067. so put another dime in the jukebox, baby
Title | so put another dime in the jukebox, baby
Chapter | 1/1
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Dan. Dan/Serena, Dan/Blair, Dan/Chuck, Dan/Nate, Dan/Georgina
Summary | Ten ways the summer of 2010 could go for Dan Humphrey.
Notes | Written for artemis_sparks 's birthday.
i.
He goes to Paris for Serena.
It's messily planned, but nonetheless, it's a romantic gesture of epic proportions.
He blows nearly all his money on his plane ticket, and when he gets there the only affordable accommodation he can find is a youth hostel mostly populated by a loud, giggling group of girls with accents that he thinks sound Australian, but that's okay.
He's here, and she's here. It is summertime in the city of love. And it kind of feels like a final chance; they're nineteen and they're about to start their real lives in the real world - either he still loves her now like he did when he was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…or he doesn't love her at all.
Finding her isn't so hard. Lily knew Serena's travel plans, which means that it wasn't all that difficult for Dan to extract them from his dad during a casual conversation. She's sharing a suite with Blair at a ridiculously expensive hotel - he walks into and it looks like Versailles or something, everything ornate and meticulous and colourful.
And there she is.
She's wearing a gray, strapless shirt and a tiny pair of white shorts, sunglasses perched atop her head as she reads from a French novel. She's sitting sideways in an armchair, her legs draped over one of the armrests.
Something swells inside of him, powerful and significant.
He loves her like he did when he was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen; loves her like he will forever, he just knows it - and it feels even more real than it did every time before.
Serena sees him before he can even move. She lifts her face (she's beautiful) and this small, sweet smile springs to her lips as her book falls into her lap. She swings her legs down to the floor and wonders, "Dan?"
Moving closer to her, he smiles and parrots back at her, "Serena."
Once he's standing in front of her, she reaches a hand up and presses it to his chest, right over his heart, like she's checking to make sure that he's not a mirage.
"What're you…" Her words are breathy and they trail off. "You're here. In Paris."
He nods, feels the way his mouth curves into a smile. She doesn't stop touching him, so he lays his hand carefully over hers. "Yeah."
She tilts her head, wisps of hair falling into her face. Her question is evident in her eyes: why?
Using the fact that he's standing and his gentle grip on her hand as leverage, he tugs her to her feet and she lets herself fall into him a bit, her chest pressed momentarily to his and her nose only an inch or two away from his own.
"I missed you," he tells her.
Lips pressed together, she replies, "I've been gone five days."
He touches her cheek, slips his hand into her hair, pulls her just a little bit closer, and hears the way her breathing hitches. "I missed you longer than that," he says, his voice low and his words slow, to make sure she understands.
She blinks at him, lashes fluttering alluringly over those blue eyes. Her lips hover near his, but she doesn't move, and he doesn't either. He can't stop thinking about those ten minutes, that night in his bedroom with her sad faces and red wine, and he just aches for her.
"Where's Blair?" he asks, wondering how much trouble he'll get in if he whisks Serena away right now.
She doesn't seem to hear him. "You're here," is all she says, her expression still a little shell-shocked.
He laughs, but it hurts a part of him, the way she sounds so surprised. It makes him remember her in the lobby of her building, small and sad and left behind. (Of course he's here, just like he was there.)
He doesn't tell her that (he'll tell her later), he just says, "I am."
Serena keeps grinning and then trying to quell it; she looks about two seconds away from laughing her four-year-old laugh. She touches his arms. "Let's go somewhere."
Dan nods, and let's her lead him away.
"Where're we going?" he asks when they're outside. He slips an arm around her waist. The heat is sweltering but he doesn't want to stop touching her.
Her smile breaks free. "You pick."
He doesn't bother telling her that they are in Paris, and he's never been to Paris before, so he's lost by default - he just picks the only landmark he can recognize and steers them both toward it. "Okay. I picked."
She touches his cheek very gently, then slides her hand downward, over his shoulder, before she cuddles into his touch, leaning into him as they walk. "I can't believe you," she whispers against his shoulder.
Dan presses a kiss into her hair - he thinks that's allowed. "Do you remember our first date? When you asked me why I hadn't talked to you sooner, or asked you out sooner, because if I had - "
Serena's flip-flops thwack against the sidewalk and she looks at him disbelievingly. "You're following that advice now?"
He shrugs and grabs her hand, running across the street during a break in traffic. "Better late than never!" he yells to her as an angry driver honks his horn at them.
"Better late than - "
He stops short and Serena halts at his side, her question forgotten.
"Dan," she sighs, and he'd forgotten how much he loves the way her mouth looks when she says his name, but he's too busy trying to figure out the semantics - there's a huge line for the elevator and it'd just be embarrassing if he got winded while climbing all those stairs - to tell her so.
So he gives up on the cliché, on the idea of getting to the top first, and he kisses her at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the sun shining down and tourists milling around them.
Serena keeps her eyes closed when he pulls away, whispers, "We've tried this."
He laughs and shrugs a little, bumping his nose against hers. She scrunches up her nose, smiling as she opens her eyes.
"Once more with feeling?" he suggests, eyes on her mouth.
Something flickers through her eyes, doubt and then hope and then certainty, and then she kisses him, arms wrapped securely around his neck and tasting like better late than never.
And maybe it's heatstroke and he's just dreaming it up, but there is a hint of I'll never stop loving you there, too.
ii.
He hangs out with Nate a lot.
After they get over the whole "sorry, man, I kissed your girlfriend" thing, that is.
