come nightfall you'll be waltzing through my door (dan/blair) (part 1)
title: come nightfall you'll be waltzing through my door (part 1)
fandom: gossip girl
characters: dan humphrey, blair waldorf, mentions of: jenny humphrey, serena van der woodsen, chuck bass, nate archibald
pairings: dan/blair, implied chuck/blair, implied serena/dan, implied (v. vaguely, more my headcanon than anything else) jenny/nate
wordcount: 2876
rating: PG for now, to be safe, will probably end up reaching R or NC-17 during the next (few) parts
disclaimer: i don't own gossip girl or the title of this fic
warning: i wrote this. it has internal monologues and something masquerading as plot and nothing much ever happens.
for: ever-neutral and vergoldung who wanted adultery. (who doesn't, really)
Paris in summer is wonderful - at times. Paris in summer is also unbearably hot.
The best way of dealing with the heat, Dan Humphrey finds, is finding a café without much direct sunlight and a red haired waitress with kind eyes who also makes fantastic ice coffee.
The sun's shining brightly, even while he’s trying to avoid it - it's the beginning of the story, he’ll decide sometime later, because that's what Dan knows the sun does at the beginnings of stories - and he's sitting outside in a lovely, cozy café in a charming street on Montmartre and then like it’s any other day of his life, he sees Blair Waldorf crossing the street and -
-- oh --
-- Toto it seems now like we're in Kansas again, or aren't in Kansas anymore, depending on the chosen of interpretation of Kansas and whether Kansas is someplace where Dan should be.
Four things happen almost immediately: he decides he still thinks she's exquisitely beautiful, he wonders if she's noticed him, realizes he's not sure if he wants her to, and he spills the rest of his ice coffee.
The spilling of the coffee creates a seemingly unstoppable (and inevitably leading to his ultimate demise, he’ll add in his head later; perhaps sarcastically) chain of events. The waitress fusses over him and curses in a slightly louder voice than one would expect. He’s trying to find tissues while waiting for the waitress, who soon comes back and brings him a wet cloth so he can attempt to clean some of the coffee off his pants and the next thing he knows when he looks up is that for some reason or other (because the gods love him or because the gods hate him, he can’t tell) Blair is standing 20 feet away from him. She looks like she hasn't moved in a while. He’s not sure if she’s noticed him.
Oh crap.
He allows himself a few moments to observe her, as impeccably dressed as always, in a dark blue and white dress, with a matching purse and stilettos. She still looks as if she dresses to kill, and he’s not sure if it’s a good thing now, or if it ever was at all.
And (as if there was ever another version of how this would end) then she turns around, back to where she came from, and then Dan's running towards her --
-- (maybe he imagines this, but he thinks she's stopped walking away even before he's called out her name and approached her) --
-- and she stops, and turns around. He think her hair's a bit shorter than it used to be, it barely reaches her shoulders now. He likes it.
“Blair Waldorf.”
“Dan Humphrey. And it’s Bass. It’s Bass now,” she replies.
He knows, of course, that she’s a Bass, has been a Bass for quite some time now, but her maiden name is what makes it across his lips anyway, like an old habit that he can’t shake. In his mind, she’s just always been Blair Waldorf. That name used to mean something. Blair Waldorf is what he knows, or likes to think he knows. He’s not sure what he knows about Blair Bass. Or what anyone knows about Blair Bass, for that matter.
“Of course, how could I forget, so stupid of me.”
Before he gets the chance to speak again, though he isn't sure what he would say, her phone starts ringing and she takes it out of her purse. For some reason, she doesn't take the call and she just puts the phone back in her purse: he couldn't discern the caller ID from where he was standing, and he has to consciously stop himself from over-analyzing this. What if it was Chuck, what if it was Serena, what if what if whatifwhatifwhatif.
"What are you doing here?" he asks, as if "Blair Waldorf loves Paris" isn't one of the thousand little or grand things he still remembers about her, like this is strange somehow, that Blair Waldorf would be walking down the streets of Paris.
She smiles feebly, avoids meeting his eyes.
"One part business, two parts Paris."
He think she's probably avoiding using the word pleasure with him, which he can understand. Pleasure is Serena smiling and holding his hand, pleasure is Serena waking up with him and kissing him awake. Pleasure is also Blair in his loft, lifetimes ago, ordering food and taking her shoes off to make herself more comfortable on his couch, watching movies, pleasure is Blair knocking on his door, each time as unexpected as the one before, because he never allowed himself to learn that Blair Waldorf is a person that comes to Brooklyn to see Dan Humphrey.
If she was intentionally avoiding the word pleasure, he would understand.
"Do you want to have a cup of coffee with me?" he asks then, because he can't not. It's been years since they've done anything like this, but they used to be friends, even if it was lifetimes ago.
All he wants is for them to try to be friends, really - (he doesn't want her to smile because of him only and mock his apartment while sort of implying it would be better for him if she decorated it, if it was their apartment, doesn't want her to straddle him on his couch because the couch is closer to the door than the bed and she doesn't want to wait) - all he wants is to try to be friends. They used to be friends, why not now?
