our last goodbye
Dan/Blair. 2959 words. R.
Summary: Blair is not going to cry one bitter tear about Dan Humphrey getting on a plane to Rome without her. Not one.
Note: Dan and Blair actually dating has made me into a huge sap, goodbye. Based on promos/speculation/foilers/etc. Title from Jeff, song title headers within the fic from Jeff and Elliott, respectively.
I know we could be so happy, baby
"One kiss," Blair repeated.
"One kiss," Dan affirmed.
One kiss – Blair had never thought about kissing Dan, not ever, not once. Except during that dumb play in high school, that travesty of a classic. They were supposed to kiss for the carriage scene. Blair had completely refused, always turned her head at the last second so Dan's mouth would land on her cheek, a feather from her hat, a curl of her hair. She did it half to infuriate him.
One kiss – she hadn't thought about kissing him lately either. She'd just become more accustomed to his face and its expressions. She noticed things now, like the crease between his brows that meant worry (different than the one that meant confusion or annoyance) or the way he pursed his lips when he was curious. It was the face he made during films when he didn't get something but he wanted to. It was the expression he made before she kissed him.
"For god's sake, Humphrey," Blair exclaimed, grabbing him by the lapels and hauling him in.
One kiss.
Blair felt nothing, Blair felt nothing, Blair felt nothing.
Do you miss me, miss misery?
Dan leaves.
Blair thinks about all the times boys have made her cry - Nate and the obvious distance in his eyes, Chuck and the way he would cut, Louis who wanted only revenge in the end - and decides she is not going to cry about Dan Humphrey of all people. Even though he pressed a kiss to her shoulder in the mornings, a little hello before retreating back to his side of the bed. Even though he had a side of the bed. Even though his entire everything relaxed utterly when he spotted her in a crowd, like he'd been looking for her since the last time they parted. Even though he said he loved her a million different ways before he said it for real. Even though he was always there because there was nowhere else he wanted to be. Even then. Even after all that, she's not going to cry one bitter tear over Dan Humphrey getting on a plane to Rome without her.
"You love him," Chuck says flatly.
"Stop telling me how I feel," Blair snarls. Once she would've said she didn't love Dan just because Chuck said she did, just to be contrary, just because. Once she was a different girl entirely but she became very, very tired and now this is the only girl she knows how to be.
I don't like who I've become with you, she told Chuck once.
It's you, Dan had said, It couldn't be awful.
The more time Serena had spent with her family, the more the penthouse became just theirs. They spent one lazy Saturday sleeping in, Dan's fingers tucked beneath the satin bodice of Blair's camisole, his eyes sleepily half-open. Blair woke up promptly at seven every day, so she was only entertaining the laziness on his account. So she said.
Isn't it funny? Dan murmured. His face was tucked against her arm and, as he fidgeted a little to get more comfortable, she felt his stubble rough against her skin.
She tugged lightly with the hand buried in his hair, prompting, What?
You and me, Dan said.
Blair frowned. Why would that be funny?
I never thought - Dan started, shrugged. I just never would have thought.
Blair inched down until they were eye level, his still looking red and resistant to waking. Never would have thought what, Humphrey? Use your words, I hear they pay you for that.
He rolled his eyes at her but said, in a rush, Never would have thought you'd want me. That we'd - that we'd ever get here, you know?
Blair smiled, softened. Me either, really. But I'm glad we did.
Yeah? He nudged up into a light kiss. Blair had no idea when kissing Humphrey became something she just wanted to do all the time. Me too, Waldorf.
He should have said it then. He should have told her he loved her then, when everything was all memory-soft and morning-bright. She could have said it back so easily and they would have kissed and everything would be fine. She would be in Rome now trying to get Dan to throw out his guidebooks and Italian dictionaries. They would kiss over their gelato like the kind of obnoxious couple Blair usually wants to stab violently with nail scissors. Maybe she would cut her hair – maybe he would.
"Either you love me or you don't," Dan said. "Either you feel something or you don't."