Nate's the best guy friend Dan has ever had. Maybe even the best friend Dan has had, period. He's just so chilled out about everything, and kind, and occasionally clueless - but never in a bad way, somehow. Most of the time he's just supportive and happy and…friendly.
They do stupid guy stuff, like drinking beer and watching 'the game' and being each other's quote unquote wingmen, according to Nate, who is pretty much always the organizer of their outings since Dan's social life is pretty limited other than, well, Nate.
They also do stupid (non)guy stuff, like watching the Endless Knights trilogy three times and making a doomed-from-the-start attempt at making chocolate chip cookies because Nate has never actually cooked anything before, not once in his life.
But most of all, they get high and watch the World Cup.
Nate is intense about it, maybe more intense than Dan has even seen him about anything. He's rooting for about seven different teams, passionate about them at varying degrees. He wears jerseys. He makes charts. He cheers and curses and yells at the referees as though they can hear him.
And Dan observes it all, highly amused.
During one of the games (later Dan will try hard to recall which one it was, and he will think that it was England vs. Germany, but it is not the details of the game that matter), Nate takes them both out for brunch at a bar with high mahogany tables and multiple flat-screen televisions. They stay there for hours, eating sausages and home fries and pancakes, drinking pitcher after pitchers of beer.
Eventually, the team Nate is rooting for wins.
The bar is in an uproar, laughter and disappointed groans and excited conversation filling the air. Nate is all bright blue eyes and boyish grin; he throws his arms around Dan for a hug.
Dan laughs and returns the enthusiastic embrace.
And then - (probably) by accident - Nate's mouth sort of presses against Dan's neck for a few seconds.
For the next two and a half weeks, Dan spends all his time thinking about how he is not going to think about that moment.
It finally happens when they're drunk - Dan thinks that Nate tends to hide his emotions behind alcohol, and that it's not a healthy habit, but - screw it.
Nate looks around the bar, observing all the woman who are already observing him, and then pats Dan on the back.
"I gotta feeling tonight's gonna be a good night," he says happily, and Dan laughs, because only Nate Archibald would have Black Eyed Peas lyrics in his everyday vernacular.
Nate buys the drinks and Dan gulps them down. It's something of a system at this point.
The girls who approach them first are twins, which for about two seconds feels like real-life fantasy. Nate buys them all shots, but the girls are blonde and blue-eyed and overconfident, and when Dan meets Nate's eyes they both shake their heads subtly.
But Nate finds another girl (of course), this time with black hair and spiky-heeled shoes and a particularly enticing smile.
By this time Dan is drunk, possibly more drunk than he's ever been in his life. Everything is a wonderful blur.
Nate wraps a hand around his wrist and yells, close to Dan's ear, "We're leaving!"
Dan nods. That's cool. He'll just grab a cab home, once the room stops spinning. "Okay. See ya!" he yells back.
The music playing screams obnoxiously your love, your love, your love is my drug and Nate leans closer as he says, "No, dude. We're leaving," and drags Dan toward the doors.
The girl, whose name he still doesn't know, is waiting for them in the car, but Dan kisses Nate before they even get there.
Dan wakes in the morning only a couple minutes before Nate does. The girl (oh, shit, what was her name?) is already gone, and sunlight is leaking into the room through the windows.
Nate is sprawled out on his stomach in only a pair of white boxers, his hair a mess and his eyes are adorably blurry when he finally blinks them open, and Dan really can't help but smirk sheepishly at him.
"Well," he says, "at least the third person was a stranger."
iii.
So, his ex-girlfriend is pregnant. Actually pregnant, with a baby bump and sonograms to prove it.
He gives himself two days to panic, to pace around the loft a lot and stare disbelievingly at her happy-go-lucky smile, to do the mental math over and over again and, yes - it could be his baby.
Then he tries to get it together. He rides the subway for half an hour, goes to a bookstore he's never been in before. He puts on his most judgmental face and buys What to Expect When You're Expecting. He holds the book gingerly, like it's contaminated somehow.
Dan is not totally opposed to the American Dream. It makes for good literature and it's a nice, hazy way to think about the future: girl you love, kids you love, a dog, a picket fence.
But this is too soon, and not right, and he keeps thinking of being sixteen years old and seeing a pregnancy test in his girlfriend's hand and how his very first thoughts had been that he loved her, and would support her, and they'd make it right, no matter what it took.
He keeps thinking of how he doesn't have any of those feelings now.
His phone buzzes one day and the text message reads: demand a paternity test, you absolute moron, or i will travel there and do it for you. xo - B.
He doesn't question how she knows. He doesn't question much of anything.
"Dude," Nate guffaws sympathetically, beer bottles littered around his feet as they stand on the roof. "You were going to play daddy to a Russian mobster's child."
"Thanks for the support, man."
Dan punches him - lightly, because his strength seems to fade more with every drink he takes - and looks out at the New York City skyline, out into a life of possibilities that does not include teenage parenting.
For the first time ever he thinks he's really capable of changing his life or changing this city or changing the world…but that might just be the relief and the Jagermeister talking.
iv.
He doesn't really think about it, that's how fast it happens.
Lily is all in a panic and Charles has been shot and his father says we're getting on a plane right now and then, Dan, want to come?
He'll never really know why he says yes.
He knocks on the doorframe. "Lily asked me…to sit with you," he explains awkwardly.
Chuck levels him with what looks like a half-hearted glare. "I'm not an invalid, Humphrey. I do not need to be sat with."
Dan shrugs and walks into the room, dropping into the semi-comfortable chair by Chuck's bed. "Hospital room, hospital bed, hospital gown…yeah, I think that makes you an invalid."
