been the least of her obligations: Blair's hassling of every magazine in the tri-state area had finally yielded results.
It had become automatic to check her email immediately upon waking, though considering her endeavors had been mostly fruitless, Blair hadn't had much hope. Yet there it was in clear black and white, subject line reading re: Teen Vogue internship.
Blair smacked Dan awake. "You have to read this for me!"
He peered at her with one squinting eye, which was apparently enough to gauge how desperate the situation was, because he held out his hand. There was a lot of grumbling and eye-rubbing until Dan quieted down to read the email, smiled at her, and said, "You got it, Waldorf."
Blair had been so happy that she made the abrupt wake-up very worth his while. They lay together later, Blair fairly thrumming with contentment, and Dan whispered with an air of confession that he'd started a novel.
Everything is beginning to feel as though it's on track, everything going right for once, and there isn't anything in the world more terrifying to Blair than that.
(There is also, of course, the time bomb ticking away in her body.)
Serena smiles at her across the sunny courtyard and raises a hand in a wave. They meet in the middle, clutching books and bags anxiously, feeling as though two weeks has been two years.
"Got time for lunch?" Serena asks.
They go somewhere nearby that's packed with way too many students. They squeeze into a corner table that rightfully seats four, but Blair drops her bag pointedly on the empty end to dissuade anyone looking for a spot to sit.
After several moments of silence, Blair tries for small talk, internally cringing. "So…how are you? How's – how's Lily, your family?"
Serena waves that off. "Doing her classic denial thing. But it's fine, it's going to be fine."
Blair nods, attempting to look supportive and resolute. "I've been keeping up a little, through –" She falters. "Well, the news, I suppose, like anyone else."
Serena just looks at her and then she says gently, "You can say his name. I won't implode." But her gaze is focused on her salad instead of Blair when she speaks next. "How are things going?"
Blair fiddles with her heart ring, twisting it around her finger. "Good," she says hesitantly, then clears her throat and continues more assertively, giving Serena a short run-down of everything that had happened recently. Almost everything. "I thought it would be weird, dating him. I mean, not that I thought about it an awful lot before, just, I don't know, I thought it would be a lot to get used to. But it's not, it's…easy."
"I'm so happy for you, B." Serena gives her a smile that's mostly there, though her eyes remain a little distant. "It seems like everything's going your way."
Blair intends to return the smile, maybe change the subject to something safer, but instead she quite unexpectedly bursts into tears.
Blair is not the kind of girl who cries in public, not if she can help it, but there she is doing it nonetheless. Serena is taken aback but recovers lightning-fast, grabbing Blair's bag before hustling her outside and into a cab so quickly it's possible the event occurred un-spotted. Blair hopes so; she couldn't handle the Gossip Girl commentary today.
In the cab Serena rubs her back, looking worried. "B, what's going on?"
Blair shakes her head, gulping air, and then the words find their way out of her anyway.
Serena's eyes widen. "What?"
"I'm pregnant," Blair says again, loudly, almost angrily. "I'm pregnant, that's why I'm – that's why I start crying in cafés, apparently, and why my mother thinks I'm relapsing and why I pick fights with Dan and why I can't look you in the eye lately –"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down," Serena says, brow still furrowed in concern. "Let's – we have to go somewhere quiet to talk."
Serena calls ahead to make sure the penthouse is empty of parents and to send Dorota out on some errands. Blair is grateful. She's even more grateful that Serena holds back all questions until they are curled in Blair's bed like when they were young, amongst piles of pillows.
"You're sure?" is the first inquiry, followed by, "It's, um. It's Dan's?"
"Yes, I'm sure. I saw the doctor," Blair says. "And yes. There hasn't been anyone else."
Serena worries her bottom lip but does a remarkable job of pretending that has no effect on her. "Are you going to have it?"
Blair is silent.
Serena seems to accept that as an answer. "Did you make the appointment?"
It feels childish and silly that she hasn't. Blair should have been able to take care of this efficiently as soon as she found out but she hadn't; she'd ignored it, buried it, denied it. She did what she's always done and now she feels her immaturity acutely. Did she think it was just going to go away? "Not yet."
Serena observes her impassively for a moment. Then she says, "It's okay."
Blair gives her a slightly incredulous look. "Nothing about this is okay."
Serena's expression softens into one of more open concern. "I meant it's okay to not want it. It's okay to be confused. It's okay to be afraid."
"Oh, how would you know," Blair says, snappish because she doesn't know any other way to be. Dan would want it, she thinks. It doesn't matter how uncertain their relationship is, that's the kind of guy Dan is: he would want it.
Serena is probably too used to Blair's unnecessary attitude by now and no reaction at all shows on her face. "I know," she says after a minute. "I had one."
For one wild, horrifying second, Blair thinks Serena means she had a baby. "When?" Blair demands, almost indignant. "How could I not know about this?"
Serena presses her lips together to prevent something like a smile at Blair's tone, and then shakes it off, growing more serious. "I was fourteen," she says. "It was the beginning of freshman year, it must've…um, happened in the summer. I took a test and Lily found it and, well. She took care of it."
Blair's brows draw together. "You should've told me, S."
Serena shrugs. "I was a kid. I didn't even want to think about it much."
"Do you?" Blair wonders. "Think about it much."
"Sometimes," Serena allows. "But it was so long ago it's like it happened to someone else."
"Do you ever regret it?" Blair asks.
"No," Serena says.
Blair nods a little, gaze dropping down to study the stitching of the duvet. "Dan would be so good at it, you know." Apologetically, she adds, "Of course you know. I don't just mean that whole thing with Georgina's baby. He would be so patient and so – so devoted." It's a hushed, almost embarrassed statement next. "He would be such a good dad." And maybe his goodness would make Blair better in turn – less scared, more capable, less Eleanor.
