188. left hook (1/10)
Title | left hook
Chapter | one
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Dan + Blair. Serena, Nate, Eric, Jenny.
Summary | Also known as the Blair Is From Brooklyn and Dan is a WASP-y Rich Kid AU.
blow by blow, i didn't see it coming
blow by blow, sucker punch.
(feel it in my bones, tegan and sara)
Dan thinks about the civil war in the shower. He mumbles dates and names under his breath as he shampoos his hair, grudgingly dedicated to memorizing them all. He needs to ace his AP American History test. Yale will notice if he starts slacking off just after he's sent his application in. He's been obsessive about making a good impression - his mother graduated summa cum laude.
The water becomes scalding hot abruptly and he hisses, "Fuck," as he darts out of the spray and pokes his head out around the shower curtain. He glares. "Serena - "
She blinks at him innocently from where she's sitting on the counter, running cold water into the sink. "Oops," she says simply.
He swipes suds of shampoo off the side of his face. "You have your own bathroom."
"But I like yours better. Listen - "
"No," he says, cutting her off.
She pouts. "But - "
He sighs, leaning his head against the tiled wall. "Let me guess. Lily wants to play family today."
"She's down there at the table just waiting. It's like she knows."
Dan gives her a look. "You're not exactly subtle."
Serena crosses her arms. "Do you want your best friend to jump out a fifth-story window? Because that's the only plan I hav eto get him out of here."
He groans, shampoo suds sliding down the side of his face. "Give me a minute."
"Thank you," Serena says, hopping off the counter and leaving the room.
Dan sighs, rinsing off quickly and stepping out of the shower. It takes five minutes to dry off and slip into his boxers and pants; he buttons his shirt on the way down the hall to Serena's room.
Her room is a mess, as it's always been, clothes and shoes scattered everywhere. She's laying on her stomach on her bed, laughing at something; Nate's on his side next to her in a wrinkled school uniform. He sees Dan first.
"Hey, man," he says with that boyish, charming grin of his.
"Hey," Dan says.
Serena turns to look at him, one eyebrow raised expectantly.
"I'll distract them by talking about Yale," Dan says on a sigh. "Lily'll launch into her Harvard endorsement and Dad will make that face he makes every time Mom comes up in conversation and try to distract himself. You sneak Nate to the elevator and then come in, tell Dad his cooking's still better than the chef's, diffuse the tension."
Serena smiles softly. "Thanks, Dan."
"You owe me," he says, smiling back.
"I always do."
Nate stands, giving Serena's ankle a light tug. "C'mon, babe, I've got to get home before my mom notices."
"Right," she sighs, getting up too. "Lead the way," she tells Dan.
Breakfast passes quickly - Rufus reminds Jenny about her appointment with her new tutor after school, Lily comments that Serena should brush her hair before she leaves, and then they retreat to their newspaper and dayplanner, respectively. Dan eats an egg, half a piece of toast, and a bowl of yoghurt and fruit before Eric reminds them that they need to leave or they'll be late for school.
They pile into the limo as they always do. Serena slide over to the corner and flips open her compact to do her makeup, rifling through the collection of little tubes and pencils and palettes that have ended up in the limo over the years. Jenny sits next to her, slumping on the seat, her bottom lip poking out.
"It's completely unfair," she says, glancing over at Serena. "We're supposed to go shopping today."
"Tutoring's going to be like an hour, Jen," Serena says, a smile in her voice as she puts on eyeliner. "We can go to Bendel's after dinner."
Jenny's clearly unsatisfied with that answer, and she turns to look at Dan, turning on her little-sister pout. "Why can't you just tutor me?"
"Oh, no," Dan laughs. "No way. I'm not taking on that responsibility. You'd con me out of it somehow. Or just not listen to me."
"But - "
"They just don't want you to end up like me," Serena says lightly, "With zero college prospects."
"You'll get into Brown," Eric points out. "There's no way you won't."
"I don't even want to go to college," Jenny huffs.
Serena smiles softly, sliding Eric a look. "Exactly," she says wryly.
"This is so unfair," Jenny huffs.
Dan ruffles her hair, smiling to himself when that makes her frown. "You'll survive, Jen."
The limo pulls up to the curb in front of their schools and they all step out. Nate's already standing on the steps amidst their group of friends, smoking a joint, his tie lose around his neck. Serena heads straight for him, skirt swinging with every step, Jenny on her heels; the girls fall into rank around Serena and Jenny slips among them. Eric waves and goes off to meet his boyfriend. Nelly, Dan's on-and-off girlfriend since the sixth grade, waves him over, and Dan jogs up the steps to join them.
"Let's skip," Nate says at lunch. They're sitting alone; Serena's holding court over the girls, Jenny and Nelly among them.
Dan smiles, taking a long drink from his extra-large cup of coffee. "Ivy escort interviews are this afternoon, remember?"
"Fuck," Nate sighs. "Right. I have to get that Dartmouth spot or my dad'll kill me."
Dan nods. "Dad and Lily have been pushing Serena and I toward Brown and Harvard all week."
"But you're going for Yale, right?"
"Yes," Dan says definitively. "Of course."
Nate laughs a little, wryly, shaking his head. "College," he mutters. "What a pain."
"Still not interested, huh?" Dan asks, almost fondly.
Nate shakes his head. "Serena and I are going to go to California."
Dan's eyebrows lift. "What?"
"Oh - " Nate looks suddenly sheepish. "We weren't going to tell anyone yet."
"You're going to move to California?"
He nods. "She'll get work there so easily - modelling or acting, whatever. And I'll find some job to do on the water, sailing or lifeguarding or something."
"No college?"
"No." Nate shrugs. "Neither of us want that. What's the point?"
Dan's eyebrows rise again. "Your parents are going to freak out."
"Yeah." Nate half-smiles. "I know. But Serena has her trust fund from Cece and I think my mom'll come around."
"How do you figure that?"
Nate shrugs again, too casual for it to seem natural. "I'm going to ask her to marry me."
Dan stares at him.
"Not, like, now," Nate adds hurriedly. "Definitely not before graduation. But I'm going to do it. Someday."
