fic: gone like her smile (Dan/Blair)

gone like her smile
Pairing: Dan/Blair
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1868


Summary: So this is them, however many years later.



Note: For dysenchanted2! This turned out very differently than I expected and I'm not quite sure how I feel about it, but I hope you like it!







So this is them, however many years later: either side of a table, suited professionals at their sides. Dan had expected it, really. Maybe not at the time, but later. Or maybe always. Maybe he'd always expected it, just a little.

"I don't see why we need to do it like this," Dan says, annoyed, interrupting his lawyer's spiel.

"Mr. Humphrey –" her lawyer starts.

Dan interrupts again, ignoring the suits. "Blair –"

Blair's arms are crossed and she turns her face away. "Just let them do their job, Dan."

So he does, and he is divvied up, scraps handed all around. There wasn't anything Dan wouldn't have given her anyway.







Maddie clings to one of his hands; their time together is now regimented. "I don't want to," she says stubbornly, mouth pursed like her mother.

"You wouldn't stop talking about piano lessons all summer," Dan reminds her patiently. Of course, the summer before that she was obsessed with horses and look how long that lasted. Next it'll be some new spark; dolls, maybe, or the guitar. Something new, always.

Madeleine does not like it when facts that counteract her argument are presented to her. In a whine, she starts, "Daaaad –"

It amuses Dan, though he knows he should probably scold her. "Mads, we already paid for them. It's eight lessons, it's not the end of your life."

They arrive at the door of the studio. She crosses her arms. "I hate you."

Isn't it early for that? he thinks. He'd expected it of fifteen, not nine. "We grow through opposition," Dan tells her. Then he gives her a kiss and pushes her through the door, unfurls his paper to wait.






They hadn't been together (really, properly together, done with the push and pull) for very long when Blair got pregnant.

They both sat perched on the edge of her bathtub, staring at the little incriminating stick. "God," Blair says, voice thick with tears maybe, or frustration, "why am I so fertile?"

Dan snorts. "At least we know who the father is this time." He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. "Unless you've got something to tell me."

Blair smacks his arm. "Yes, Humphrey, the little parasite is yours."

Which is a thought Dan doesn't particularly mind.

More seriously, he asks, "What do you want to do?"

Blair's hand slips from his arm to his wrist before she twins their fingers together. Quietly, she says, "I don't know yet."

Dan gives her hand a squeeze. "There's time."






There had been plans, before the baby. Garden variety moving-in-together plans, saying goodbye to her penthouse and his loft and finding somewhere just for the two of them, somewhere so small they couldn't escape each other. Somewhere they would both probably hate in six months, with a bathroom only big enough for a standup shower and the couch a stone's throw from the bed. Somewhere Blair would deem picturesque, like a French film, with white walls and dusty windowsills. Dan would write a lot.

Instead he moves into her childhood bedroom. Serena's room becomes a nursery. It makes more sense, for the moment. They're too busy to be disappointed.

They're both keeping busy to keep from being other things; neither of them have had much luck with kids. He sees how careful Blair is being, reading a million books and watching her diet, hesitant about every car she gets in. It's okay, he wants to tell her, constantly, a constant hum during her day away from him. It's okay. But he knows she'd rebel against the coddling.

Dan is doing his best to stamp down his own uneasiness. That's what he did with –

That's what he did the first time, though he supposes that isn't the best judge.






Somehow, after the divorce, she's never home when he calls. It's always the awkward two-minute catch-up with Dorota before he's handed off to Maddie and then Cecily.

(Blair had named both of the girls without much input from Dan, much to his annoyance at the time, and he tries to circumvent it by calling them Maddie and Cee but for Blair it's always Madeleine and Cecily.)

After a exuberant monologue by Cecily about a new book she'd gotten from her grandmother (Grandma, which would be Dan's mother; Gran, which would be Blair's; and Great Aunt Lily, which makes no sense and was at Lily's insistent request), Dan asks again, "How's Mom doing, Cee? Is she home?"

"Um…" He hears the muffled sound of her hand on the phone. "She's busy."

Dan sighs. "Alright. Alright, alright." She's always busy. "I'll see you Saturday, okay?"

"Okay," she says brightly and then makes a smacking noise into the phone. "Kisses!"

Dan laughs, repeats, "Kisses, to you and your sister."

"No, not to Maddie, she's annoying," Cecily says, as though that's the very worst thing on earth. "Anyway, see you!"






Maddie is born a bald, squishy thing with dark blue newborn eyes (Milo's had been a similar shade, Dan remembers, before he makes himself push that thought away) that lighten over time, slowly, surprisingly. Dan had expected brown eyes but his daughter's eyes are blue – the blue of Jenny's eyes, Dan's father's eyes.