"You're not even listening to me!" Blair exclaimed. "That's not what I'm saying! I don't want you to - to throw some declaration at me just because you're jealous, even though you have no reason to be -"
"Really, no reason to be?" Dan said, sarcastic, and that's all he had to say.
Blair's cheeks heated up in a shameful, angry flush, thinking back to every time she showed up at his doorstep crying about Louis and Chuck and how she couldn't make a decision, about how she needed a paternity test because she didn't even know who -
"Do you really think so little of what we have?" she said.
Dan did look somewhat rebuked but shook it off, too mad. "I'm just saying. It's not like it would be the first time that happened."
Blair wanted to hit him. Standing there, hands fisted at her sides, body tense - looking into his eyes, which were just as wounded as hers. She wanted to slap him. He wasn't supposed to say things like that to her. She imagined the satisfying cracking sound, the slap hard enough to make Dan's eyes tear, make his cheek go red-pink. But that's not the relationship they have (had) and Blair was still going to respect the boundaries even if he wasn't.
"I suppose if that's what you think of me," she said finally, "you must not love me as much as you thought."
"Don't," Dan said, shaking his head, almost laughing but utterly mirthless. "Don't you fucking say that - you know, you know how much I - We don't lie to each other, Blair, we never have, even when you fucking hated me and we were sixteen, and I'm not going to pretend like you getting sucked back into Chuck's web of drama isn't a very real possibility." He shakes his head. "No. It's an eventuality. And it's happening now, isn't it?"
"I'm just helping him," Blair insisted. "God, why can't you understand that?"
"Because asking for help is one of those fucking tricks of his," Dan said. "He did that to me all during the end of summer. He's done that to all of you as long as I've known you – you and Nate and even Serena, he fucks up and then he needs help so everyone jumps to –"
"We've been friends for as long as any of us can remember, sometimes that takes precedence -"
"Don't I fucking know it," Dan spat. "You never let me forget it. None of you. You kept your shitty friendship for the four of you and me on the outside where you like me -"
"Stop being absurd -"
"You never let me in -"
Put on this dress. Dan had appeared and summarily disappeared into her closet, emerging again with a mistake she made in high school, a giant pink thing she thought Dorota had discarded.
Absolutely not.
Absolutely yes, Dan said. He took a moment to seemingly debate something in his head. Look, if you do this, I'll do that thing you're always bugging me about.
Blair perked up. Princess and the stableboy?
Dan looked caught between amusement and derision, settling on resignation. He nodded. Princess and the stableboy. In fact, that's actually…never mind. Just put on the dress.
If he'd said it then, on the steps of the Met, she would have been able to say it back. It would have felt sort of poetic, full circle. Blair certainly loved him in that moment, sticking her in a fluffy dress and crowning her in plastic, looking at her like she always wanted someone to look at her. Like he saw her, for real, and he liked her anyway.
She runs into Alessandra on the street when Dan's been gone two weeks. "You know," Alessandra says, "when he first turned down the retreat –"
"Turned down?" Blair interrupts, frowning. "You mean when they found someone else?"
Alessandra gives Blair an odd look and, not for the first time, Blair thinks Alessandra doesn't really like her. "No? Dan turned it down because he said he was spending the summer with you. But, luckily, he ended up taking it. It's really an excellent opportunity for him, I think it'll really help –"
She chatters on but Blair's stopped listening.
"I guess you're stuck with me for the whole summer," Dan said, not looking particularly glad about it. And as sorry as she was for him – as much as she wanted him to get all the opportunities he deserved to get – she was glad. Serena and Chuck and Nate would probably disappear to various corners of the world over the summer, which would give her and Dan the entire city to do with as they pleased. Her mind was already whirring, filling their days.
After dinner Dan was still moody so they started a movie in near-silence. Blair tucked herself into his side, running her fingertips idly over his cheek, the delineation of scruff and cheekbone. She was distracted too but warmly, pleased – Dan loved her, something she already knew in the back of her mind but felt different to hear out loud. She remembers thinking at the time that she didn't have to worry with Dan because it would never be a bargaining chip, that even angrily he'd never throw it back at her.
Blair's always been bad at recognizing things right when she's in the middle of them.