"You're seventeen."
"Yeah, I know," Nate laughs. "I know how old I am. But I love her. We've been together since we were twelve."
Dan hesitates, not wanting to point out all the ups and downs there have been since then, all the nights he's dragged a drunken Serena home and listen to her cry about Nate.
"I love her," Nate says again, in response to Dan's silence. "I'm not going to love anyone else."
Nate sounds more serious about this than he ever sounds about anything and Dan can't quite help a small smile. "Is this the moment when I have to tell you that if you break her heart I'll break your leg? Because we both know you could take me so that won't work out too well. I'd have to hire a hitman."
Nate smiles back but his eyes stay uncharacteristically serious. "I won't break her heart."
"Yeah," Dan says, thinking of Serena's tendency to bolt. "I know."
"Don't tell her. Don't tell anybody, especially not Jenny."
Dan chuckles. "Don't worry, I learned not to tell Jenny secrets after that time she tattled on us when we were ten."
Nate grins, ducking his head as he nods a little.
"Do I get to be your best man?" Dan teases.
Nate laughs. "Shut up."
"I'm going to take that as a yes."
Grinning again, Nate says, "Of course you are."
Dan's Ivy interview goes well. He's never been the best at interviews - he gets nervous, he gets sarcastic, he says the wrong things at the wrong times. But this interview is with the headmaster, who's known him since he was five, knows his record at the school, knows that he's a Yale legacy, and it goes fairly smoothly. He leaves feeling fairly confident and then all he can do is sit through his last two classes, guzzling coffee nervously.
Nate catches up with him in the hallway at the end of the day, looking as though he doesn't have a care in the world. "Moment of truth, huh?"
"Yes," Dan says. "Please, try and look less nervous."
Nate grins, nudging him. "You'll get it."
There's a small crowd in front of the board where important school announcements are posted, including the list of Ivy Mixer escorts. Dan waits until it clears a bit to go and look. Unsurprisingly, Nathaniel Archibald is written next to Dartmouth, but it says Penelope Shafai instead of Serena van der Woodsen next to Brown. He looks down the list further and releases a relieved breath when he sees Daniel Humphrey written neatly across from Yale.
He turns around to tell Nate and ends up looking directly into the frowning face of a girl. Her brown hair is pushed back from her face with a headband and she looks thoroughly impressed when their eyes meet.
"Of course," she says dryly.
Dan's eyebrows furrow. "Excuse me?"
"I said of course," she repeats, enunciating clearly. "If I'd known you were interviewing for the Yale position, I wouldn't have bothered."
Dan bristles a bit. "They made the choices based on our interviews," he points out.
She rolls her eyes. "Please. They made the choice based on your daddy's money," she says scathingly. "Perfectly fair."
"That's not - "
"Nate Archibald got a position," she says dryly. "Don't stand there and tell me it's not true."
"I'm not Nate."
"You're Nate-lite. A little less handsome, a little less popular." Her nostrils flare slightly. "You're all the same."
"You guys are in the way," Anthony interrupts, lacrosse stick resting against his shoulder. He gives the girl a quick once-over and makes a face of vague approval.
"I was just leaving," Dan says.
She scoffs, turning on her heel. "Me too."
Dan stares after her, completely baffled, until Nate nudges him. "Hey, how'd it turn out?"
Dan snaps out of her reverie, glancing at Nate. "Uh - " He smiles. "I got it."
"That's awesome."
"Yeah. You got it, too."
Nate makes a face, laughing. "Less awesome."
"It'll get your dad off your back," Dan offers, putting the girl who'd scoffed in his face out of his mind.
"Yeah, if I impress the guy." Nate sighs. "I have lacrosse, I'll see you later?"
"Yeah," Dan nods, glancing down the hall again in spite of himself. It's empty. "See you later."
Dan wanders around for a while after school, smoking. He plays soccer to round out his extracurriculars but he's never really been athletically inclined, so he's only busy with sports for half of the school year, whereas Nate is playing some sport on nearly every afternoon of the year. Dan ends up, as he usually does when he has nothing important to do, in his favourite coffee shop, scribbling in a moleskin notebook.
Three cups of coffee later he doesn't have much to do but go home. Nelly texts him to tell him that she got the escort position for the rep from Princeton, and he texts back his congratulations, half-smiling. Of course Nelly would get a position even though she has no intention of staying in the country for college - it was part of the reason they broke up. She'll go to La Sorbonne in the fall and Dan will go to Yale; there will be no point in even attempting a long-distance relationship. It had started to feel a bit too set in stone after a while, the potential of their future: they would fly across the Atlantic to keep together, excel in their fields, they would both become academics, their children would be cello and piano and literary prodigies. Dan likes Nelly well enough, and he'd dated her because he'd recognized their compatibility, not necessarily because he wanted the future her parents seemed to envision for them.
He gets back to the penthouse prior to the official dinner time of six-thirty, though family dinners are always an unachieved goal, Lily's attempt to make them think they're some sort of nuclear, perfect example for the world. If two of them make it to the table at once each night, it's enough.
Jenny's in the dining room; he can hear her laugh drifting out. He thinks she should probably be with her tutor and probably not talking about the dress she's going to wear to the party Serena's throwing that weekend, so he goes in to investigate.
It turns out that Serena's at the table too, sitting on one of the chairs with her legs tugged up, smiling that easy smile of hers - and so is the girl Dan almost ran into in the hallway earlier, her hair pulled back into a ponytail now, textbooks spread in front of her.
"Hey, Dan," Jenny greets him.
"Hey," he says.
"This is Blair," Jenny introduces, nodding to the girl from school.
"We've met," Blair says dryly, tapping at the textbook with the end of her pencil.
"Briefly," Dan says, just as dryly.
Serena glances back and forth between them, lifts both eyebrows at Dan.
"Blair wants to go to Yale," he explains.
"Oh," Serena says. "That's great."
Blair nods. "If I get in."
Dan frowns. "I didn't take your spot," he tells her. "Stop acting like I did. I just got the escort position."
"Which could have been my ticket to a scholarship," she says.