"Yeah," Serena says with a dip of her head. "He would. But what do you want?"
Blair already knows the answer, of course. She has since the first second she saw that pink symbol. "I want the abortion." Her hand finds Serena's over the blanket. "Will you come?"
"Of course," Serena says with the kind of tenderness and immediacy that releases tension Blair didn't even realize she was holding. "But…" Serena hesitates. "Are you going to tell Dan?" Blair only shrugs. "Because he'd – I think he would be understanding. And I think he'd want to know."
"I don't know," Blair says, just to say something. Then she rubs a hand through her hair, careless of styling. "What if it ends up on Gossip Girl?"
Serena squeezes Blair's fingers again. "Then I'll say it's me."
It's firm, unhesitating, and Blair meets Serena's eyes, feeling so grateful she doesn't even know what to say.
The next time she's with Dan, Blair lays awake while he breathes beside her, even and quiet. She glances over to make sure he's asleep before pushing the comforter away and laying a hand atop her own flat stomach. There's nothing to give it away. Blair has always kept an eye to the shape of her stomach and she's certainly not forgiving, but there's no denying that no one would ever be able to tell.
She thinks of dinner with her mother, Dan's hand on her knee under the table – not lascivious or anything like that, just supportive. Just his way of saying I'm here.
But she still doesn't know how to tell him.
There's no reason to wait after that.
Once it becomes a shared secret instead of Blair's private panic, she can't very well go on pretending it's not happening. She calls the doctor and makes her appointment, placing a little red dot in the corner of the chosen date in her schedule.
She can't eat anything the morning of, not that she would be able to anyway. She makes an early appointment in the hopes of being in and out with little fanfare, so she and Serena are both sleepy and red-eyed when they arrive at the office – on the West Side, not Blair's usual doctor. Just to be safe.
Blair is tense as she waits, fills out more forms, signs off on her consent. She feels brittle. Serena tries to rub her back briefly but gives up; the attempt at comfort only makes Blair inexplicably angry. She just wants it to be over.
Even once they call her in it takes too long for Blair's liking. She has to hear another lecture about options and birth control, take another pregnancy test ("I've taken about fifty by now," Blair says tightly. "I promise, it's in there."), another blood test, another sonogram. Serena is by her side the whole time, being open and kind, asking appropriate questions of the doctor whereas Blair can only grit her teeth in annoyed impatience. At least they finally give her some Vicodin, but then she has to wait even longer for it to take effect.
When it's finally time, Serena is sent back to the waiting room, but only after pressing a kiss to Blair's temple. "It'll be done before you know it, B," she promises.
Blair had thought that the waiting room was the worst part – sitting amongst all those similarly fidgety women who didn't want to make eye contact. But she thinks it's absolutely worse in the bustling minutes before the procedure, her head pillowed on crinkling paper, listening to the patter and chatter of nurses while her heart hammers out of her chest. She should've told Dan. Why hadn't she told Dan?
Blair jumps when the nurse touches her shoulder.
"Nervous, honey?" the nurse asks, nodding towards the machine where Blair's heart rate is zipping along.
"I'm fine," Blair says automatically. If Dan were here, he'd make some stupid joke that would make her anxiety dissipate despite herself.
Once the doctor arrives there's an uptick in activity, everyone making final checks and every single person in the room asking Blair how she is one more time. The doctor, a brisk middle-aged woman, gives Blair an impersonal pat on the shoulder and tells her it's time to begin. The anesthesiologist injects something into the IV.
Blair has long enough to wonder when it's going to kick in before she's out, and the next thing she's aware of is coming to hazily in recovery. There are other women around her with similarly vague, drugged up smiles. A nurse gives her a pleasant, encouraging look and offers her a tiny paper cup of apple juice. The tape from the IV has left a splotchy patch of itchy skin on the inside of her elbow, though the needle mark itself is imperceptible.
It's over, Blair realizes. She smiles and then she laughs, a silly drunk giggle. It's over. Her reaction is inappropriate, ridiculous, and she knows her giddiness is just the sedatives wearing off but the sense of relief is overwhelming. She just feels so good, so relieved, so free.
Blair spends the following three days not answering her phone. Then the pile up of texts from Dan (Waldorf I'm beginning to think you're dead in a ditch somewhere) start to become so ridiculous she has to say something, though all she comes up with are lame protestations about work.
"He even called me asking about you," Serena says. "You have to talk to him, B."
But Blair has not yet developed a course of action for her first conversation with Dan post-abortion. She's terrified that it'll just burst out of her mouth the second she sees his face so she continues to keep him at arm's length, choosing instead to mope around the penthouse in silk pajamas reading a Judy Garland biography.
She crosses paths with Eleanor in the kitchen one morning. Blair doesn't have work or class so she's planning to settle in for a long moody sulk full of imagined conversations with Dan that she's too chicken to have in reality. Eleanor observes her with passive interest as the water brews for tea. "Have you broken up with Mr. Humphrey?"
Blair starts. "No," she says, a touch snottily.
Eleanor nods slightly. "Have you had a fight then?"
"What's with the sudden interest, Mother?"
"Aren't I allowed to be interested in my daughter's life? As far as I know that is part of the job description."
Blair rolls her eyes. "No, we haven't," she says. "I'm avoiding him."
Eleanor arches an eyebrow. "Oh?"
It had just slipped out; Blair hadn't meant to say anything. "It's nothing," she backtracks. "It's stupid."
"Hmph," Eleanor murmurs. "And that internship, that's going well?"
Blair narrows her eyes, her skin prickling with familiar defensiveness. She could never tell the difference between Eleanor caring and Eleanor criticizing. Is she just looking for gaps in Blair's story? "What do you want to hear, Mother? I made a mess of everything, alright? I've been ruining things for myself forever, really, and I wasted the entire year but now I'm fixing it. I'm putting it back together. I don't need your needling."