Eventually Dan had tilted his face into her palm, a faint and involuntary smile on his face. "You're obsessed," he told her.
"I just want to help," Blair said. "You should consider yourself lucky to have such a helpful girlfriend."
It only took a little bit of wheedling before they were squeezed into the Humphreys' tiny bathroom, Dan sitting and Blair standing, him eyeing the razor in her hand doubtfully.
"Letting another person take a blade to my face seems kind of like one of those common sense no situations," he said.
"Don't be a baby," Blair replied. "Take off your shirt."
Dan watched her intently as she moved this way and that, very careful and slow as she navigated the contours of his face. He set his hands gently on her hips. "What is this dress you're wearing, by the way?"
"I was getting into the mindset of a desperate woman." Blair smiled, slid out of his grasp. "Why? Do you like it?"
"It's not bad," he said, dutifully tilting his face to the side for her.
She rinsed the razor off and turned her attention to the last section. Lightly, "I think you'd be more interested in what I'm wearing under it."
He did, indeed, look more interested. "What are you wearing under it?"
Blair finished, setting the razor on the edge of the still-running sink and reaching for a towel to wipe any remaining shaving cream from his face. She turned the water off. "Not much."
Dan grinned and for the first time all night his expression was clear of clouds hanging over it. He reached for her again, hands skimming over her hips to her waist. "Define 'not much,'" he said.
Blair smiled. "Why don't you take a look for yourself?"
He kissed her as he pulled the zipper down, pushed the dress off her shoulders and down her arms. It was so tight it caught on her hips, where Dan left it as he pressed his mouth to the hollow of her throat, cupped her breast.
"I missed you today," she said softly, kissed his cheek.
The look he gave her was unreadable but he kissed her again, deep and breathless, and Blair took that as enough confirmation that he'd missed her too.
In bed, locked up tight together, her arms around his neck and his hands flat on her back holding her to him, he looked at her that way he sometimes did – the way she spent half the year trying to ignore, like he was aching, like he wanted her so much he couldn't stand it. You have me, she thought, hooking her leg over his hip and pressing closer even though there was no closer to go. The way he was looking at her, she expected him to say it again. But he didn't.
Sometimes it feels like everything that goes wrong in Blair's life is the result of those three words, eight letters that no one seems to be able to say at the same time.
Everything else was so different with Dan that she stupidly assumed the pressure was off, that she could just be happy and wait until the moment was right to say it instead of needing to be prompted. He still wanted her even when the sex with terrible, even when she was acting crazy, even when he thought he'd never have her.
Blair hates him for overreacting. She misses him acutely.
She tags along when Serena and Serena Lite want to go for drinks in Williamsburg only because she has nothing better to do except mope. Serena is still awkward about her and Dan but she's trying so Blair supposes the absolute least she can do is put up with the sister cousin for a couple of hours.
She realizes halfway through appetizers that they're in the same place she came to with Dan that night they got utterly trashed. They'd had sex in the bathroom. It looks different without the haze of alcohol.
"B, you okay?"
Blair blinks, smiles. "I'm fine."
And afterwards, outside, Dan had been laughing into their kiss, saying, I can't, I can't – I wish I could, but I can't –
Come on, she cajoled, It's not that hard, Humphrey –
Dan was still laughing, helplessly. That's the problem.
Dan's hand was under her skirt though, moving without hesitation; she tried to stifle her moans but they were like hiccups rising up. Dan kissed her hair, kissed her mouth tasting like whiskey, fitted his hips against hers with his hand between them and to her it felt like maybe he could after all.
He couldn't again, but she did, again, there in that Brooklyn alley with her underwear on the ground three feet away, kicked off. They forgot about it when they eventually stumbled out of there; Blair hadn't realized until the next morning.
She crosses her arms, perched on the edge of Serena's bed. "Why didn't he trust me?"
Serena opens her mouth, seems to think better of it, and shuts it again.
"What?" Blair snaps. "What were you going to say?"
"Nothing," Serena says easily, suddenly very interested in the ends of her hair.