There are a few minutes of silence, during which Chuck glowers and shifts around self-consciously in his hospital gown. When Dan gets tired of watching him fidget, he opens his book and starts to read.
"So, I assume you came here expecting Serena."
"Did not," Dan replies evenly without looking up.
Chuck prods, "You must be so disappointed that my dear sister hasn't made an appearance."
He glances up from his book, honestly curious. "Are you disappointed that Serena hasn't shown up?"
"No."
"Are you disappointed Blair hasn't shown up?" He lets his book fall shut.
"No." The response is the exact same: unhurried, unbothered.
Dan grins a little. "Are you disappointed that I showed up?"
"Yes."
He laughs. "Seriously, about the girls - "
Chuck shrugs one shoulder. "I can only hope that they're bringing new meaning to the idea of gay Paris."
Dan's grin widens. It's kind of nice to know that some things can't be changed, not even by a bullet, even if one of those things is Chuck fucking Bass.
The first time he has sex with Chuck Bass, his first thought (when he can think coherently) is an embarrassingly girlish exclamation of, "You slept with my sister!"
Chuck smirks as he fastens his suspenders again - his pink suspenders. "Jealous, Humphrey?"
"Disgusted," Dan shoots back.
"The feeling's mutual."
So, he hooks up with Chuck Bass.
What happens in Prague fucking stays in Prague, okay.
(Well. Prague and the private jet they take back to Manhattan.
But seriously, that's it.)
v.
They lose his luggage.
The upbeat worker at Charles de Gaulle tells him, repeatedly that, ze very seconde that Dan's luggage shows up, he will be notified, ze very seconde, monsieur, je vous le promets.
Which is how he ends up lifting the ornate knocker on the door of a Parisian hotel room, his only possessions at the moment being the clothes he has on, his wallet, and the book he read on the plane.
"Humphrey," Blair sighs when she swings open the door. She's wearing a silky robe, loosely tied, and her hair is partially pulled back. She looks very pretty and European and adult, and Dan feels like a moron with no suitcase and the crappy novel he bought at the airport bookstore.
He nods. "Waldorf."
She turns and wanders back into the room, but she leaves the door open, so he takes it as a sign that he's permitted to follow.
Blair sits down at a vanity table, her eyes on her own reflection in the mirror as she lifts her hairbrush. "You're looking for Serena, I presume?"
"Uh, yeah." He looks around. There are no chairs, so he perches very awkwardly at the foot of her bed and does not touch anything.
She runs the brush slowly, methodically, through her hair as she tells him evenly: "She's in love - well she thinks she is, she's lusting after someone new this week. She's been drinking. And smoking. And forgetting to wash her hair." She glances at the ceiling and then says flatly, "She's going to run off within the next week, and the next time I hear from her it will be a request for me to be maid of honour at her first wedding. And I will say yes."
Dan gapes at her, at the ivory-coloured silk covering the delicate bones of her back and shoulders. "How do you…"
Her eyes clash with his in the mirror. "Nineteen years of experience." She smirks but it holds no humour. "You'll learn."
"What about…after that?"
"Maybe she'll go to Africa. Maybe she'll drink herself into a coma." Blair swivels around on the stool she's sitting on, and her robe falls open a bit, revealing a lacy black camisole. "I can't predict her every move."
He doesn't know what to say, so for a long time, they sit in silence. She crosses her legs and his eyes, unbidden, fall to the skin of her thighs.
"She won't really do all that."
Blair shrugs, and he notices for the first time that there is something raw and pulsing in her brown eyes - it throws him into the past, to a hallway and a lonely girl, to the girl who loved Chuck Bass but wasn't brave enough to say so.
Dan watches her carefully and he finally begins to understand.
"Well," he says, "what about you?"
He stays. He tells himself - and Blair - that he's just staying until they track down his luggage, and then he'll forget this whole pathetic trip and go home.
She stares at him, says, "Whatever," in the most flippant tone he's ever heard, and calls down to the reception desk, speaking perfect French as she books the room across the hall from hers for him.
"You didn't really mean that stuff, did you?"
He's sitting on her bed, a little more comfortably this time, flipping through channel after channel of French programming on the tv while Blair, sitting next to him in a silky red dress (all dressed up with no one to impress), paints her toenails a deep burgundy colour.
"What stuff?" she asks disdainfully.
"You know what stuff. The stuff about Serena."
Her shoulders tense up and her fingers freeze on the tiny bottle. "I did and I didn't." She sighs, and a little brokenly she adds, "I love her. And I want so badly for her to sort herself out, but…it can't be my job anymore. I'm tired. She's always been a wild child and I'm just…tired, of loving her but not being able to fix her."
Blair deposits her bare feet in his lap and sticks the nail polish into one of his hands. When she looks at him her eyes are gentle. "Surely you can understand that," she says softly.
"Do you think she'll come back?"
Blair's lips are stained red with wine (and Dan wonders how many bottles they've had now, two or maybe three) and her eyes flash in the candlelight.
"It's always about Serena with you, isn't it?"
"It's always about Serena with you," he bites back, defensive.
She breathes out a surprised laugh and her foot touches his, oh-so-briefly, beneath the table they're sharing.
"Look who's finally caught on," she praises him (mockingly).
There is a blackout.
The city is dark, full of shadows.
"Humphrey," Blair sighs when she opens the door of her room.
He kisses her first.
She presses a hand to his chest and he's sure that she'll push him away, but then her fingers wrap around the fabric of his shirt and she yanks him into the room, toward her bed.
vi.