"You always think the worst of me," Eleanor says lightly. "I know how hard you've been working, Blair. I'm proud of you."
Blair can't help a blink of surprise but she refuses to take the words to heart. "Oh."
"I'm not so wicked all the time," Eleanor reminds her and smiles just slightly. Blair's greatest fear has always been becoming her mother because she knows how easy it would be, how much it's already true.
"I know," Blair says, almost apologetic. "Me either."
She's tempted, for a moment, to tell her mother about the pregnancy and its subsequent dissolution. Eleanor is a liberal woman and she's never been sentimental or precious about things; she might be critical, but Blair isn't so sure she'd be condemning. Her mouth opens but then it shuts, and instead of speaking she gives her mother a small smile in return. Even without fear of recrimination, she doesn't trust Eleanor enough. Maybe one day.
Until then, Blair has Serena. And she's beginning to accept that she has Dan too.
I miss you, she texts him, finally. Come over.
Blair is sitting on her bed pretending to read a magazine when Dan arrives. The first thing she does is get her arms around him, savoring the way he feels, the way he smells. God, she's ridiculous. It hasn't even been a week.
"You'd think you hadn't seen me in years," he teases her, but he sounds happy enough about it. "I was going a little crazy. I thought you were breaking up with me."
"Don't be silly." Blair has always liked the way Dan says things straight out, no obfuscating. "But I do have to tell you something."
"Can it hold?" Dan asks, leaning into her so much she tips over laughing. "Maybe you could kiss me first?"
Blair does but she's conscious that it can't go farther than that, even though she still twists her arms around his neck, brings her leg around his hips. "Dan," she protests with another laugh she can't help – this is serious, he's going to think she doesn't have a heart at all once she tells him. She sobers after another kiss, puts her hand on his chest. "We really do have to talk."
He props himself on his elbow, shifting so he's next to her on the bed. "Oh no," he says. "Those words are never good."
Blair bites her lip, running her fingertips over his cheek. "I don't want you to hate me."
His expression shifts to genuine wariness, which Blair had been afraid of. "What happened?"
"I took a test," Blair says. "A pregnancy test. It was –" She clears her throat. "I made an appointment and I took care of it."
Dan's face changes though Blair can't read anger in it, at least not yet – confusion, certainly, and blank, flat surprise. He pushes upright, shifting to sit at the edge of the bed. His back is to her. "You mean…"
"You got me pregnant and I had an abortion," she says, abrupt and rushed.
"When?"
"Monday morning," Blair says. "I wasn't sick, or busy with work."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Dan asks and Blair steels herself for his anger. But then he says, "I would've come with you." He looks over his shoulder, brows knotted with concern. "You didn't have to do it by yourself."
"You don't – you're not mad?"
"I wish you'd told me." It isn't an answer, but when she sits up and curls against his back, chin on his shoulder and hands clasped over his chest, he covers her fingers with his. "I wouldn't have… I'd support whatever you wanted to do. You know that, right?"
"I do now," Blair murmurs. They're quiet for a moment as she leans her cheek against his shoulder. "I wish I'd told you too."
She hesitates to say more, considering he's reacting well; she doesn't know if it would bother him to hear her say that she was afraid to tell him because she was afraid he might convince her to keep it. The fact that such a thing was even a possibility makes her worried about his effect on her. It could be dangerous. She knows all about that.
"It was just so soon," she adds, still soft-voiced. "I want to date you. I don't want…all those other things. I didn't want to lose what I have with you before I'd even really had it."
Dan tilts slightly so he can kiss the side of her nose. "That's what I want too, Waldorf." He pauses. "Okay, but: when did we not use a condom?"
"Right!" Blair says, indignant. "We're switching brands. I'm not satisfied with the margin of error."
Dan's lips twitch with suppressed laughter before he kisses her and Blair knows it's going to be fine, everything is going to be fine.
Summer finds Blair and Serena moving out of the penthouse.
They choose a newer building, farther East than Blair would like, and the kitchen is an absolute joke, but it's fresh and clean, painted an all-over shining white, and the floor-to-ceiling windows are laughably delightful. She and Serena clash over every single design decision, but Blair likes that too.
"You're still too far," Dan complains every time he comes over.
"No one told you to live in Brooklyn," Blair tells him.
"We can't compromise here? You couldn't have chosen somewhere in Midtown, at least?"
"God, if the next thing out of your mouth is a suggestion I live downtown, then I'm walking out, I don't care if this is my apartment."
But compromise is something they endeavor to keep in mind, and Blair spends at least half her time in his loft. And it's on one such occasion, going through his desk looking for Post-Its (honestly) that she finds a neatly printed hardcopy of his novel, covered in red ink corrections in Dan's own handwriting. Of course she sits down immediately in the desk chair and reads it start to finish.
"Humphrey," she calls after she's done. "I take issue with your prose. You have not described my eyes as 'sparkling' even once."
Dan appears in the doorway in record time. "You did not," he says.
Blair bites her lip, eyebrows raising as she holds up the manuscript. "I might have. Tell me: have you been holding a candle this entire time, then?"
"We're breaking up," Dan tells her. He moves to grab the pages, which Blair dangles out of reach. "That's it. This is my line in the sand."
"Don't you think," Blair says, hopping up out of her seat so she can dodge his attempts, "that 'ninety-eight pound, bon-mot tossing, label-whoring package of girly evil' is one signifier too many?"
She lets him catch her but the pages go everywhere, all out of order, a cascade of crinkling paper all around them. "Not when all of them are true," Dan says, practically picking her up. "Especially that last one. Totally evil."