"I wouldn't cheat on him," Blair grumbles. "I wouldn't do that to him."
Impatient, frustrated, she thinks, I love you, you idiot. How many ways did she have to say it?
Even-toned, Serena says, "Not on purpose."
"Not by accident either," Blair says, glaring at her. "God, why does everyone think that I can't keep myself under control for longer than a week? Dan's been gone for five and I haven't fallen into bed with Chuck."
"Maybe the time apart will be good," Serena tries. "Or you could call him? Dan likes to talk things out -"
Serena doesn't know anything. Blair refuses to call him.
"I've had a front row seat to the Chuck and Blair show for the last five years," Dan had snapped, everything in him tensed, spine shoulders and jaw. "How do I know the next time you kiss me you won't decide it's him you want instead?"
I love you more and more every day, if it's even possible to love someone that much.
"It's over with Chuck," Blair insisted.
"It's never over," Dan said.
Blair's most pathetic action, post-breakup, is to sleep in one of the shirts Dan left at her place, a handful odd button-downs and sweaters in a drawer from when he would stay over. She's got three dresses hanging on his clothing rack in the loft that she's assuming she'll never get back.
She sleeps in his shirt because it smells like him and in the morning she throws all of his stuff out.
Blair refuses to call him.
Nate checked out of their relationship when she needed him the most. Chuck left her alone in Tuscany for three straight months. Louis trapped her with a ring. Blair's dealt with worse than some idiot from Brooklyn going to Rome so that he can brood into his Moleskine and over-mousse his hair. She's not going to mope about it and she's not going to call him.
Blair calls him.
Dan coughs, sounding tired. "Blair?"
Blair purses her lips. She'd missed his voice. "Yes."
"Are you aware of what time it is here?"
"Yes," she says again, tightly. She'd waited until it would be inconvenient. "Say it again."
"I –" Dan falters. "What are you talking about?"
Blair rolls her eyes. She demands, "Say it again."
There is a pause on the line as Dan maybe sits up or rearranges or maybe just panics a little. "I love you," he says.
Blair hangs up.
Dan/Blair. 2959 words. R.
Summary: Blair is not going to cry one bitter tear about Dan Humphrey getting on a plane to Rome without her. Not one.
Note: Dan and Blair actually dating has made me into a huge sap, goodbye. Based on promos/speculation/foilers/etc. Title from Jeff, song title headers within the fic from Jeff and Elliott, respectively.
I know we could be so happy, baby
"One kiss," Blair repeated.
"One kiss," Dan affirmed.
One kiss – Blair had never thought about kissing Dan, not ever, not once. Except during that dumb play in high school, that travesty of a classic. They were supposed to kiss for the carriage scene. Blair had completely refused, always turned her head at the last second so Dan's mouth would land on her cheek, a feather from her hat, a curl of her hair. She did it half to infuriate him.
One kiss – she hadn't thought about kissing him lately either. She'd just become more accustomed to his face and its expressions. She noticed things now, like the crease between his brows that meant worry (different than the one that meant confusion or annoyance) or the way he pursed his lips when he was curious. It was the face he made during films when he didn't get something but he wanted to. It was the expression he made before she kissed him.
"For god's sake, Humphrey," Blair exclaimed, grabbing him by the lapels and hauling him in.
One kiss.
Blair felt nothing, Blair felt nothing, Blair felt nothing.
Do you miss me, miss misery?
Dan leaves.
Blair thinks about all the times boys have made her cry - Nate and the obvious distance in his eyes, Chuck and the way he would cut, Louis who wanted only revenge in the end - and decides she is not going to cry about Dan Humphrey of all people. Even though he pressed a kiss to her shoulder in the mornings, a little hello before retreating back to his side of the bed. Even though he had a side of the bed. Even though his entire everything relaxed utterly when he spotted her in a crowd, like he'd been looking for her since the last time they parted. Even though he said he loved her a million different ways before he said it for real. Even though he was always there because there was nowhere else he wanted to be. Even then. Even after all that, she's not going to cry one bitter tear over Dan Humphrey getting on a plane to Rome without her.