It takes two days for him to figure out that Georgina Sparks is not pregnant with his child, and by the end of that forty-eight hours, he's just…tired.
It's summer, so the city is muggy, but he puts on his ugliest sweater anyway and mopes around for a while. He calls Nate and listens to him babble about soccer (uh huh, yeah - that's awesome, man). He e-mails Vanessa with what might be the world's longest and worst explanation (really sorry, please call). He texts Serena something lame (hope you're having a great time).
He's just tired. He's tired of being lied to.
Some way, somehow, with someone, it just has to be uncomplicated.
And he'll find it. He will.
vii.
He goes to Paris and declares his undying love for Serena.
Except, not really.
He gets there and he sees her, with Blair on the street, hats on over their shiny hair, arms linked, smiles relaxed and easy.
She's fine without him.
And what's more, he's fine without her.
They are finally over. To his surprise, it does not feel as tragic as he expected it to. It's like a satisfying ending to an addicting book.
Still, that doesn't mean he doesn't wish there was just one more chapter every now and again.
viii.
He goes to Hudson to spend the summer with his sister and his mom and the man who may as well be his stepfather.
Allison's overjoyed to have both her kids there, and Dan almost feels bad when he sees how happy she is - but then he remembers that she left, she moved on and away from their family. He resolves to be forgiving but not guilty.
He's never met Alex, but his impression of him (as the man his mother cheated with) is not really the best one. Alex makes good conversation at the dinner table, though, and he is respectful of Dan's space. He makes an effort but he doesn't go overboard. He offers to teach Dan to drive, buys him the Driver's Manual but does not volunteer to pay for his beginner's test - so it's a nice gesture without being a bribe.
And Jenny is Jenny again, less makeup and longer skirts and she's finally the same girl Dan used to grab onto to keep her from running out into traffic when they were really little kids. There are disadvantages to his little sister making a comeback, of course: she sneakily trades plates with him at dessert so that she gets the bigger piece of chocolate cake, she uses her old, rickety, loud sewing machine into all hours of the morning, and she almost always controls the TV viewing options.
(But Dan loves her likes this, when she's his baby sister, so much more than when she was all eyeliner and big black boots - so he lets her. He even tolerates the fact that she goes through this phase of addiction to Britney Spears music, similar to the one that lasted the whole eighth year of her life. He watches Crossroads with her. Twice. Because that is the kind of brother he is.)
Choosing to be in Hudson, to spend his nights watching TV with his family or writing out on the deck instead of taking the city by storm is lame, and he knows it.
But, whatever, it's one of the best summers of his life.
ix.
He hangs out with Nate a lot.
Nate is kind of…awesome. He just is; there's no way to avoid it and no way for Dan to avoid loving it.
He has total disregard for all the things Dan used to find impossibly impressive, like limo drivers at his disposal and AmEx Black Cards sitting pretty in his wallet, and how spilling iced coffee on his cashmere-from-Kashmir sweater is totally no big deal because he has about twelve more.
And then he's totally wowed by all the things Dan thinks are normal, like how you can play Scattergories and drink really cheap vodka on Saturday nights instead of attending a gala, and how it is possible to make your own food (it's just a lot of work sometimes) and how you can buy perfectly good soccer cleats from less than what Nate has always been accustomed to paying.
It's fun, watching the way their worlds mesh carefully together.
Plus it's easy, so long as they ignore the part of that won't mesh - the part where they could both say, so you know your (ex) girlfriend? I love her.
Summer flies by, a blur of soccer games in Central Park and joints shared on Dan's fire escape. They talk about the future sometimes - about classes next year and jobs a few years after, and Dan likes the way Nate phrases it all; you're totally coming to Connecticut for Christmas and if I decide to leave the city you totally gotta come visit me, like Dan is a permanent part of the rest of his life.
But a heat wave hits right at the beginning of September, hellish heat that engulfs the city with no sign of mercy, and Serena comes back (so you know your girlfriend? I love her).
She's got flushed cheeks and messy hair and she says, "I just…I needed some time. I wanted to make sure that…I felt the same. And that…" Her breath catches. "That you felt the same."
Honest, needing eyes and hesitant posture; she's in love and it's hurting her, he knows it, he's seen it before.
She's not talking to him, though.
He listens to the tender way Nate says her name, full of the same sort of ache, and then the subsequent murmurs that get caught between kisses.
Dan stands in the other room feeling like an idiot.
Like an interruption.
x.
He writes a book.
An honest-to-good book, with over five hundred pages and chapters and metaphors and what he thinks is pretty good characterization. And he's grown up quite a bit over these last few years, is mature enough now that he does not name characters Charlie Trout or make the title the date of an important day in a year.
It is not about anyone else. For some reason whenever he dreams about cover art, he thinks of blonde hair and Grand Central Station, so maybe to a certain degree it is about Serena. The heroine is a pretty girl who refuses to be weak and tries her hardest to avoid being caught without the upper hand, even when her whole world is falling apart, so he supposes that in a sense it is about Blair. The protagonist has two best friends, one female and one male, whom he loves equally but in different ways, and whom he engages in whirlwind relationships with before they end up dating each other - shades of Nate and Vanessa. There is a younger sister, and she loses her way sometimes. Dan's antagonist character is eccentric and elitist; whether or not he has a soul beneath his outward appearance is still questionable.
In a way, it is about everyone and everything that Dan has experienced since Serena van der Woodsen ran into him drunkenly three years ago.
Mostly, however, it's about him.