She makes everything so soft, like it's under a layer of snow. It's a strange thing, that she's theirs.

One night, after a three a.m. crying jag (Dan so very insistent that they do this themselves; until Blair goes back to work, that is, then he'll be doing it alone), Blair turns to him and says, "Let's get married."

They hadn't even brought up the idea in all the preceding months, though Dan had turned it over in his mind once or twice. He didn't think Blair would want to, really. They work better without names or labels, especially the legally binding kind.

Blair has no makeup on and her hair is unbrushed. It's half a command. "Marry me."

Maddie makes soft sounds between them. Dan teases, "Do I have to take your name?"

Blair smiles a little. "You don't have to, but it would improve your own immensely."

So they get married.






(Before Maddie was born, a while before, when the fact of her existence was still up in the air, Blair said, "I think I want to have it."

Dan had been on edge ever since they found out, waiting. He'd tried, several times, to slip a you know I'll always support you into the conversation but he was always met by Blair's dark glare.

He met her eyes, surprised. "You do?"

"Yes." It was a decisive, curt little yes. "I can count on you, can't I, Humphrey?"

Dan smiled, allowed himself his first hint of excitement. "You know you can.")






Blair hated it when Dan would bring up Milo, though honestly he never did it on purpose. He's not your son, she hissed finally and Dan shut up, had no idea how to explain that Milo didn't have to be his to be his.

Blair never brought up her other pregnancy, not once. Dan never asked.






They cross paths at Lily's Christmas party. Blair is keeping her careful distance so Dan invades her space, like he does. "Let me guess," he says, approaching with a drink for her in his hand like a peace offering, "You're not available?"

"Ha, ha, Humphrey." She takes the drink. "You're just lucky it's Christmas, otherwise I'd be halfway across the room by now."

Dan rolls his eyes. "I'm grateful for the holiday season, then."

They're silent a moment, watching Cecily weave through the crowd after Serena's son. Then, "Are you really going to avoid me forever?"

Blair sighs. "Dan."

"It's not fair to the girls," he continues. He's not looking at Blair, instead tracing Madeleine through the crowd, finding her in a corner with Serena's little girl, heads bent together, brown and blonde. They probably don't look unlike Blair and Serena at that age.

"Dan," she says again, in that quiet voice reserved for when she really means something. He turns to her. "It's too fresh, still."

He can't argue that. It hurts, just talking to her now. Part of him wants to be snide, wants to say the whole idea was her decision anyway, she deserves it. But he knows better by know, or at least he's supposed to. "I know." Dan sighs too. "I know."






It's any number of things: they had kids too soon, got married too soon, settled down too soon. Blair's job was too demanding. Dan's took him away from home for long stretches of time. They grew bitter about the things they missed out on, the decisions they made when they were younger and stupider that kept them apart for so long. Then there's guilt for wishing things were different even though they wouldn't trade their kids for anything.

It's any number of things.






After six months, Dan calls. "Too soon?" he asks.

"I'm hanging up on you, Humphrey," Blair says, but she doesn't.






Serena takes all the girls for some weekend trip, only Blair has to miss it because of a deadline. Dan has writer's block and not much to fill his free time anymore so, as the only ones remaining in the city with no prior engagements, they fall into old habits. They watch a movie.

"Your new place is not entirely horrible," Blair says.

"I would say thank you if I really believed that was a compliment," Dan says.

"It is." Blair smiles a little. "Mostly."

They watch The Philadelphia Story, because it's a classic and because it's the only Jimmy Stewart movie he can ever get her to watch. He's too earnest, Blair would say. I don't trust it. Dan would tell her, politely, that she was insane.

By the time it gets to the part where Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart are drunk and dancing, Blair and Dan have both fallen silent. Blair rests her head on his shoulder, tucks her arm through his. Dan misses her with such sudden acuteness that he speaks without thinking and tells the truth.

"I never felt like I was giving anything up," Dan says quietly. "If you thought that. Maybe nothing happened like we planned, but I – I didn't mind."

Blair is quiet and then says, "I did."

"I know," Dan says. Even if she never said it before now, he knew; every time she had to choose between him and the girls or work or a function, he knew. "Timing was never exactly our strong suit."

Her smile is faint. "I suppose it wasn't."

"Still," Dan says slowly. "It seems like a kind of bullshitty thing to fight about, now."

Blair traces shapes on his arm idly. "I used to like making up reasons to fight with you."

"I think we're too old for that now."

She pinches him. "Speak for yourself, Humphrey," she says, tone much more normal. "And watch the movie, you're always so distracting."

Dan laughs and dutifully falls silent, returning his attention to the screen. After a moment Blair tilts up to kiss him on the cheek.

For once Dan doesn't try to interpret how this fits into the rest of their lives and just watches the movie.