Dan opens his mouth to object but Jenny beats him to it, rolling her eyes, "Ignore my brother, he's obsessed with Yale. Our mom went there."
One of Blair's eyebrows lifts minutely. "So did my dad."
"Would you look at that," Serena says, shooting Dan a be nice look.
He makes a face at her. "If you're a legacy then - " he starts, looking back at Blair.
"Oh my god, stop talking about college," Serena interrupts.
"Yes," Jenny jumps in. "Let's talk about the party this weekend."
Blair slides the textbook across the table toward Jenny. "Or, trigonometry."
Jenny gives her a sunny, beguiling smile. "You'll come, right? To the party?"
Blair's lips pinch together for a beat and then she asks, in the voice of someone who's getting paid to be there, "What party?"
"It's technically a fundraiser," Serena says. "For sloths. But it's going to be amazing. Everyone's going; it's this Friday night."
"You have to come," Jenny says brightly.
Blair gives her a look that's half-amused, half-condescending. "My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail."
Serena smiles. "Nope, you're just getting the in-person invite." She wiggles her eyebrows. "VIPs only."
Blair is saved from answering by Nate, who comes in at that moment, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, hair stuck to his forehead by perspiration. "Hey," he says.
"Hi, Nate," Jenny says. "This is Blair."
"Hey, Blair," he says, flashing her a polite-but-genuine grin as he leans down to wrap his arms around Serena from behind, smacking a kiss against her cheek.
"Natie!" she laughs. "You're sweaty."
He kisses the corner of her mouth. "I need a shower."
"Do you not have those at your house?" she teases.
Nate's mouth drops to her neck. "Not ones with you in them."
"Guys," Dan groans, and Jenny makes several obligatory gagging noises.
"Calm down," Nate says, still smiling as he scoops Serena up out of her chair. "We're leaving."
"You're such an idiot," Serena tells Nate, giggling, and he whispers something back to her that the rest of them can't hear, heading for the stairs.
Jenny watches them with narrowed eyes. "They better stay out of my bathroom."
"There are no guarantees, Jen," Dan sighs, dropping down into the seat Serena was in previously. "No guarantees."
Blair looks at the staircase for an extra beat and then taps her perfectly sharpened pencil against the textbook. "Trigonometry," she tells Jenny firmly.
"Will you come to the party?" Jenny asks, ignoring the book.
"Jen," Dan says lightly, pointedly, taking his own textbooks out and opening them.
She makes a huffy sound and turns her attention the math problems. "Fine."
Blair's gaze slides toward Dan's for a moment and their eyes meet; it's not a thank-you look by any means but it's something a little gentler than the hardness that was there in the hallway earlier, so he just gives her a little nod and then turns back to his Latin homework.
Fridays of senior year tends to be a joke day at school. Serena skips the whole day, Nate skips the afternoon, and Dan ends up eating lunch in the courtyard with Nelly, listening to her talk about Paris, amazed at all her certainty about what she wants.
He arrives home to find Jenny and Serena in the hallway all of their bedrooms open off of, Jenny in her school skirt and a barely-there camisole, Serena in a slip, arguing about outfits. He waves both hands in front of his face, says, "Clothes, people."
Eric, who's leaning against one wall, attempting to mediate, half-smirks.
"Oh my god, Dan, grow up," Jenny says.
"No," he says, holding a hand directly in front of his eyes. "No growing up. You're eight. Go put some clothes on."
"Serena won't let me - "
"Talk about it with clothes!" he interrupts. "You're a baby," he tells Jenny. "And you - "
Serena crosses her arms under her breasts and tilts her head slightly, all the time in the world.
Have boobs is the first thing that pops into Dan's head but obviously not the first thing that he can say; he had a massive crush on Serena in kindergarten, back before their parents got together, and it has reared its ugly, inappropriate head every once and a while since they hit puberty. "Clothing," is all he can manage. "I am your older brother - "
"Oh, please," Serena and Jenny say in tandem, voices dripping sarcasm, but they both turn around and storm back into their rooms.
Eric laughs, still leaning against the wall. "Very smooth," he tells Dan. "Very collected."
"How would they like it if I walked around naked in the hallway?" Dan grumbles, heading for his room, and from behind Jenny's door he hears her yell, ew! "Exactly!" he responds, directing his voice toward her door.
Serena pokes her head out of her room. "Take it off, Humphrey," she teases, one eyebrow raised in that challenging way of hers.
Dan turns around to look at her. "I will tell Dad about Nate staying here," he begins.
"You're so boring," Serena says, retreating back into her room.
Eric trails Dan into his room. "What time are people coming over?" he asks.
"Around six, I think," Dan says, tugging his tie off. "We'll have to wait a couple hours for the girls to finish getting ready. Even though they've apparently already started."
Eric shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "Can Jonathon come?"
Dan smiles at him. "Of course."
Eric smiles back. "Okay, cool." He nods a little and then turns to go.
"Hey, Eric?" Dan says.
Eric turns. "Yeah?"
"You're my favourite sibling."
Eric grins, rolling his eyes. "It's not like you have much choice."
"I heard that!" Serena calls.
"That should give you an idea of what I hear in the middle of the night!" Dan yells back. "Jesus, can't we afford some sound-proofing?" he grumbles, flopping down onto his bed as Jenny and Serena start to fight over something new.
Lily and Rufus leave early for dinner before the benefit, just in time for all of their friends to invade the penthouse. The boys hot-box the guest bathroom and drink nearly all of Rufus' whiskey, watching several sports games at once on split-screen and hollering at the girls whenever one of them appears downstairs.
Dan starts to lose his patience around seven-thirty and he goes upstairs, heading for Serena's door. "We were supposed to be there at seven," he reminds her. "You realize this is basically your party - " he adds as he opens the door and then stops short.
Blair is standing in the middle of Serena's room in a dark blue dress, the back of it still unzipped, revealing the pale skin of her back, the absence of a bra. She whirls on him when the door opens, brows knit in a frown. "Didn't they teach you to knock at finishing school?" she snaps.