And that's probably how it should be.
fin
Chapter | 1/1
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Dan. Dan/Serena, Dan/Blair, Dan/Chuck, Dan/Nate, Dan/Georgina
Summary | Ten ways the summer of 2010 could go for Dan Humphrey.
Notes | Written for artemis_sparks 's birthday.
i.
He goes to Paris for Serena.
It's messily planned, but nonetheless, it's a romantic gesture of epic proportions.
He blows nearly all his money on his plane ticket, and when he gets there the only affordable accommodation he can find is a youth hostel mostly populated by a loud, giggling group of girls with accents that he thinks sound Australian, but that's okay.
He's here, and she's here. It is summertime in the city of love. And it kind of feels like a final chance; they're nineteen and they're about to start their real lives in the real world - either he still loves her now like he did when he was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen…or he doesn't love her at all.
Finding her isn't so hard. Lily knew Serena's travel plans, which means that it wasn't all that difficult for Dan to extract them from his dad during a casual conversation. She's sharing a suite with Blair at a ridiculously expensive hotel - he walks into and it looks like Versailles or something, everything ornate and meticulous and colourful.
And there she is.
She's wearing a gray, strapless shirt and a tiny pair of white shorts, sunglasses perched atop her head as she reads from a French novel. She's sitting sideways in an armchair, her legs draped over one of the armrests.
Something swells inside of him, powerful and significant.
He loves her like he did when he was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen; loves her like he will forever, he just knows it - and it feels even more real than it did every time before.
Serena sees him before he can even move. She lifts her face (she's beautiful) and this small, sweet smile springs to her lips as her book falls into her lap. She swings her legs down to the floor and wonders, "Dan?"
Moving closer to her, he smiles and parrots back at her, "Serena."
Once he's standing in front of her, she reaches a hand up and presses it to his chest, right over his heart, like she's checking to make sure that he's not a mirage.
"What're you…" Her words are breathy and they trail off. "You're here. In Paris."
He nods, feels the way his mouth curves into a smile. She doesn't stop touching him, so he lays his hand carefully over hers. "Yeah."
She tilts her head, wisps of hair falling into her face. Her question is evident in her eyes: why?
Using the fact that he's standing and his gentle grip on her hand as leverage, he tugs her to her feet and she lets herself fall into him a bit, her chest pressed momentarily to his and her nose only an inch or two away from his own.
"I missed you," he tells her.
Lips pressed together, she replies, "I've been gone five days."
He touches her cheek, slips his hand into her hair, pulls her just a little bit closer, and hears the way her breathing hitches. "I missed you longer than that," he says, his voice low and his words slow, to make sure she understands.
She blinks at him, lashes fluttering alluringly over those blue eyes. Her lips hover near his, but she doesn't move, and he doesn't either. He can't stop thinking about those ten minutes, that night in his bedroom with her sad faces and red wine, and he just aches for her.
"Where's Blair?" he asks, wondering how much trouble he'll get in if he whisks Serena away right now.
She doesn't seem to hear him. "You're here," is all she says, her expression still a little shell-shocked.
He laughs, but it hurts a part of him, the way she sounds so surprised. It makes him remember her in the lobby of her building, small and sad and left behind. (Of course he's here, just like he was there.)
He doesn't tell her that (he'll tell her later), he just says, "I am."
Serena keeps grinning and then trying to quell it; she looks about two seconds away from laughing her four-year-old laugh. She touches his arms. "Let's go somewhere."
Dan nods, and let's her lead him away.
"Where're we going?" he asks when they're outside. He slips an arm around her waist. The heat is sweltering but he doesn't want to stop touching her.
Her smile breaks free. "You pick."
He doesn't bother telling her that they are in Paris, and he's never been to Paris before, so he's lost by default - he just picks the only landmark he can recognize and steers them both toward it. "Okay. I picked."
She touches his cheek very gently, then slides her hand downward, over his shoulder, before she cuddles into his touch, leaning into him as they walk. "I can't believe you," she whispers against his shoulder.
Dan presses a kiss into her hair - he thinks that's allowed. "Do you remember our first date? When you asked me why I hadn't talked to you sooner, or asked you out sooner, because if I had - "
Serena's flip-flops thwack against the sidewalk and she looks at him disbelievingly. "You're following that advice now?"
He shrugs and grabs her hand, running across the street during a break in traffic. "Better late than never!" he yells to her as an angry driver honks his horn at them.
"Better late than - "
He stops short and Serena halts at his side, her question forgotten.
"Dan," she sighs, and he'd forgotten how much he loves the way her mouth looks when she says his name, but he's too busy trying to figure out the semantics - there's a huge line for the elevator and it'd just be embarrassing if he got winded while climbing all those stairs - to tell her so.
So he gives up on the cliché, on the idea of getting to the top first, and he kisses her at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, the sun shining down and tourists milling around them.
Serena keeps her eyes closed when he pulls away, whispers, "We've tried this."
He laughs and shrugs a little, bumping his nose against hers. She scrunches up her nose, smiling as she opens her eyes.
"Once more with feeling?" he suggests, eyes on her mouth.
Something flickers through her eyes, doubt and then hope and then certainty, and then she kisses him, arms wrapped securely around his neck and tasting like better late than never.
And maybe it's heatstroke and he's just dreaming it up, but there is a hint of I'll never stop loving you there, too.
ii.
He hangs out with Nate a lot.
After they get over the whole "sorry, man, I kissed your girlfriend" thing, that is.