"You love him," Chuck says flatly.
"Stop telling me how I feel," Blair snarls. Once she would've said she didn't love Dan just because Chuck said she did, just to be contrary, just because. Once she was a different girl entirely but she became very, very tired and now this is the only girl she knows how to be.
I don't like who I've become with you, she told Chuck once.
It's you, Dan had said, It couldn't be awful.
The more time Serena had spent with her family, the more the penthouse became just theirs. They spent one lazy Saturday sleeping in, Dan's fingers tucked beneath the satin bodice of Blair's camisole, his eyes sleepily half-open. Blair woke up promptly at seven every day, so she was only entertaining the laziness on his account. So she said.
Isn't it funny? Dan murmured. His face was tucked against her arm and, as he fidgeted a little to get more comfortable, she felt his stubble rough against her skin.
She tugged lightly with the hand buried in his hair, prompting, What?
You and me, Dan said.
Blair frowned. Why would that be funny?
I never thought - Dan started, shrugged. I just never would have thought.
Blair inched down until they were eye level, his still looking red and resistant to waking. Never would have thought what, Humphrey? Use your words, I hear they pay you for that.
He rolled his eyes at her but said, in a rush, Never would have thought you'd want me. That we'd - that we'd ever get here, you know?
Blair smiled, softened. Me either, really. But I'm glad we did.
Yeah? He nudged up into a light kiss. Blair had no idea when kissing Humphrey became something she just wanted to do all the time. Me too, Waldorf.
He should have said it then. He should have told her he loved her then, when everything was all memory-soft and morning-bright. She could have said it back so easily and they would have kissed and everything would be fine. She would be in Rome now trying to get Dan to throw out his guidebooks and Italian dictionaries. They would kiss over their gelato like the kind of obnoxious couple Blair usually wants to stab violently with nail scissors. Maybe she would cut her hair – maybe he would.
"Either you love me or you don't," Dan said. "Either you feel something or you don't."
"You're not even listening to me!" Blair exclaimed. "That's not what I'm saying! I don't want you to - to throw some declaration at me just because you're jealous, even though you have no reason to be -"
"Really, no reason to be?" Dan said, sarcastic, and that's all he had to say.
Blair's cheeks heated up in a shameful, angry flush, thinking back to every time she showed up at his doorstep crying about Louis and Chuck and how she couldn't make a decision, about how she needed a paternity test because she didn't even know who -
"Do you really think so little of what we have?" she said.
Dan did look somewhat rebuked but shook it off, too mad. "I'm just saying. It's not like it would be the first time that happened."
Blair wanted to hit him. Standing there, hands fisted at her sides, body tense - looking into his eyes, which were just as wounded as hers. She wanted to slap him. He wasn't supposed to say things like that to her. She imagined the satisfying cracking sound, the slap hard enough to make Dan's eyes tear, make his cheek go red-pink. But that's not the relationship they have (had) and Blair was still going to respect the boundaries even if he wasn't.
"I suppose if that's what you think of me," she said finally, "you must not love me as much as you thought."
"Don't," Dan said, shaking his head, almost laughing but utterly mirthless. "Don't you fucking say that - you know, you know how much I - We don't lie to each other, Blair, we never have, even when you fucking hated me and we were sixteen, and I'm not going to pretend like you getting sucked back into Chuck's web of drama isn't a very real possibility." He shakes his head. "No. It's an eventuality. And it's happening now, isn't it?"
"I'm just helping him," Blair insisted. "God, why can't you understand that?"
"Because asking for help is one of those fucking tricks of his," Dan said. "He did that to me all during the end of summer. He's done that to all of you as long as I've known you – you and Nate and even Serena, he fucks up and then he needs help so everyone jumps to –"
"We've been friends for as long as any of us can remember, sometimes that takes precedence -"
"Don't I fucking know it," Dan spat. "You never let me forget it. None of you. You kept your shitty friendship for the four of you and me on the outside where you like me -"
"Stop being absurd -"
"You never let me in -"
Put on this dress. Dan had appeared and summarily disappeared into her closet, emerging again with a mistake she made in high school, a giant pink thing she thought Dorota had discarded.