Blair grins before she kisses him. "You're horribly sentimental," she says. "And a revisionist. I loved it."
"Yeah, well, you would," he says, smile tugging at his own lips. "Pot, kettle."
"It's either very lucky or very unfortunate that we found each other," Blair says.
"Both, I think," Dan tells her. "But maybe that second one a little more."
"Yes," she agrees, "I certainly feel very unlucky."
dan/blair. serena. 11k words. s4 au.
w: abortion
PART ONE
"She would do this," Blair says, trying to keep the wild note of hysteria out of her voice. "She would give me a single day's notice before showing up."
She's sitting on the floor in front of Dan's coffee table, textbooks and notes spread across its surface, laptop open, checklist bleeding red ink. She was supposed to have things together before her mother got back. She was supposed to be able to present Eleanor with another perfect GPA and a shiny new internship, a list of accomplishments. Not what she has: a GPA still recovering from her sleepless weeks, no job prospects in sight, nothing at all accomplished except a lot of sex in Brooklyn. Which has obviously led nowhere good.
"Have you eaten today?" Dan clucks like a mother hen, setting a bowl of chicken and rice next to her without waiting for a response.
Blair is sick to her stomach. "I don't need to be hovered over, thank you, Humphrey," she snaps.
"Ah, Humphrey again," Dan says with disappointment. He drags the book out of her hands and replaces it pointedly with the bowl of food. "I thought after the Serena thing going well, I might get upgraded to a first name full time."
Blair rolls her eyes and sets the food aside. "I'm not hungry, Brooklyn."
"You wound me," he calls on his way back into the kitchen.
She watches him move around, cleaning and loading the dishwasher, putting everything to rights. He would be a good father. It's not exactly revelatory, as revelations go, but it's the first time it might affect her.
"You know you should ask your mother."
Blair's lips tighten, nice thoughts vanishing in a puff of smoke. "No."
Dan looks up from where he's wiping down the counter, arching an eyebrow. "You should ask your mother," he repeats, as he has periodically in the last few weeks. "You cannot expect me to believe that Eleanor Waldorf doesn't have connections at any high-fashion magazines. Ask her for help."
"Leave me alone, Cabbage Patch," Blair says irritably.
"You're already a spoiled brat, might as well take advantage of it." He makes his way back over, leaning down to press a kiss into her hair. "It's not like you have no talent. You just need to get your foot in the door, so to speak."
"I can't believe the poster boy for middle class ingenuity is telling me to use my connections."
Dan drops into the nearest armchair, smile tugging at his lips. "Now that's a title I haven't had before," he says. "It's just that… Look. We both know you can do this on your own, but you've been killing yourself for months, and if Eleanor's help could make you slow down and breathe for five minutes, then I'm all for it."
Blair tilts her head, smiling a little despite herself. "So your pushiness is just your way of expressing concern?"
He ducks his head, sheepish. "Apparently."
"Lucky for you I'm familiar with that." She shifts over, laying her hands on his knees and then sliding them up his thighs. "It's sort of cute on you."
Dan's brows raise as one. "Your shifts in mood are impossible to predict."
Blair doesn't want to hear things like that, things that could be explained by words like hormones– but, more likely, just crazy. "Enjoy it while it lasts," she says, reaching for his belt buckle.
Dan sinks down in the armchair, doing that boy slouch, and when she looks up at him it's all sharp jaw, cheekbones. His head tips back enough to make his throat one long arc. He never grabs her hair unless she tells him to, which Blair appreciates, and even now his hands scrabble upwards for the back of the chair instead, sliding against upholstery, digging in.
Dan always smells very faintly of leather, the good kind, and paperbacks, Tom Ford cologne and the L'Occitane almond oil Blair keeps in his shower. He smells warm and homey, like falling asleep on his shoulder watching The Philadelphia Story, like someplace she could land without breaking.
He would be good, if.
Their first official outing as a couple would, of course, end up coinciding with an Eleanor Waldorf dinner party, just to cause Blair the maximum amount of stress at the worst time. Blair fusses beforehand, insisting on final wardrobe approval; she dithers for hours before settling on a cool gray suit, shirt pearl-gray and tie a darker slate, perfectly tailored but still looking a little out of sorts on a boy who prefers cardigans to tuxedos. He looks good when he wants to. Blair decides to match him in silver, thinking of it like armor, the two of them protected and prepared for the night ahead.
"If you adjust my tie any more you're going to strangle me," Dan says in the elevator, pushing her hands away.
"Don't give me ideas," Blair mutters darkly.
"Don't worry. Worst case scenario, she makes me tend bar again."
"She absolutely will not." As the doors open, Blair grabs his arm and pulls him out into the room, just catching his smile out of the corner of her eye.
It's still cocktail hour. The entire apartment has been transformed for the night, switched around so the living room can accommodate a long table glimmering faintly with candlelight and silver. Eleanor is holding court in the repurposed dining room, now home to a bar and a roving pack of middle-aged socialites and their balding husbands. It's mostly an older crowd, thank god, so Blair doesn't have to flash Dan around to all their peers yet. Though Serena should be here, somewhere – maybe still upstairs, putting on the finishing touches. Serena will be here.
Blair lets her hand slip into Dan's as they cross the room, fingers interlocking. This will be fine. This will be fine. This will be fine.
"Mother?" she ventures, interrupting a patter of laughter that followed Eleanor's latest dry witticism.
"Daughter," Eleanor returns. Her gaze, sharp and assessing as always, takes in Blair from head to toe, down to the tennis bracelet at her wrist, her hand in Dan's, and then Dan himself. Eleanor looks him over critically, as though she's never met him before. "And Serena's young man."