"Dan," Jenny says, popping out of Serena's closet before he can reply. "Don't be a perv."
Serena follows Jenny out. "Look who we convinced to come!" she says as Jenny steps behind Blair, zipping up her dress and starting to do something elaborate with pins in her hair.
"Strong-armed," Blair corrects, not looking at him.
"Which ones?" Serena asks Dan, holding out two pairs of Jenny's heels.
"I'm not Eric," he reminds her.
"Doesn't mean you can't make yourself useful."
"Uh - " He points to the black pair and Serena sets them down in front of Blair's feet.
"You need a clutch," she muses, retreating to her closet again.
Dan tugs at his tie. "We were supposed to leave half an hour ago," he points out, again.
"Calm down," Jenny says, a bobby pin between her teeth. "The party won't start without us."
"Just - " Dan glances away from Jenny and finds himself looking at Blair, who's studying her reflection critically in the mirror. "Hurry up."
The party goes off without a hitch, champagne flowing, everyone dancing, Serena a radiant hostess, almost living up to Lily's impossibly high standards for once. Things start to quiet down around two, when the drunkest people have gone home and couples have found semi-private corners to make out in, the DJ playing quieter songs.
Dan loosens his tie, letting it hang around his neck, scanning the room. Jenny's sitting at the table, legs tucked up beneath her, giggling with her friends. Eric and his boyfriend are at the next table over, sharing the same cup of coffee. Serena and Nate are on the dance floor, noses close, her arms wrapped around his neck, her heels dangling by their straps from her fingertips.
Everyone's present and accounted for so Dan digs out his pack of cigarettes and heads outside, closing his lips around one as he fishes for his lighter. He's heading for a slightly closed-off stone bench, his favourite place to smoke when he needs a break at this venue, and he comes to a stop when he finds Blair sitting there, legs crossed neatly and a book open on her lap.
"Hey," he says, for lack of a better greeting.
She looks up, clearly startled, but she recovers quickly. "Hi."
"What are you doing out here?" he asks.
"I got tired of being in there."
He smiles. "That's a good reason," he says, and then gestures to the space next to her, a wordless question.
She nods.
Dan lights his cigarette and takes a long drag, blowing out smoke slowly, watching it disappear into the air. "What are you reading?" he asks.
She flips the book closed so that he can see the cover; Persuasion.
"Ah," he says. "Figures you'd be an Austen girl."
Her eyebrows lift. "Figures?" she repeats.
"You have that look."
Her eyebrows rise higher, somehow. "Oh, and what's your look?"
He blows out more smoke. "Hemingway."
Blair's shoulders lift slightly in a stifled laugh. "Hemingway," she repeats.
"You sound sceptical."
"I pegged you as Virgina Woolf."
Dan frowns, unsure how to interpret that. "No, you didn't."
She looks at him for a moment and then admits. "No, I didn't. Salinger, maybe."
Dan makes a face. "Cliché."
"For a reason."
He studies her for a moment. "What do you think Serena is?" he asks curiously.
"Fitzgerald," she says, in the tone of duh.
Dan's vaguely impressed. "Good eye."
Blair shrugs, not quite modest.
"What about Jenny?"
Blair considers. "I don't know."
Dan's quiet for a beat and then he divulges, "Neither do I."
That surprises a small smile out of her. "What about Nate?" she asks.
"Kerouac," Dan says right away. "If he'd bother."
Blair nods slowly at that and then laughs, almost to herself. "I really used to like him," she says, suppressing a little shiver when the wind picks up.
"Nate?"
She nods. "When we were younger, everyone invited everyone to their birthday parties, do you remember that? I guess their parents made them do it. So I went, once. To…Nelly's party, I think. And I saw Nate, and I thought - I thought he was handsome, I guess. He got me a drink. Very polite."
"You liked Nate," Dan repeats, surprised.
"I hardly knew him," she says. "And of course the next Monday at school, he and Serena -"
"Yeah," Dan says. "That's…been around for a while." He thinks of kindergarten class, Nate pulling Serena's pigtails; he thinks of Nate, serious-eyed, I'm going to ask her to marry me.
"They seem happy."
Dan smiles, and finds himself teasing, "You liked Nate."
Blair frowns at him, but her eyes still have a little sparkle. "For a weekend." She's quiet for a moment, frown easing. "That's a cliché too, isn't it? The Austen girl liking the Kerouac boy."
"Ah," Dan says. "So you are an Austen girl."
"An Austen girl who wants to go to Yale," she says pointedly.
He can't help but smile. "I'm not just going because I'm some rich kid," he tells her. "It's more than that."
"It's more than that," she repeats, clearly not believing him.
He nods. "My, uh…my mom went there. We haven't talked much since she left my dad; she lives in Paris now. But when we were younger, we always talked about it. Yale for me, like it was Yale for her."
Blair looks at him for a long moment, and then says softly, "I've been sleeping in my father's Yale sweatshirt since I was three. It was always…Yale for me, like it was for him. My mother moved to Paris, too."
"Why?" Dan asks, seeming to startle them both with the sudden question.
"My father - " She looks at him, suddenly cautious, shivering again. "I don't even know you."
"No," he says. "I guess you don't." He lights another cigarette. "My mother wanted to be an artist."
"And?"
Dan offers her a cigarette. "And my father loved someone else."
She takes one, holding it between two fingers. "I've never smoked before."
"Dan," someone calls in the distance, sounding like either Penelope or Nelly, voice giggly and drunk. "Daaaaan."
He stands from the bench slowly. "Hang onto that," he tells Blair with a little shrug. "You might want to learn something someday." He shrugs off his suit jacket and hands it to her.
She takes it slowly, seeming unsure.
"I'll see you," he tells her. "Tutoring Jen or whatever."
Blair nods, holding his jacket stiffly, but it's not quite resting in her lap, so he knows she'll put it on. "Goodnight, Humphrey," she says quietly.
"Goodnight," he says, and then hesitates, realizing abruptly that he has no idea what her full name is.
"Waldorf," she supplies.
He nods, and around a new cigarette, says, "Goodnight, Waldorf."
tbc.