Absolutely not.
Absolutely yes, Dan said. He took a moment to seemingly debate something in his head. Look, if you do this, I'll do that thing you're always bugging me about.
Blair perked up. Princess and the stableboy?
Dan looked caught between amusement and derision, settling on resignation. He nodded. Princess and the stableboy. In fact, that's actually…never mind. Just put on the dress.
If he'd said it then, on the steps of the Met, she would have been able to say it back. It would have felt sort of poetic, full circle. Blair certainly loved him in that moment, sticking her in a fluffy dress and crowning her in plastic, looking at her like she always wanted someone to look at her. Like he saw her, for real, and he liked her anyway.
She runs into Alessandra on the street when Dan's been gone two weeks. "You know," Alessandra says, "when he first turned down the retreat –"
"Turned down?" Blair interrupts, frowning. "You mean when they found someone else?"
Alessandra gives Blair an odd look and, not for the first time, Blair thinks Alessandra doesn't really like her. "No? Dan turned it down because he said he was spending the summer with you. But, luckily, he ended up taking it. It's really an excellent opportunity for him, I think it'll really help –"
She chatters on but Blair's stopped listening.
"I guess you're stuck with me for the whole summer," Dan said, not looking particularly glad about it. And as sorry as she was for him – as much as she wanted him to get all the opportunities he deserved to get – she was glad. Serena and Chuck and Nate would probably disappear to various corners of the world over the summer, which would give her and Dan the entire city to do with as they pleased. Her mind was already whirring, filling their days.
After dinner Dan was still moody so they started a movie in near-silence. Blair tucked herself into his side, running her fingertips idly over his cheek, the delineation of scruff and cheekbone. She was distracted too but warmly, pleased – Dan loved her, something she already knew in the back of her mind but felt different to hear out loud. She remembers thinking at the time that she didn't have to worry with Dan because it would never be a bargaining chip, that even angrily he'd never throw it back at her.
Blair's always been bad at recognizing things right when she's in the middle of them.
Eventually Dan had tilted his face into her palm, a faint and involuntary smile on his face. "You're obsessed," he told her.
"I just want to help," Blair said. "You should consider yourself lucky to have such a helpful girlfriend."
It only took a little bit of wheedling before they were squeezed into the Humphreys' tiny bathroom, Dan sitting and Blair standing, him eyeing the razor in her hand doubtfully.
"Letting another person take a blade to my face seems kind of like one of those common sense no situations," he said.
"Don't be a baby," Blair replied. "Take off your shirt."
Dan watched her intently as she moved this way and that, very careful and slow as she navigated the contours of his face. He set his hands gently on her hips. "What is this dress you're wearing, by the way?"
"I was getting into the mindset of a desperate woman." Blair smiled, slid out of his grasp. "Why? Do you like it?"
"It's not bad," he said, dutifully tilting his face to the side for her.
She rinsed the razor off and turned her attention to the last section. Lightly, "I think you'd be more interested in what I'm wearing under it."
He did, indeed, look more interested. "What are you wearing under it?"
Blair finished, setting the razor on the edge of the still-running sink and reaching for a towel to wipe any remaining shaving cream from his face. She turned the water off. "Not much."
Dan grinned and for the first time all night his expression was clear of clouds hanging over it. He reached for her again, hands skimming over her hips to her waist. "Define 'not much,'" he said.
Blair smiled. "Why don't you take a look for yourself?"
He kissed her as he pulled the zipper down, pushed the dress off her shoulders and down her arms. It was so tight it caught on her hips, where Dan left it as he pressed his mouth to the hollow of her throat, cupped her breast.
"I missed you today," she said softly, kissed his cheek.
The look he gave her was unreadable but he kissed her again, deep and breathless, and Blair took that as enough confirmation that he'd missed her too.
In bed, locked up tight together, her arms around his neck and his hands flat on her back holding her to him, he looked at her that way he sometimes did – the way she spent half the year trying to ignore, like he was aching, like he wanted her so much he couldn't stand it. You have me, she thought, hooking her leg over his hip and pressing closer even though there was no closer to go. The way he was looking at her, she expected him to say it again. But he didn't.