Blair bites the inside of her cheek, but without so much as a twitch or bat of an eyelash, Dan holds out his hand for Eleanor to shake. "Your daughter's, actually," he says. "C'mon, Mrs. Waldorf, I know you remember my name."
Against all odds, Eleanor smirks just slightly. "And I know you remember my drink order," she says. "Off you go, Mr. Humphrey."
He gives Blair an apologetic look, squeezing her fingers before leaving her to her mother.
"So that's new," Eleanor says. "Isn't it?"
"I suppose," Blair says, waving a fidgety hand. "How's the new house? I can't wait to see it."
It's the right thing to say; her mother launches into a fresh round of complaints about the house, the renovations, the neighbors. Blair tries to nod along attentively but finds her attention straying. Cyrus has intercepted Dan and appears to be telling a grand story if the hand gestures are any indication.
Eleanor, of course, notices. "Are you going to tell me how this started?"
"How it usually does," Blair says. "Went on a few dates, went on a few more."
Eleanor scoffs, but with that distinct twist of humor that is her hallmark. "Are you sure this is wise, Blair?"
"No," Blair says, squashing a smile as Dan shoots her a wide-eyed help me expression. "But I'm going to do it all the same."
She walks away before her mother can say anything to that, sliding her arm through Dan's and happily giving in to Cyrus' relentless positivity for once. He gives her at least three hugs, as per usual, and on the last one stage whispers, "I like him," just loud enough for Dan to hear.
It's grotesquely embarrassing in a way Blair does not exactly mind.
The dinner goes rather well, if only because Blair avoids her mother entirely and Dan is good at entertaining her, murmuring a slightly mean and very funny commentary in her ear throughout the evening. Serena ultimately doesn't show; it fills Blair with mingled relief and queasiness.
Towards the end of the night, Blair leans heavily into his shoulder. "Verdict?"
"We're together, everyone knows, and the world didn't end. I'm calling it, it's a win." Dan pauses. "Wait, has anyone told Nate?"
Blair smiles, trying to ignore the roiling in her stomach. She had to escape dinner once already for not-only-morning sickness, feeling her mother's eyes on her back the entire time. Despite her best efforts, it must show in her face.
"Want me to stay?" Dan asks, brushing her hair back. "I can sneak out really early, dodge your parents and everything."
Blair had spent the last three days at Dan's, hadn't stepped foot in her own home once and hardly missed it. She's beginning to worry about it a bit. She feels vulnerable and clingy, especially with her mother home, and in the past that has only been a precursor to disappearing. She slides away from him, leaning back into her chair. "I'll survive," she tells him.
"But will I?" Dan teases, and something pleasant swims through Blair's chest. Idiot, she thinks, but couldn't say if she meant him or herself.
In the morning Blair shuffles downstairs to find only Eleanor at the breakfast table. Everything has already been returned to its rightful place, the apartment as spotless as if it had never seen a party at all. Blair is exhausted despite a near seven hours of sleep and she's cranky, resentful. Her stomach rebels at the prepared spread so she settles on some green tea and very dry toast.
"Hungover?" Eleanor asks, peering at Blair over her glasses, newspaper open between her hands.
Blair wishes. Instead of answering, she says, "The dinner seemed to be a success."
"Mm." She lifts her coffee to her lips, turns a page. "I take it Mr. Humphrey didn't stay the night."
"You can call him Dan, Mother," Blair says, exasperated. "If I learned to, surely anyone can." Eleanor merely gives her a very flat look, so Blair is compelled to add, "No, he did not stay. That would hardly be appropriate."
"Hardly," Eleanor agrees. "Especially with Serena asleep on the other side of the door."
Blair frowns. In her hands her toast becomes a pile of crumbs. Serena knows, she wants to say. This isn't any of your business. No one cared when Serena went out with my boyfriend. Dan is funny, isn't he, and smart and handsome, isn't that enough? When is it enough?
"I meant with you and Cyrus here," Blair says.
Blair imagines telling Eleanor about the stick turning pink, unplanned and unexpected as it is. It's a thought that had crossed her mind before, back in high school, and she imagines the reaction then or now would be much the same. There is rarely any real comfort coming from Eleanor, just criticism, just disappointment, just do better.
Finally Eleanor folds her paper and pushes her glasses onto her head, standing with her cup in one hand. "I like him more than the last one," she says. "You like him?"
Blair looks up at her. "Obviously, Mother."
Eleanor nods a little and smoothes a hand over Blair's hair before moving towards the staircase, but she doesn't say anything else.
Blair isn't sure what to call it. With her mother, somehow wins usually feel like losses anyway.
Blair sees Serena across a courtyard at Columbia and it's startling for a moment, like Serena is a too-familiar stranger. It's a moment of unknowing, seeing a tall blonde girl and realizing half a second later it's someone important to her. They haven't spoken in two weeks, maybe. Blair's been busy.
Eleanor and Cyrus have taken up residence in New York for the foreseeable future, which means Blair has been spending even more time at Dan's in an effort to avoid her mother's semi-watchful eye. Though there had been an official boyfriend-meets-the-family brunch where Dan had the honor of fielding both Cyrus' well-meaning inquiries and Eleanor's less well-meaning interrogation.
Afterwards, Blair offered, "Over the summer, you can meet Daddy," and made sure not to look at Dan as she said it. She wouldn't let herself take it back either, not when Dan was trying so hard to appear as though he wasn't pleased, muttering something about bringing her up to Hudson.
But that had been the least of her obligations: Blair's hassling of every magazine in the tri-state area had finally yielded results.
It had become automatic to check her email immediately upon waking, though considering her endeavors had been mostly fruitless, Blair hadn't had much hope. Yet there it was in clear black and white, subject line reading re: Teen Vogue internship.
Blair smacked Dan awake. "You have to read this for me!"