Chapter | one
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Dan + Blair. Serena, Nate, Eric, Jenny.
Summary | Also known as the Blair Is From Brooklyn and Dan is a WASP-y Rich Kid AU.
blow by blow, i didn't see it coming
blow by blow, sucker punch.
(feel it in my bones, tegan and sara)
Dan thinks about the civil war in the shower. He mumbles dates and names under his breath as he shampoos his hair, grudgingly dedicated to memorizing them all. He needs to ace his AP American History test. Yale will notice if he starts slacking off just after he's sent his application in. He's been obsessive about making a good impression - his mother graduated summa cum laude.
The water becomes scalding hot abruptly and he hisses, "Fuck," as he darts out of the spray and pokes his head out around the shower curtain. He glares. "Serena - "
She blinks at him innocently from where she's sitting on the counter, running cold water into the sink. "Oops," she says simply.
He swipes suds of shampoo off the side of his face. "You have your own bathroom."
"But I like yours better. Listen - "
"No," he says, cutting her off.
She pouts. "But - "
He sighs, leaning his head against the tiled wall. "Let me guess. Lily wants to play family today."
"She's down there at the table just waiting. It's like she knows."
Dan gives her a look. "You're not exactly subtle."
Serena crosses her arms. "Do you want your best friend to jump out a fifth-story window? Because that's the only plan I hav eto get him out of here."
He groans, shampoo suds sliding down the side of his face. "Give me a minute."
"Thank you," Serena says, hopping off the counter and leaving the room.
Dan sighs, rinsing off quickly and stepping out of the shower. It takes five minutes to dry off and slip into his boxers and pants; he buttons his shirt on the way down the hall to Serena's room.
Her room is a mess, as it's always been, clothes and shoes scattered everywhere. She's laying on her stomach on her bed, laughing at something; Nate's on his side next to her in a wrinkled school uniform. He sees Dan first.
"Hey, man," he says with that boyish, charming grin of his.
"Hey," Dan says.
Serena turns to look at him, one eyebrow raised expectantly.
"I'll distract them by talking about Yale," Dan says on a sigh. "Lily'll launch into her Harvard endorsement and Dad will make that face he makes every time Mom comes up in conversation and try to distract himself. You sneak Nate to the elevator and then come in, tell Dad his cooking's still better than the chef's, diffuse the tension."
Serena smiles softly. "Thanks, Dan."
"You owe me," he says, smiling back.
"I always do."
Nate stands, giving Serena's ankle a light tug. "C'mon, babe, I've got to get home before my mom notices."
"Right," she sighs, getting up too. "Lead the way," she tells Dan.
Breakfast passes quickly - Rufus reminds Jenny about her appointment with her new tutor after school, Lily comments that Serena should brush her hair before she leaves, and then they retreat to their newspaper and dayplanner, respectively. Dan eats an egg, half a piece of toast, and a bowl of yoghurt and fruit before Eric reminds them that they need to leave or they'll be late for school.
They pile into the limo as they always do. Serena slide over to the corner and flips open her compact to do her makeup, rifling through the collection of little tubes and pencils and palettes that have ended up in the limo over the years. Jenny sits next to her, slumping on the seat, her bottom lip poking out.
"It's completely unfair," she says, glancing over at Serena. "We're supposed to go shopping today."
"Tutoring's going to be like an hour, Jen," Serena says, a smile in her voice as she puts on eyeliner. "We can go to Bendel's after dinner."
Jenny's clearly unsatisfied with that answer, and she turns to look at Dan, turning on her little-sister pout. "Why can't you just tutor me?"
"Oh, no," Dan laughs. "No way. I'm not taking on that responsibility. You'd con me out of it somehow. Or just not listen to me."
"But - "
"They just don't want you to end up like me," Serena says lightly, "With zero college prospects."
"You'll get into Brown," Eric points out. "There's no way you won't."
"I don't even want to go to college," Jenny huffs.
Serena smiles softly, sliding Eric a look. "Exactly," she says wryly.
"This is so unfair," Jenny huffs.
Dan ruffles her hair, smiling to himself when that makes her frown. "You'll survive, Jen."
The limo pulls up to the curb in front of their schools and they all step out. Nate's already standing on the steps amidst their group of friends, smoking a joint, his tie lose around his neck. Serena heads straight for him, skirt swinging with every step, Jenny on her heels; the girls fall into rank around Serena and Jenny slips among them. Eric waves and goes off to meet his boyfriend. Nelly, Dan's on-and-off girlfriend since the sixth grade, waves him over, and Dan jogs up the steps to join them.
"Let's skip," Nate says at lunch. They're sitting alone; Serena's holding court over the girls, Jenny and Nelly among them.
Dan smiles, taking a long drink from his extra-large cup of coffee. "Ivy escort interviews are this afternoon, remember?"
"Fuck," Nate sighs. "Right. I have to get that Dartmouth spot or my dad'll kill me."
Dan nods. "Dad and Lily have been pushing Serena and I toward Brown and Harvard all week."
"But you're going for Yale, right?"
"Yes," Dan says definitively. "Of course."
Nate laughs a little, wryly, shaking his head. "College," he mutters. "What a pain."
"Still not interested, huh?" Dan asks, almost fondly.
Nate shakes his head. "Serena and I are going to go to California."
Dan's eyebrows lift. "What?"
"Oh - " Nate looks suddenly sheepish. "We weren't going to tell anyone yet."
"You're going to move to California?"
He nods. "She'll get work there so easily - modelling or acting, whatever. And I'll find some job to do on the water, sailing or lifeguarding or something."
"No college?"
"No." Nate shrugs. "Neither of us want that. What's the point?"
Dan's eyebrows rise again. "Your parents are going to freak out."
"Yeah." Nate half-smiles. "I know. But Serena has her trust fund from Cece and I think my mom'll come around."
"How do you figure that?"
Nate shrugs again, too casual for it to seem natural. "I'm going to ask her to marry me."
Dan stares at him.
"Not, like, now," Nate adds hurriedly. "Definitely not before graduation. But I'm going to do it. Someday."
"You're seventeen."