Nate's the best guy friend Dan has ever had. Maybe even the best friend Dan has had, period. He's just so chilled out about everything, and kind, and occasionally clueless - but never in a bad way, somehow. Most of the time he's just supportive and happy and…friendly.
They do stupid guy stuff, like drinking beer and watching 'the game' and being each other's quote unquote wingmen, according to Nate, who is pretty much always the organizer of their outings since Dan's social life is pretty limited other than, well, Nate.
They also do stupid (non)guy stuff, like watching the Endless Knights trilogy three times and making a doomed-from-the-start attempt at making chocolate chip cookies because Nate has never actually cooked anything before, not once in his life.
But most of all, they get high and watch the World Cup.
Nate is intense about it, maybe more intense than Dan has even seen him about anything. He's rooting for about seven different teams, passionate about them at varying degrees. He wears jerseys. He makes charts. He cheers and curses and yells at the referees as though they can hear him.
And Dan observes it all, highly amused.
During one of the games (later Dan will try hard to recall which one it was, and he will think that it was England vs. Germany, but it is not the details of the game that matter), Nate takes them both out for brunch at a bar with high mahogany tables and multiple flat-screen televisions. They stay there for hours, eating sausages and home fries and pancakes, drinking pitcher after pitchers of beer.
Eventually, the team Nate is rooting for wins.
The bar is in an uproar, laughter and disappointed groans and excited conversation filling the air. Nate is all bright blue eyes and boyish grin; he throws his arms around Dan for a hug.
Dan laughs and returns the enthusiastic embrace.
And then - (probably) by accident - Nate's mouth sort of presses against Dan's neck for a few seconds.
For the next two and a half weeks, Dan spends all his time thinking about how he is not going to think about that moment.
It finally happens when they're drunk - Dan thinks that Nate tends to hide his emotions behind alcohol, and that it's not a healthy habit, but - screw it.
Nate looks around the bar, observing all the woman who are already observing him, and then pats Dan on the back.
"I gotta feeling tonight's gonna be a good night," he says happily, and Dan laughs, because only Nate Archibald would have Black Eyed Peas lyrics in his everyday vernacular.
Nate buys the drinks and Dan gulps them down. It's something of a system at this point.
The girls who approach them first are twins, which for about two seconds feels like real-life fantasy. Nate buys them all shots, but the girls are blonde and blue-eyed and overconfident, and when Dan meets Nate's eyes they both shake their heads subtly.
But Nate finds another girl (of course), this time with black hair and spiky-heeled shoes and a particularly enticing smile.
By this time Dan is drunk, possibly more drunk than he's ever been in his life. Everything is a wonderful blur.
Nate wraps a hand around his wrist and yells, close to Dan's ear, "We're leaving!"
Dan nods. That's cool. He'll just grab a cab home, once the room stops spinning. "Okay. See ya!" he yells back.
The music playing screams obnoxiously your love, your love, your love is my drug and Nate leans closer as he says, "No, dude. We're leaving," and drags Dan toward the doors.
The girl, whose name he still doesn't know, is waiting for them in the car, but Dan kisses Nate before they even get there.
Dan wakes in the morning only a couple minutes before Nate does. The girl (oh, shit, what was her name?) is already gone, and sunlight is leaking into the room through the windows.
Nate is sprawled out on his stomach in only a pair of white boxers, his hair a mess and his eyes are adorably blurry when he finally blinks them open, and Dan really can't help but smirk sheepishly at him.
"Well," he says, "at least the third person was a stranger."
iii.
So, his ex-girlfriend is pregnant. Actually pregnant, with a baby bump and sonograms to prove it.
He gives himself two days to panic, to pace around the loft a lot and stare disbelievingly at her happy-go-lucky smile, to do the mental math over and over again and, yes - it could be his baby.
Then he tries to get it together. He rides the subway for half an hour, goes to a bookstore he's never been in before. He puts on his most judgmental face and buys What to Expect When You're Expecting. He holds the book gingerly, like it's contaminated somehow.
Dan is not totally opposed to the American Dream. It makes for good literature and it's a nice, hazy way to think about the future: girl you love, kids you love, a dog, a picket fence.
But this is too soon, and not right, and he keeps thinking of being sixteen years old and seeing a pregnancy test in his girlfriend's hand and how his very first thoughts had been that he loved her, and would support her, and they'd make it right, no matter what it took.
He keeps thinking of how he doesn't have any of those feelings now.
His phone buzzes one day and the text message reads: demand a paternity test, you absolute moron, or i will travel there and do it for you. xo - B.
He doesn't question how she knows. He doesn't question much of anything.
"Dude," Nate guffaws sympathetically, beer bottles littered around his feet as they stand on the roof. "You were going to play daddy to a Russian mobster's child."
"Thanks for the support, man."
Dan punches him - lightly, because his strength seems to fade more with every drink he takes - and looks out at the New York City skyline, out into a life of possibilities that does not include teenage parenting.
For the first time ever he thinks he's really capable of changing his life or changing this city or changing the world…but that might just be the relief and the Jagermeister talking.
iv.
He doesn't really think about it, that's how fast it happens.
Lily is all in a panic and Charles has been shot and his father says we're getting on a plane right now and then, Dan, want to come?
He'll never really know why he says yes.
He knocks on the doorframe. "Lily asked me…to sit with you," he explains awkwardly.
Chuck levels him with what looks like a half-hearted glare. "I'm not an invalid, Humphrey. I do not need to be sat with."
Dan shrugs and walks into the room, dropping into the semi-comfortable chair by Chuck's bed. "Hospital room, hospital bed, hospital gown…yeah, I think that makes you an invalid."