He peered at her with one squinting eye, which was apparently enough to gauge how desperate the situation was, because he held out his hand. There was a lot of grumbling and eye-rubbing until Dan quieted down to read the email, smiled at her, and said, "You got it, Waldorf."
Blair had been so happy that she made the abrupt wake-up very worth his while. They lay together later, Blair fairly thrumming with contentment, and Dan whispered with an air of confession that he'd started a novel.
Everything is beginning to feel as though it's on track, everything going right for once, and there isn't anything in the world more terrifying to Blair than that.
(There is also, of course, the time bomb ticking away in her body.)
Serena smiles at her across the sunny courtyard and raises a hand in a wave. They meet in the middle, clutching books and bags anxiously, feeling as though two weeks has been two years.
"Got time for lunch?" Serena asks.
They go somewhere nearby that's packed with way too many students. They squeeze into a corner table that rightfully seats four, but Blair drops her bag pointedly on the empty end to dissuade anyone looking for a spot to sit.
After several moments of silence, Blair tries for small talk, internally cringing. "So…how are you? How's – how's Lily, your family?"
Serena waves that off. "Doing her classic denial thing. But it's fine, it's going to be fine."
Blair nods, attempting to look supportive and resolute. "I've been keeping up a little, through –" She falters. "Well, the news, I suppose, like anyone else."
Serena just looks at her and then she says gently, "You can say his name. I won't implode." But her gaze is focused on her salad instead of Blair when she speaks next. "How are things going?"
Blair fiddles with her heart ring, twisting it around her finger. "Good," she says hesitantly, then clears her throat and continues more assertively, giving Serena a short run-down of everything that had happened recently. Almost everything. "I thought it would be weird, dating him. I mean, not that I thought about it an awful lot before, just, I don't know, I thought it would be a lot to get used to. But it's not, it's…easy."
"I'm so happy for you, B." Serena gives her a smile that's mostly there, though her eyes remain a little distant. "It seems like everything's going your way."
Blair intends to return the smile, maybe change the subject to something safer, but instead she quite unexpectedly bursts into tears.
Blair is not the kind of girl who cries in public, not if she can help it, but there she is doing it nonetheless. Serena is taken aback but recovers lightning-fast, grabbing Blair's bag before hustling her outside and into a cab so quickly it's possible the event occurred un-spotted. Blair hopes so; she couldn't handle the Gossip Girl commentary today.
In the cab Serena rubs her back, looking worried. "B, what's going on?"
Blair shakes her head, gulping air, and then the words find their way out of her anyway.
Serena's eyes widen. "What?"
"I'm pregnant," Blair says again, loudly, almost angrily. "I'm pregnant, that's why I'm – that's why I start crying in cafés, apparently, and why my mother thinks I'm relapsing and why I pick fights with Dan and why I can't look you in the eye lately –"
"Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down," Serena says, brow still furrowed in concern. "Let's – we have to go somewhere quiet to talk."
Serena calls ahead to make sure the penthouse is empty of parents and to send Dorota out on some errands. Blair is grateful. She's even more grateful that Serena holds back all questions until they are curled in Blair's bed like when they were young, amongst piles of pillows.
"You're sure?" is the first inquiry, followed by, "It's, um. It's Dan's?"
"Yes, I'm sure. I saw the doctor," Blair says. "And yes. There hasn't been anyone else."
Serena worries her bottom lip but does a remarkable job of pretending that has no effect on her. "Are you going to have it?"
Blair is silent.
Serena seems to accept that as an answer. "Did you make the appointment?"
It feels childish and silly that she hasn't. Blair should have been able to take care of this efficiently as soon as she found out but she hadn't; she'd ignored it, buried it, denied it. She did what she's always done and now she feels her immaturity acutely. Did she think it was just going to go away? "Not yet."
Serena observes her impassively for a moment. Then she says, "It's okay."
Blair gives her a slightly incredulous look. "Nothing about this is okay."
Serena's expression softens into one of more open concern. "I meant it's okay to not want it. It's okay to be confused. It's okay to be afraid."
"Oh, how would you know," Blair says, snappish because she doesn't know any other way to be. Dan would want it, she thinks. It doesn't matter how uncertain their relationship is, that's the kind of guy Dan is: he would want it.
Serena is probably too used to Blair's unnecessary attitude by now and no reaction at all shows on her face. "I know," she says after a minute. "I had one."
For one wild, horrifying second, Blair thinks Serena means she had a baby. "When?" Blair demands, almost indignant. "How could I not know about this?"
Serena presses her lips together to prevent something like a smile at Blair's tone, and then shakes it off, growing more serious. "I was fourteen," she says. "It was the beginning of freshman year, it must've…um, happened in the summer. I took a test and Lily found it and, well. She took care of it."
Blair's brows draw together. "You should've told me, S."
Serena shrugs. "I was a kid. I didn't even want to think about it much."
"Do you?" Blair wonders. "Think about it much."
"Sometimes," Serena allows. "But it was so long ago it's like it happened to someone else."
"Do you ever regret it?" Blair asks.
"No," Serena says.
Blair nods a little, gaze dropping down to study the stitching of the duvet. "Dan would be so good at it, you know." Apologetically, she adds, "Of course you know. I don't just mean that whole thing with Georgina's baby. He would be so patient and so – so devoted." It's a hushed, almost embarrassed statement next. "He would be such a good dad." And maybe his goodness would make Blair better in turn – less scared, more capable, less Eleanor.
"Yeah," Serena says with a dip of her head. "He would. But what do you want?"
Blair already knows the answer, of course. She has since the first second she saw that pink symbol. "I want the abortion." Her hand finds Serena's over the blanket. "Will you come?"