Sometimes it feels like everything that goes wrong in Blair's life is the result of those three words, eight letters that no one seems to be able to say at the same time.
Everything else was so different with Dan that she stupidly assumed the pressure was off, that she could just be happy and wait until the moment was right to say it instead of needing to be prompted. He still wanted her even when the sex with terrible, even when she was acting crazy, even when he thought he'd never have her.
Blair hates him for overreacting. She misses him acutely.
She tags along when Serena and Serena Lite want to go for drinks in Williamsburg only because she has nothing better to do except mope. Serena is still awkward about her and Dan but she's trying so Blair supposes the absolute least she can do is put up with the sister cousin for a couple of hours.
She realizes halfway through appetizers that they're in the same place she came to with Dan that night they got utterly trashed. They'd had sex in the bathroom. It looks different without the haze of alcohol.
"B, you okay?"
Blair blinks, smiles. "I'm fine."
And afterwards, outside, Dan had been laughing into their kiss, saying, I can't, I can't – I wish I could, but I can't –
Come on, she cajoled, It's not that hard, Humphrey –
Dan was still laughing, helplessly. That's the problem.
Dan's hand was under her skirt though, moving without hesitation; she tried to stifle her moans but they were like hiccups rising up. Dan kissed her hair, kissed her mouth tasting like whiskey, fitted his hips against hers with his hand between them and to her it felt like maybe he could after all.
He couldn't again, but she did, again, there in that Brooklyn alley with her underwear on the ground three feet away, kicked off. They forgot about it when they eventually stumbled out of there; Blair hadn't realized until the next morning.
She crosses her arms, perched on the edge of Serena's bed. "Why didn't he trust me?"
Serena opens her mouth, seems to think better of it, and shuts it again.
"What?" Blair snaps. "What were you going to say?"
"Nothing," Serena says easily, suddenly very interested in the ends of her hair.
"I wouldn't cheat on him," Blair grumbles. "I wouldn't do that to him."
Impatient, frustrated, she thinks, I love you, you idiot. How many ways did she have to say it?
Even-toned, Serena says, "Not on purpose."
"Not by accident either," Blair says, glaring at her. "God, why does everyone think that I can't keep myself under control for longer than a week? Dan's been gone for five and I haven't fallen into bed with Chuck."
"Maybe the time apart will be good," Serena tries. "Or you could call him? Dan likes to talk things out -"
Serena doesn't know anything. Blair refuses to call him.
"I've had a front row seat to the Chuck and Blair show for the last five years," Dan had snapped, everything in him tensed, spine shoulders and jaw. "How do I know the next time you kiss me you won't decide it's him you want instead?"
I love you more and more every day, if it's even possible to love someone that much.
"It's over with Chuck," Blair insisted.
"It's never over," Dan said.
Blair's most pathetic action, post-breakup, is to sleep in one of the shirts Dan left at her place, a handful odd button-downs and sweaters in a drawer from when he would stay over. She's got three dresses hanging on his clothing rack in the loft that she's assuming she'll never get back.
She sleeps in his shirt because it smells like him and in the morning she throws all of his stuff out.
Blair refuses to call him.
Nate checked out of their relationship when she needed him the most. Chuck left her alone in Tuscany for three straight months. Louis trapped her with a ring. Blair's dealt with worse than some idiot from Brooklyn going to Rome so that he can brood into his Moleskine and over-mousse his hair. She's not going to mope about it and she's not going to call him.
Blair calls him.
Dan coughs, sounding tired. "Blair?"
Blair purses her lips. She'd missed his voice. "Yes."
"Are you aware of what time it is here?"
"Yes," she says again, tightly. She'd waited until it would be inconvenient. "Say it again."
"I –" Dan falters. "What are you talking about?"
Blair rolls her eyes. She demands, "Say it again."
There is a pause on the line as Dan maybe sits up or rearranges or maybe just panics a little. "I love you," he says.
Blair hangs up.