There are a few minutes of silence, during which Chuck glowers and shifts around self-consciously in his hospital gown. When Dan gets tired of watching him fidget, he opens his book and starts to read.
"So, I assume you came here expecting Serena."
"Did not," Dan replies evenly without looking up.
Chuck prods, "You must be so disappointed that my dear sister hasn't made an appearance."
He glances up from his book, honestly curious. "Are you disappointed that Serena hasn't shown up?"
"No."
"Are you disappointed Blair hasn't shown up?" He lets his book fall shut.
"No." The response is the exact same: unhurried, unbothered.
Dan grins a little. "Are you disappointed that I showed up?"
"Yes."
He laughs. "Seriously, about the girls - "
Chuck shrugs one shoulder. "I can only hope that they're bringing new meaning to the idea of gay Paris."
Dan's grin widens. It's kind of nice to know that some things can't be changed, not even by a bullet, even if one of those things is Chuck fucking Bass.
The first time he has sex with Chuck Bass, his first thought (when he can think coherently) is an embarrassingly girlish exclamation of, "You slept with my sister!"
Chuck smirks as he fastens his suspenders again - his pink suspenders. "Jealous, Humphrey?"
"Disgusted," Dan shoots back.
"The feeling's mutual."
So, he hooks up with Chuck Bass.
What happens in Prague fucking stays in Prague, okay.
(Well. Prague and the private jet they take back to Manhattan.
But seriously, that's it.)
v.
They lose his luggage.
The upbeat worker at Charles de Gaulle tells him, repeatedly that, ze very seconde that Dan's luggage shows up, he will be notified, ze very seconde, monsieur, je vous le promets.
Which is how he ends up lifting the ornate knocker on the door of a Parisian hotel room, his only possessions at the moment being the clothes he has on, his wallet, and the book he read on the plane.
"Humphrey," Blair sighs when she swings open the door. She's wearing a silky robe, loosely tied, and her hair is partially pulled back. She looks very pretty and European and adult, and Dan feels like a moron with no suitcase and the crappy novel he bought at the airport bookstore.
He nods. "Waldorf."
She turns and wanders back into the room, but she leaves the door open, so he takes it as a sign that he's permitted to follow.
Blair sits down at a vanity table, her eyes on her own reflection in the mirror as she lifts her hairbrush. "You're looking for Serena, I presume?"
"Uh, yeah." He looks around. There are no chairs, so he perches very awkwardly at the foot of her bed and does not touch anything.
She runs the brush slowly, methodically, through her hair as she tells him evenly: "She's in love - well she thinks she is, she's lusting after someone new this week. She's been drinking. And smoking. And forgetting to wash her hair." She glances at the ceiling and then says flatly, "She's going to run off within the next week, and the next time I hear from her it will be a request for me to be maid of honour at her first wedding. And I will say yes."
Dan gapes at her, at the ivory-coloured silk covering the delicate bones of her back and shoulders. "How do you…"
Her eyes clash with his in the mirror. "Nineteen years of experience." She smirks but it holds no humour. "You'll learn."
"What about…after that?"
"Maybe she'll go to Africa. Maybe she'll drink herself into a coma." Blair swivels around on the stool she's sitting on, and her robe falls open a bit, revealing a lacy black camisole. "I can't predict her every move."
He doesn't know what to say, so for a long time, they sit in silence. She crosses her legs and his eyes, unbidden, fall to the skin of her thighs.
"She won't really do all that."
Blair shrugs, and he notices for the first time that there is something raw and pulsing in her brown eyes - it throws him into the past, to a hallway and a lonely girl, to the girl who loved Chuck Bass but wasn't brave enough to say so.
Dan watches her carefully and he finally begins to understand.
"Well," he says, "what about you?"
He stays. He tells himself - and Blair - that he's just staying until they track down his luggage, and then he'll forget this whole pathetic trip and go home.
She stares at him, says, "Whatever," in the most flippant tone he's ever heard, and calls down to the reception desk, speaking perfect French as she books the room across the hall from hers for him.
"You didn't really mean that stuff, did you?"
He's sitting on her bed, a little more comfortably this time, flipping through channel after channel of French programming on the tv while Blair, sitting next to him in a silky red dress (all dressed up with no one to impress), paints her toenails a deep burgundy colour.
"What stuff?" she asks disdainfully.
"You know what stuff. The stuff about Serena."
Her shoulders tense up and her fingers freeze on the tiny bottle. "I did and I didn't." She sighs, and a little brokenly she adds, "I love her. And I want so badly for her to sort herself out, but…it can't be my job anymore. I'm tired. She's always been a wild child and I'm just…tired, of loving her but not being able to fix her."
Blair deposits her bare feet in his lap and sticks the nail polish into one of his hands. When she looks at him her eyes are gentle. "Surely you can understand that," she says softly.
"Do you think she'll come back?"
Blair's lips are stained red with wine (and Dan wonders how many bottles they've had now, two or maybe three) and her eyes flash in the candlelight.
"It's always about Serena with you, isn't it?"
"It's always about Serena with you," he bites back, defensive.
She breathes out a surprised laugh and her foot touches his, oh-so-briefly, beneath the table they're sharing.
"Look who's finally caught on," she praises him (mockingly).
There is a blackout.
The city is dark, full of shadows.
"Humphrey," Blair sighs when she opens the door of her room.
He kisses her first.
She presses a hand to his chest and he's sure that she'll push him away, but then her fingers wrap around the fabric of his shirt and she yanks him into the room, toward her bed.
vi.