"Of course," Serena says with the kind of tenderness and immediacy that releases tension Blair didn't even realize she was holding. "But…" Serena hesitates. "Are you going to tell Dan?" Blair only shrugs. "Because he'd – I think he would be understanding. And I think he'd want to know."
"I don't know," Blair says, just to say something. Then she rubs a hand through her hair, careless of styling. "What if it ends up on Gossip Girl?"
Serena squeezes Blair's fingers again. "Then I'll say it's me."
It's firm, unhesitating, and Blair meets Serena's eyes, feeling so grateful she doesn't even know what to say.
The next time she's with Dan, Blair lays awake while he breathes beside her, even and quiet. She glances over to make sure he's asleep before pushing the comforter away and laying a hand atop her own flat stomach. There's nothing to give it away. Blair has always kept an eye to the shape of her stomach and she's certainly not forgiving, but there's no denying that no one would ever be able to tell.
She thinks of dinner with her mother, Dan's hand on her knee under the table – not lascivious or anything like that, just supportive. Just his way of saying I'm here.
But she still doesn't know how to tell him.
There's no reason to wait after that.
Once it becomes a shared secret instead of Blair's private panic, she can't very well go on pretending it's not happening. She calls the doctor and makes her appointment, placing a little red dot in the corner of the chosen date in her schedule.
She can't eat anything the morning of, not that she would be able to anyway. She makes an early appointment in the hopes of being in and out with little fanfare, so she and Serena are both sleepy and red-eyed when they arrive at the office – on the West Side, not Blair's usual doctor. Just to be safe.
Blair is tense as she waits, fills out more forms, signs off on her consent. She feels brittle. Serena tries to rub her back briefly but gives up; the attempt at comfort only makes Blair inexplicably angry. She just wants it to be over.
Even once they call her in it takes too long for Blair's liking. She has to hear another lecture about options and birth control, take another pregnancy test ("I've taken about fifty by now," Blair says tightly. "I promise, it's in there."), another blood test, another sonogram. Serena is by her side the whole time, being open and kind, asking appropriate questions of the doctor whereas Blair can only grit her teeth in annoyed impatience. At least they finally give her some Vicodin, but then she has to wait even longer for it to take effect.
When it's finally time, Serena is sent back to the waiting room, but only after pressing a kiss to Blair's temple. "It'll be done before you know it, B," she promises.
Blair had thought that the waiting room was the worst part – sitting amongst all those similarly fidgety women who didn't want to make eye contact. But she thinks it's absolutely worse in the bustling minutes before the procedure, her head pillowed on crinkling paper, listening to the patter and chatter of nurses while her heart hammers out of her chest. She should've told Dan. Why hadn't she told Dan?
Blair jumps when the nurse touches her shoulder.
"Nervous, honey?" the nurse asks, nodding towards the machine where Blair's heart rate is zipping along.
"I'm fine," Blair says automatically. If Dan were here, he'd make some stupid joke that would make her anxiety dissipate despite herself.
Once the doctor arrives there's an uptick in activity, everyone making final checks and every single person in the room asking Blair how she is one more time. The doctor, a brisk middle-aged woman, gives Blair an impersonal pat on the shoulder and tells her it's time to begin. The anesthesiologist injects something into the IV.
Blair has long enough to wonder when it's going to kick in before she's out, and the next thing she's aware of is coming to hazily in recovery. There are other women around her with similarly vague, drugged up smiles. A nurse gives her a pleasant, encouraging look and offers her a tiny paper cup of apple juice. The tape from the IV has left a splotchy patch of itchy skin on the inside of her elbow, though the needle mark itself is imperceptible.
It's over, Blair realizes. She smiles and then she laughs, a silly drunk giggle. It's over. Her reaction is inappropriate, ridiculous, and she knows her giddiness is just the sedatives wearing off but the sense of relief is overwhelming. She just feels so good, so relieved, so free.
Blair spends the following three days not answering her phone. Then the pile up of texts from Dan (Waldorf I'm beginning to think you're dead in a ditch somewhere) start to become so ridiculous she has to say something, though all she comes up with are lame protestations about work.
"He even called me asking about you," Serena says. "You have to talk to him, B."
But Blair has not yet developed a course of action for her first conversation with Dan post-abortion. She's terrified that it'll just burst out of her mouth the second she sees his face so she continues to keep him at arm's length, choosing instead to mope around the penthouse in silk pajamas reading a Judy Garland biography.
She crosses paths with Eleanor in the kitchen one morning. Blair doesn't have work or class so she's planning to settle in for a long moody sulk full of imagined conversations with Dan that she's too chicken to have in reality. Eleanor observes her with passive interest as the water brews for tea. "Have you broken up with Mr. Humphrey?"
Blair starts. "No," she says, a touch snottily.
Eleanor nods slightly. "Have you had a fight then?"
"What's with the sudden interest, Mother?"
"Aren't I allowed to be interested in my daughter's life? As far as I know that is part of the job description."
Blair rolls her eyes. "No, we haven't," she says. "I'm avoiding him."
Eleanor arches an eyebrow. "Oh?"
It had just slipped out; Blair hadn't meant to say anything. "It's nothing," she backtracks. "It's stupid."
"Hmph," Eleanor murmurs. "And that internship, that's going well?"
Blair narrows her eyes, her skin prickling with familiar defensiveness. She could never tell the difference between Eleanor caring and Eleanor criticizing. Is she just looking for gaps in Blair's story? "What do you want to hear, Mother? I made a mess of everything, alright? I've been ruining things for myself forever, really, and I wasted the entire year but now I'm fixing it. I'm putting it back together. I don't need your needling."
"You always think the worst of me," Eleanor says lightly. "I know how hard you've been working, Blair. I'm proud of you."
Blair can't help a blink of surprise but she refuses to take the words to heart. "Oh."