"Yeah, I know," Nate laughs. "I know how old I am. But I love her. We've been together since we were twelve."
Dan hesitates, not wanting to point out all the ups and downs there have been since then, all the nights he's dragged a drunken Serena home and listen to her cry about Nate.
"I love her," Nate says again, in response to Dan's silence. "I'm not going to love anyone else."
Nate sounds more serious about this than he ever sounds about anything and Dan can't quite help a small smile. "Is this the moment when I have to tell you that if you break her heart I'll break your leg? Because we both know you could take me so that won't work out too well. I'd have to hire a hitman."
Nate smiles back but his eyes stay uncharacteristically serious. "I won't break her heart."
"Yeah," Dan says, thinking of Serena's tendency to bolt. "I know."
"Don't tell her. Don't tell anybody, especially not Jenny."
Dan chuckles. "Don't worry, I learned not to tell Jenny secrets after that time she tattled on us when we were ten."
Nate grins, ducking his head as he nods a little.
"Do I get to be your best man?" Dan teases.
Nate laughs. "Shut up."
"I'm going to take that as a yes."
Grinning again, Nate says, "Of course you are."
Dan's Ivy interview goes well. He's never been the best at interviews - he gets nervous, he gets sarcastic, he says the wrong things at the wrong times. But this interview is with the headmaster, who's known him since he was five, knows his record at the school, knows that he's a Yale legacy, and it goes fairly smoothly. He leaves feeling fairly confident and then all he can do is sit through his last two classes, guzzling coffee nervously.
Nate catches up with him in the hallway at the end of the day, looking as though he doesn't have a care in the world. "Moment of truth, huh?"
"Yes," Dan says. "Please, try and look less nervous."
Nate grins, nudging him. "You'll get it."
There's a small crowd in front of the board where important school announcements are posted, including the list of Ivy Mixer escorts. Dan waits until it clears a bit to go and look. Unsurprisingly, Nathaniel Archibald is written next to Dartmouth, but it says Penelope Shafai instead of Serena van der Woodsen next to Brown. He looks down the list further and releases a relieved breath when he sees Daniel Humphrey written neatly across from Yale.
He turns around to tell Nate and ends up looking directly into the frowning face of a girl. Her brown hair is pushed back from her face with a headband and she looks thoroughly impressed when their eyes meet.
"Of course," she says dryly.
Dan's eyebrows furrow. "Excuse me?"
"I said of course," she repeats, enunciating clearly. "If I'd known you were interviewing for the Yale position, I wouldn't have bothered."
Dan bristles a bit. "They made the choices based on our interviews," he points out.
She rolls her eyes. "Please. They made the choice based on your daddy's money," she says scathingly. "Perfectly fair."
"That's not - "
"Nate Archibald got a position," she says dryly. "Don't stand there and tell me it's not true."
"I'm not Nate."
"You're Nate-lite. A little less handsome, a little less popular." Her nostrils flare slightly. "You're all the same."
"You guys are in the way," Anthony interrupts, lacrosse stick resting against his shoulder. He gives the girl a quick once-over and makes a face of vague approval.
"I was just leaving," Dan says.
She scoffs, turning on her heel. "Me too."
Dan stares after her, completely baffled, until Nate nudges him. "Hey, how'd it turn out?"
Dan snaps out of her reverie, glancing at Nate. "Uh - " He smiles. "I got it."
"That's awesome."
"Yeah. You got it, too."
Nate makes a face, laughing. "Less awesome."
"It'll get your dad off your back," Dan offers, putting the girl who'd scoffed in his face out of his mind.
"Yeah, if I impress the guy." Nate sighs. "I have lacrosse, I'll see you later?"
"Yeah," Dan nods, glancing down the hall again in spite of himself. It's empty. "See you later."
Dan wanders around for a while after school, smoking. He plays soccer to round out his extracurriculars but he's never really been athletically inclined, so he's only busy with sports for half of the school year, whereas Nate is playing some sport on nearly every afternoon of the year. Dan ends up, as he usually does when he has nothing important to do, in his favourite coffee shop, scribbling in a moleskin notebook.
Three cups of coffee later he doesn't have much to do but go home. Nelly texts him to tell him that she got the escort position for the rep from Princeton, and he texts back his congratulations, half-smiling. Of course Nelly would get a position even though she has no intention of staying in the country for college - it was part of the reason they broke up. She'll go to La Sorbonne in the fall and Dan will go to Yale; there will be no point in even attempting a long-distance relationship. It had started to feel a bit too set in stone after a while, the potential of their future: they would fly across the Atlantic to keep together, excel in their fields, they would both become academics, their children would be cello and piano and literary prodigies. Dan likes Nelly well enough, and he'd dated her because he'd recognized their compatibility, not necessarily because he wanted the future her parents seemed to envision for them.
He gets back to the penthouse prior to the official dinner time of six-thirty, though family dinners are always an unachieved goal, Lily's attempt to make them think they're some sort of nuclear, perfect example for the world. If two of them make it to the table at once each night, it's enough.
Jenny's in the dining room; he can hear her laugh drifting out. He thinks she should probably be with her tutor and probably not talking about the dress she's going to wear to the party Serena's throwing that weekend, so he goes in to investigate.
It turns out that Serena's at the table too, sitting on one of the chairs with her legs tugged up, smiling that easy smile of hers - and so is the girl Dan almost ran into in the hallway earlier, her hair pulled back into a ponytail now, textbooks spread in front of her.
"Hey, Dan," Jenny greets him.
"Hey," he says.
"This is Blair," Jenny introduces, nodding to the girl from school.
"We've met," Blair says dryly, tapping at the textbook with the end of her pencil.
"Briefly," Dan says, just as dryly.
Serena glances back and forth between them, lifts both eyebrows at Dan.
"Blair wants to go to Yale," he explains.
"Oh," Serena says. "That's great."
Blair nods. "If I get in."
Dan frowns. "I didn't take your spot," he tells her. "Stop acting like I did. I just got the escort position."
"Which could have been my ticket to a scholarship," she says.