It takes two days for him to figure out that Georgina Sparks is not pregnant with his child, and by the end of that forty-eight hours, he's just…tired.
It's summer, so the city is muggy, but he puts on his ugliest sweater anyway and mopes around for a while. He calls Nate and listens to him babble about soccer (uh huh, yeah - that's awesome, man). He e-mails Vanessa with what might be the world's longest and worst explanation (really sorry, please call). He texts Serena something lame (hope you're having a great time).
He's just tired. He's tired of being lied to.
Some way, somehow, with someone, it just has to be uncomplicated.
And he'll find it. He will.
vii.
He goes to Paris and declares his undying love for Serena.
Except, not really.
He gets there and he sees her, with Blair on the street, hats on over their shiny hair, arms linked, smiles relaxed and easy.
She's fine without him.
And what's more, he's fine without her.
They are finally over. To his surprise, it does not feel as tragic as he expected it to. It's like a satisfying ending to an addicting book.
Still, that doesn't mean he doesn't wish there was just one more chapter every now and again.
viii.
He goes to Hudson to spend the summer with his sister and his mom and the man who may as well be his stepfather.
Allison's overjoyed to have both her kids there, and Dan almost feels bad when he sees how happy she is - but then he remembers that she left, she moved on and away from their family. He resolves to be forgiving but not guilty.
He's never met Alex, but his impression of him (as the man his mother cheated with) is not really the best one. Alex makes good conversation at the dinner table, though, and he is respectful of Dan's space. He makes an effort but he doesn't go overboard. He offers to teach Dan to drive, buys him the Driver's Manual but does not volunteer to pay for his beginner's test - so it's a nice gesture without being a bribe.
And Jenny is Jenny again, less makeup and longer skirts and she's finally the same girl Dan used to grab onto to keep her from running out into traffic when they were really little kids. There are disadvantages to his little sister making a comeback, of course: she sneakily trades plates with him at dessert so that she gets the bigger piece of chocolate cake, she uses her old, rickety, loud sewing machine into all hours of the morning, and she almost always controls the TV viewing options.
(But Dan loves her likes this, when she's his baby sister, so much more than when she was all eyeliner and big black boots - so he lets her. He even tolerates the fact that she goes through this phase of addiction to Britney Spears music, similar to the one that lasted the whole eighth year of her life. He watches Crossroads with her. Twice. Because that is the kind of brother he is.)
Choosing to be in Hudson, to spend his nights watching TV with his family or writing out on the deck instead of taking the city by storm is lame, and he knows it.
But, whatever, it's one of the best summers of his life.
ix.
He hangs out with Nate a lot.
Nate is kind of…awesome. He just is; there's no way to avoid it and no way for Dan to avoid loving it.
He has total disregard for all the things Dan used to find impossibly impressive, like limo drivers at his disposal and AmEx Black Cards sitting pretty in his wallet, and how spilling iced coffee on his cashmere-from-Kashmir sweater is totally no big deal because he has about twelve more.
And then he's totally wowed by all the things Dan thinks are normal, like how you can play Scattergories and drink really cheap vodka on Saturday nights instead of attending a gala, and how it is possible to make your own food (it's just a lot of work sometimes) and how you can buy perfectly good soccer cleats from less than what Nate has always been accustomed to paying.
It's fun, watching the way their worlds mesh carefully together.
Plus it's easy, so long as they ignore the part of that won't mesh - the part where they could both say, so you know your (ex) girlfriend? I love her.
Summer flies by, a blur of soccer games in Central Park and joints shared on Dan's fire escape. They talk about the future sometimes - about classes next year and jobs a few years after, and Dan likes the way Nate phrases it all; you're totally coming to Connecticut for Christmas and if I decide to leave the city you totally gotta come visit me, like Dan is a permanent part of the rest of his life.
But a heat wave hits right at the beginning of September, hellish heat that engulfs the city with no sign of mercy, and Serena comes back (so you know your girlfriend? I love her).
She's got flushed cheeks and messy hair and she says, "I just…I needed some time. I wanted to make sure that…I felt the same. And that…" Her breath catches. "That you felt the same."
Honest, needing eyes and hesitant posture; she's in love and it's hurting her, he knows it, he's seen it before.
She's not talking to him, though.
He listens to the tender way Nate says her name, full of the same sort of ache, and then the subsequent murmurs that get caught between kisses.
Dan stands in the other room feeling like an idiot.
Like an interruption.
x.
He writes a book.
An honest-to-good book, with over five hundred pages and chapters and metaphors and what he thinks is pretty good characterization. And he's grown up quite a bit over these last few years, is mature enough now that he does not name characters Charlie Trout or make the title the date of an important day in a year.
It is not about anyone else. For some reason whenever he dreams about cover art, he thinks of blonde hair and Grand Central Station, so maybe to a certain degree it is about Serena. The heroine is a pretty girl who refuses to be weak and tries her hardest to avoid being caught without the upper hand, even when her whole world is falling apart, so he supposes that in a sense it is about Blair. The protagonist has two best friends, one female and one male, whom he loves equally but in different ways, and whom he engages in whirlwind relationships with before they end up dating each other - shades of Nate and Vanessa. There is a younger sister, and she loses her way sometimes. Dan's antagonist character is eccentric and elitist; whether or not he has a soul beneath his outward appearance is still questionable.
In a way, it is about everyone and everything that Dan has experienced since Serena van der Woodsen ran into him drunkenly three years ago.
Mostly, however, it's about him.
And that's probably how it should be.
fin