Gossip Girl: Fic - And I'm Slow, Unraveling
Somehow, she lets him talk her into staying for breakfast.
She’s not sure how it happened, exactly. Or maybe she can trace the path of her feet to his door, the hesitant steps to the couch. Blair wakes curled against him, and she only remembers to recoil in disgust and brave the cold air of the loft after a few long, quiet moments.
He’s scruffier than normal, and she’s decidedly rumpled, and neither of them know what to say or do next.
“I’ll call my driver-“
“So, food?”
She breaks off, surprised. “Food?”
He flushes, a red sweep creeping up his cheek.
“I dunno, everyone’s gotta eat,” he mumbles, and Blair sees a quick flash of the endearing charm that brings down Park Avenue princesses and hippie artistés alike.
“Okay,” she agrees, equally as quietly.
Blair steps cautiously to the bathroom, smothering her squeak of indignation when she sees the rats’ nest her hair has become. She can’t do much more than smooth her locks into a basic ponytail and wipe off the smudged eyeliner, but she’s sure she looks better than the average girl-on-the-street here in Brooklyn. And besides, it’s Humphrey and who cares what he thinks, really?
Dan is puttering around in the kitchen when she returns, lining up bowls and boxes.
“I thought pancakes,” he says.
“Sounds good.”
Blair reaches out and fingers the cracked edge of a ceramic mixing bowl, watching him out of the corner of her eye. He catches her peeking glances and grins, and before she knows it, she’s smiling back. It’s comfortable, easy, and she slides into a rhythm with him-a little of this, a pinch of that. She gets enthusiastic, spilling flour all over the counter. He experiments with cinnamon and applesauce, and she laughs when he dares her to add chili powder.
“Maybe if I were hungover,” she tells him, “though come to think of it, I must have been drunk on something to spend the night here.”
Dan’s folding chocolate chips into a bowl of batter, and Blair can’t see his face. But she does hear the whisk skip a beat.
“…in Brooklyn,” she adds, inwardly grimacing at herself-whether for impoliteness or for making her addition, she’s not sure.
They pile the pancakes onto plates and spread their bounty on the dining room table. Blair cuts quarters of all the varieties, excepting Dan’s Cap’n Crunch-infused griddle cakes (“They are green, Humphrey, which is not remotely the color a pancake should be.”). Dan commits to a few, folding and eating them like tacos, with his fingers.
They load the dishes into the sink, and he asks her about class. She expounds on her newfound and entirely clichéd love of art history and philosophy. Such a pretentious little ingénue, he teases, agreeing to compare notes on their English classes when they got further along in the semester.
It almost breaks her heart a little to realize that the room is back in order and she is standing at the door, a pigtailed Dorothy, wakened from her Technicolor dream to find things once again in black and white.
Because the world is still there, and all the messed-up things that led her here are still there, coiled up and waiting on the Manhattan skyline. She breathes in sharply; suddenly aware of how much food she just ate and time she wasted here. Blair bites her lip, her thoughts suddenly a million miles away-or maybe just back over the bridge.
“The car is waiting, so I should get going,” she announces, picking up her bag.
Dan nods, his eyes meeting hers.
“We’ll have to do it again sometime, Waldorf.”
And with that, she’s back here, standing with him in a dingy loft.
“You’re right,” she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she shuts the door, “we definitely do.”
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Fin.
TBH, I have kind of always liked this pairing, and you can kind of see it lurking in the background of a lot of my C/B fics.