Dan opens his mouth to object but Jenny beats him to it, rolling her eyes, "Ignore my brother, he's obsessed with Yale. Our mom went there."
One of Blair's eyebrows lifts minutely. "So did my dad."
"Would you look at that," Serena says, shooting Dan a be nice look.
He makes a face at her. "If you're a legacy then - " he starts, looking back at Blair.
"Oh my god, stop talking about college," Serena interrupts.
"Yes," Jenny jumps in. "Let's talk about the party this weekend."
Blair slides the textbook across the table toward Jenny. "Or, trigonometry."
Jenny gives her a sunny, beguiling smile. "You'll come, right? To the party?"
Blair's lips pinch together for a beat and then she asks, in the voice of someone who's getting paid to be there, "What party?"
"It's technically a fundraiser," Serena says. "For sloths. But it's going to be amazing. Everyone's going; it's this Friday night."
"You have to come," Jenny says brightly.
Blair gives her a look that's half-amused, half-condescending. "My invitation must have gotten lost in the mail."
Serena smiles. "Nope, you're just getting the in-person invite." She wiggles her eyebrows. "VIPs only."
Blair is saved from answering by Nate, who comes in at that moment, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, hair stuck to his forehead by perspiration. "Hey," he says.
"Hi, Nate," Jenny says. "This is Blair."
"Hey, Blair," he says, flashing her a polite-but-genuine grin as he leans down to wrap his arms around Serena from behind, smacking a kiss against her cheek.
"Natie!" she laughs. "You're sweaty."
He kisses the corner of her mouth. "I need a shower."
"Do you not have those at your house?" she teases.
Nate's mouth drops to her neck. "Not ones with you in them."
"Guys," Dan groans, and Jenny makes several obligatory gagging noises.
"Calm down," Nate says, still smiling as he scoops Serena up out of her chair. "We're leaving."
"You're such an idiot," Serena tells Nate, giggling, and he whispers something back to her that the rest of them can't hear, heading for the stairs.
Jenny watches them with narrowed eyes. "They better stay out of my bathroom."
"There are no guarantees, Jen," Dan sighs, dropping down into the seat Serena was in previously. "No guarantees."
Blair looks at the staircase for an extra beat and then taps her perfectly sharpened pencil against the textbook. "Trigonometry," she tells Jenny firmly.
"Will you come to the party?" Jenny asks, ignoring the book.
"Jen," Dan says lightly, pointedly, taking his own textbooks out and opening them.
She makes a huffy sound and turns her attention the math problems. "Fine."
Blair's gaze slides toward Dan's for a moment and their eyes meet; it's not a thank-you look by any means but it's something a little gentler than the hardness that was there in the hallway earlier, so he just gives her a little nod and then turns back to his Latin homework.
Fridays of senior year tends to be a joke day at school. Serena skips the whole day, Nate skips the afternoon, and Dan ends up eating lunch in the courtyard with Nelly, listening to her talk about Paris, amazed at all her certainty about what she wants.
He arrives home to find Jenny and Serena in the hallway all of their bedrooms open off of, Jenny in her school skirt and a barely-there camisole, Serena in a slip, arguing about outfits. He waves both hands in front of his face, says, "Clothes, people."
Eric, who's leaning against one wall, attempting to mediate, half-smirks.
"Oh my god, Dan, grow up," Jenny says.
"No," he says, holding a hand directly in front of his eyes. "No growing up. You're eight. Go put some clothes on."
"Serena won't let me - "
"Talk about it with clothes!" he interrupts. "You're a baby," he tells Jenny. "And you - "
Serena crosses her arms under her breasts and tilts her head slightly, all the time in the world.
Have boobs is the first thing that pops into Dan's head but obviously not the first thing that he can say; he had a massive crush on Serena in kindergarten, back before their parents got together, and it has reared its ugly, inappropriate head every once and a while since they hit puberty. "Clothing," is all he can manage. "I am your older brother - "
"Oh, please," Serena and Jenny say in tandem, voices dripping sarcasm, but they both turn around and storm back into their rooms.
Eric laughs, still leaning against the wall. "Very smooth," he tells Dan. "Very collected."
"How would they like it if I walked around naked in the hallway?" Dan grumbles, heading for his room, and from behind Jenny's door he hears her yell, ew! "Exactly!" he responds, directing his voice toward her door.
Serena pokes her head out of her room. "Take it off, Humphrey," she teases, one eyebrow raised in that challenging way of hers.
Dan turns around to look at her. "I will tell Dad about Nate staying here," he begins.
"You're so boring," Serena says, retreating back into her room.
Eric trails Dan into his room. "What time are people coming over?" he asks.
"Around six, I think," Dan says, tugging his tie off. "We'll have to wait a couple hours for the girls to finish getting ready. Even though they've apparently already started."
Eric shifts his weight from one foot to the other. "Can Jonathon come?"
Dan smiles at him. "Of course."
Eric smiles back. "Okay, cool." He nods a little and then turns to go.
"Hey, Eric?" Dan says.
Eric turns. "Yeah?"
"You're my favourite sibling."
Eric grins, rolling his eyes. "It's not like you have much choice."
"I heard that!" Serena calls.
"That should give you an idea of what I hear in the middle of the night!" Dan yells back. "Jesus, can't we afford some sound-proofing?" he grumbles, flopping down onto his bed as Jenny and Serena start to fight over something new.
Lily and Rufus leave early for dinner before the benefit, just in time for all of their friends to invade the penthouse. The boys hot-box the guest bathroom and drink nearly all of Rufus' whiskey, watching several sports games at once on split-screen and hollering at the girls whenever one of them appears downstairs.
Dan starts to lose his patience around seven-thirty and he goes upstairs, heading for Serena's door. "We were supposed to be there at seven," he reminds her. "You realize this is basically your party - " he adds as he opens the door and then stops short.
Blair is standing in the middle of Serena's room in a dark blue dress, the back of it still unzipped, revealing the pale skin of her back, the absence of a bra. She whirls on him when the door opens, brows knit in a frown. "Didn't they teach you to knock at finishing school?" she snaps.