"I'm not so wicked all the time," Eleanor reminds her and smiles just slightly. Blair's greatest fear has always been becoming her mother because she knows how easy it would be, how much it's already true.
"I know," Blair says, almost apologetic. "Me either."
She's tempted, for a moment, to tell her mother about the pregnancy and its subsequent dissolution. Eleanor is a liberal woman and she's never been sentimental or precious about things; she might be critical, but Blair isn't so sure she'd be condemning. Her mouth opens but then it shuts, and instead of speaking she gives her mother a small smile in return. Even without fear of recrimination, she doesn't trust Eleanor enough. Maybe one day.
Until then, Blair has Serena. And she's beginning to accept that she has Dan too.
I miss you, she texts him, finally. Come over.
Blair is sitting on her bed pretending to read a magazine when Dan arrives. The first thing she does is get her arms around him, savoring the way he feels, the way he smells. God, she's ridiculous. It hasn't even been a week.
"You'd think you hadn't seen me in years," he teases her, but he sounds happy enough about it. "I was going a little crazy. I thought you were breaking up with me."
"Don't be silly." Blair has always liked the way Dan says things straight out, no obfuscating. "But I do have to tell you something."
"Can it hold?" Dan asks, leaning into her so much she tips over laughing. "Maybe you could kiss me first?"
Blair does but she's conscious that it can't go farther than that, even though she still twists her arms around his neck, brings her leg around his hips. "Dan," she protests with another laugh she can't help – this is serious, he's going to think she doesn't have a heart at all once she tells him. She sobers after another kiss, puts her hand on his chest. "We really do have to talk."
He props himself on his elbow, shifting so he's next to her on the bed. "Oh no," he says. "Those words are never good."
Blair bites her lip, running her fingertips over his cheek. "I don't want you to hate me."
His expression shifts to genuine wariness, which Blair had been afraid of. "What happened?"
"I took a test," Blair says. "A pregnancy test. It was –" She clears her throat. "I made an appointment and I took care of it."
Dan's face changes though Blair can't read anger in it, at least not yet – confusion, certainly, and blank, flat surprise. He pushes upright, shifting to sit at the edge of the bed. His back is to her. "You mean…"
"You got me pregnant and I had an abortion," she says, abrupt and rushed.
"When?"
"Monday morning," Blair says. "I wasn't sick, or busy with work."
"Why didn't you tell me?" Dan asks and Blair steels herself for his anger. But then he says, "I would've come with you." He looks over his shoulder, brows knotted with concern. "You didn't have to do it by yourself."
"You don't – you're not mad?"
"I wish you'd told me." It isn't an answer, but when she sits up and curls against his back, chin on his shoulder and hands clasped over his chest, he covers her fingers with his. "I wouldn't have… I'd support whatever you wanted to do. You know that, right?"
"I do now," Blair murmurs. They're quiet for a moment as she leans her cheek against his shoulder. "I wish I'd told you too."
She hesitates to say more, considering he's reacting well; she doesn't know if it would bother him to hear her say that she was afraid to tell him because she was afraid he might convince her to keep it. The fact that such a thing was even a possibility makes her worried about his effect on her. It could be dangerous. She knows all about that.
"It was just so soon," she adds, still soft-voiced. "I want to date you. I don't want…all those other things. I didn't want to lose what I have with you before I'd even really had it."
Dan tilts slightly so he can kiss the side of her nose. "That's what I want too, Waldorf." He pauses. "Okay, but: when did we not use a condom?"
"Right!" Blair says, indignant. "We're switching brands. I'm not satisfied with the margin of error."
Dan's lips twitch with suppressed laughter before he kisses her and Blair knows it's going to be fine, everything is going to be fine.
Summer finds Blair and Serena moving out of the penthouse.
They choose a newer building, farther East than Blair would like, and the kitchen is an absolute joke, but it's fresh and clean, painted an all-over shining white, and the floor-to-ceiling windows are laughably delightful. She and Serena clash over every single design decision, but Blair likes that too.
"You're still too far," Dan complains every time he comes over.
"No one told you to live in Brooklyn," Blair tells him.
"We can't compromise here? You couldn't have chosen somewhere in Midtown, at least?"
"God, if the next thing out of your mouth is a suggestion I live downtown, then I'm walking out, I don't care if this is my apartment."
But compromise is something they endeavor to keep in mind, and Blair spends at least half her time in his loft. And it's on one such occasion, going through his desk looking for Post-Its (honestly) that she finds a neatly printed hardcopy of his novel, covered in red ink corrections in Dan's own handwriting. Of course she sits down immediately in the desk chair and reads it start to finish.
"Humphrey," she calls after she's done. "I take issue with your prose. You have not described my eyes as 'sparkling' even once."
Dan appears in the doorway in record time. "You did not," he says.
Blair bites her lip, eyebrows raising as she holds up the manuscript. "I might have. Tell me: have you been holding a candle this entire time, then?"
"We're breaking up," Dan tells her. He moves to grab the pages, which Blair dangles out of reach. "That's it. This is my line in the sand."
"Don't you think," Blair says, hopping up out of her seat so she can dodge his attempts, "that 'ninety-eight pound, bon-mot tossing, label-whoring package of girly evil' is one signifier too many?"
She lets him catch her but the pages go everywhere, all out of order, a cascade of crinkling paper all around them. "Not when all of them are true," Dan says, practically picking her up. "Especially that last one. Totally evil."
Blair grins before she kisses him. "You're horribly sentimental," she says. "And a revisionist. I loved it."
"Yeah, well, you would," he says, smile tugging at his own lips. "Pot, kettle."
"It's either very lucky or very unfortunate that we found each other," Blair says.
"Both, I think," Dan tells her. "But maybe that second one a little more."
"Yes," she agrees, "I certainly feel very unlucky."