"Dan," Jenny says, popping out of Serena's closet before he can reply. "Don't be a perv."
Serena follows Jenny out. "Look who we convinced to come!" she says as Jenny steps behind Blair, zipping up her dress and starting to do something elaborate with pins in her hair.
"Strong-armed," Blair corrects, not looking at him.
"Which ones?" Serena asks Dan, holding out two pairs of Jenny's heels.
"I'm not Eric," he reminds her.
"Doesn't mean you can't make yourself useful."
"Uh - " He points to the black pair and Serena sets them down in front of Blair's feet.
"You need a clutch," she muses, retreating to her closet again.
Dan tugs at his tie. "We were supposed to leave half an hour ago," he points out, again.
"Calm down," Jenny says, a bobby pin between her teeth. "The party won't start without us."
"Just - " Dan glances away from Jenny and finds himself looking at Blair, who's studying her reflection critically in the mirror. "Hurry up."
The party goes off without a hitch, champagne flowing, everyone dancing, Serena a radiant hostess, almost living up to Lily's impossibly high standards for once. Things start to quiet down around two, when the drunkest people have gone home and couples have found semi-private corners to make out in, the DJ playing quieter songs.
Dan loosens his tie, letting it hang around his neck, scanning the room. Jenny's sitting at the table, legs tucked up beneath her, giggling with her friends. Eric and his boyfriend are at the next table over, sharing the same cup of coffee. Serena and Nate are on the dance floor, noses close, her arms wrapped around his neck, her heels dangling by their straps from her fingertips.
Everyone's present and accounted for so Dan digs out his pack of cigarettes and heads outside, closing his lips around one as he fishes for his lighter. He's heading for a slightly closed-off stone bench, his favourite place to smoke when he needs a break at this venue, and he comes to a stop when he finds Blair sitting there, legs crossed neatly and a book open on her lap.
"Hey," he says, for lack of a better greeting.
She looks up, clearly startled, but she recovers quickly. "Hi."
"What are you doing out here?" he asks.
"I got tired of being in there."
He smiles. "That's a good reason," he says, and then gestures to the space next to her, a wordless question.
She nods.
Dan lights his cigarette and takes a long drag, blowing out smoke slowly, watching it disappear into the air. "What are you reading?" he asks.
She flips the book closed so that he can see the cover; Persuasion.
"Ah," he says. "Figures you'd be an Austen girl."
Her eyebrows lift. "Figures?" she repeats.
"You have that look."
Her eyebrows rise higher, somehow. "Oh, and what's your look?"
He blows out more smoke. "Hemingway."
Blair's shoulders lift slightly in a stifled laugh. "Hemingway," she repeats.
"You sound sceptical."
"I pegged you as Virgina Woolf."
Dan frowns, unsure how to interpret that. "No, you didn't."
She looks at him for a moment and then admits. "No, I didn't. Salinger, maybe."
Dan makes a face. "Cliché."
"For a reason."
He studies her for a moment. "What do you think Serena is?" he asks curiously.
"Fitzgerald," she says, in the tone of duh.
Dan's vaguely impressed. "Good eye."
Blair shrugs, not quite modest.
"What about Jenny?"
Blair considers. "I don't know."
Dan's quiet for a beat and then he divulges, "Neither do I."
That surprises a small smile out of her. "What about Nate?" she asks.
"Kerouac," Dan says right away. "If he'd bother."
Blair nods slowly at that and then laughs, almost to herself. "I really used to like him," she says, suppressing a little shiver when the wind picks up.
"Nate?"
She nods. "When we were younger, everyone invited everyone to their birthday parties, do you remember that? I guess their parents made them do it. So I went, once. To…Nelly's party, I think. And I saw Nate, and I thought - I thought he was handsome, I guess. He got me a drink. Very polite."
"You liked Nate," Dan repeats, surprised.
"I hardly knew him," she says. "And of course the next Monday at school, he and Serena -"
"Yeah," Dan says. "That's…been around for a while." He thinks of kindergarten class, Nate pulling Serena's pigtails; he thinks of Nate, serious-eyed, I'm going to ask her to marry me.
"They seem happy."
Dan smiles, and finds himself teasing, "You liked Nate."
Blair frowns at him, but her eyes still have a little sparkle. "For a weekend." She's quiet for a moment, frown easing. "That's a cliché too, isn't it? The Austen girl liking the Kerouac boy."
"Ah," Dan says. "So you are an Austen girl."
"An Austen girl who wants to go to Yale," she says pointedly.
He can't help but smile. "I'm not just going because I'm some rich kid," he tells her. "It's more than that."
"It's more than that," she repeats, clearly not believing him.
He nods. "My, uh…my mom went there. We haven't talked much since she left my dad; she lives in Paris now. But when we were younger, we always talked about it. Yale for me, like it was Yale for her."
Blair looks at him for a long moment, and then says softly, "I've been sleeping in my father's Yale sweatshirt since I was three. It was always…Yale for me, like it was for him. My mother moved to Paris, too."
"Why?" Dan asks, seeming to startle them both with the sudden question.
"My father - " She looks at him, suddenly cautious, shivering again. "I don't even know you."
"No," he says. "I guess you don't." He lights another cigarette. "My mother wanted to be an artist."
"And?"
Dan offers her a cigarette. "And my father loved someone else."
She takes one, holding it between two fingers. "I've never smoked before."
"Dan," someone calls in the distance, sounding like either Penelope or Nelly, voice giggly and drunk. "Daaaaan."
He stands from the bench slowly. "Hang onto that," he tells Blair with a little shrug. "You might want to learn something someday." He shrugs off his suit jacket and hands it to her.
She takes it slowly, seeming unsure.
"I'll see you," he tells her. "Tutoring Jen or whatever."
Blair nods, holding his jacket stiffly, but it's not quite resting in her lap, so he knows she'll put it on. "Goodnight, Humphrey," she says quietly.
"Goodnight," he says, and then hesitates, realizing abruptly that he has no idea what her full name is.
"Waldorf," she supplies.
He nods, and around a new cigarette, says, "Goodnight, Waldorf."
tbc.