"No,“ she says. “I mean, I don't have time now."
She seems more quiet than usual, and he can't decide why that is, can't decide if it's awkward because she wants to talk to him or perhaps do more than talk or is it awkward because she doesn't want to do anything with him, and he’s here anyway, asking her to have coffee with him.
"We could have dinner together. Tonight. To catch up."
She seems to be thinking about it, bites her lip and she seems to be clutching her purse tighter than before. Her phone rings again. She doesn't take it out of her purse this time.
"We could. I'll text you the address. Try to wear something that doesn't embarrass me too much, Humphrey."
She says that, and he exhales and it's like he's been holding his breath without realizing it. He feels relief now, of a kind. This is good, this is a return to charted territory. Maybe if Blair can still mock his clothing, maybe everything turns out alright.
"Can't wait. I'll see you tonight then."
Her phone stops ringing (finally).
"Goodbye, Humphrey."
"Goodbye, Waldorf."
She frowns, for a millisecond and then promptly leaves.
He thinks it's a sort of protest, or fighting for his territory in this strange relationship of theirs, calling her Waldorf. It's completely intentional this time, not unconscious as it was a few moments ago. If she gets to call him Humphrey, like she did when they were friends (and occasionally when they fucked), well then he has the right to call her Waldorf just the same.
She walks away. He turns his back to her too, because he doesn't want to be the guy who stands on the street, waiting to see if the girl that walked away from him will turn back.
He starts walking and he thinks of her. She looks older, yes, traces of lines around her eyes, but there's less of a spark in them, he decides as well. He's so distracted he almost forgets to return to pay for his coffee and to grab his things.
This will obviously not end well for him.
He walks to his place, tries to distract himself from Blair. Tries to plan what he could eat for lunch today, finds his headphones in his bag and listens to some music, looks at the green green trees and the blue blue sky and the old old buildings. But Blair used to mock his cooking, and there's the sound of Mick Jagger singing about a girl with far away eyes in his ears, and he's doing sightseeing in one of Blair Waldorf's favorite places in the world, so by the time he makes it back to his place, he's embraced the inevitability of Blair Waldorf, at least of her existence in his mind.
As Dan enters the building his apartment’s in and tries to find the keys in his bag, he’s still thinking about Blair Waldorf, and also of his life. He came to Paris to try to write, to get away from (Serena and) New York and the world where every few feet someone knows and has an opinion about his marriage, his life, his writing. He's rented an apartment here, lives alone in a somewhat small place, lives of whatever money he's earned writing so far, and he’s learning French and trying to sell articles and short stories.
He’s been embracing the ancient, quaint feel of Paris, or at least he likes to think he’s been doing that. He even thought about buying a typewriter the first week he was here. He thought about placing it by the eastern window of his little apartment. He can see the scene play out clearly in his head, him pulling an all-nighter by the typewriter, an old but well preserved typewriter there on the desk, endless mugs of coffee surrounding it (and Blair waking up and coming to kiss his neck as she says “Good morning, Humphrey”). This scene played out in his mind at some point while he was first considering renting this apartment. He never did buy the typewriter, but he did end up renting the place. That probably says something about him, something he probably wouldn't like to know.
He'd written two more novels after his first, one about Serena in a way, the second still about Serena, but a different kind of her, and now he's writing something he's not sure what about. It's not that he's forgotten about Blair Waldorf (as if that was ever a possibility, Blair allowing the world to forget about her) but he makes an effort not to consciously allow her presence in his thoughts. She doesn't deserve that anymore, hasn't in years, and he only sees her rarely, so it's not much of a problem. They don't talk when he sees her anyway. It's not like he would know what to talk to her about.
However -- he does see Blair occasionally and he realizes it’s like whenever he sees Blair and talks to Blair and does anything with Blair - no matter how certain he is of the plot of his current novel or short story or something in between, suddenly through cracks in his seamless narrative, a fiercely independent brunette appears in the small town he’s writing about (he still hasn't thought of a name, but he knows the sound of the town and the smell of coffee that his male protagonist drinks every morning and during the day while working in his office). The brunette steals away the heart of the town along with the protagonist’s heart. It’s a cliché, definitely, undeniably.
He hates that. He likes to think he hates clichés.
The truth is, Blair’s dictated the plot of his life at times, made him change, adapt. For better or for worse, right, that’s what they say? Wrong, wrong, wrong. Because he’s said those vows, but not to her, never to her. This life of his is not something that she has a rightful claim to. (Anymore.) Or she shouldn't. She definitely shouldn't.
He thinks sometimes that what bothers him most about her is that he doesn't know, he never gets to know it all. Maybe this isn't because of his grand, be-all-end-all love for her. Maybe he’s just curious. Because she gives him bits and pieces, never the entire story, it’s all like a puzzle he's trying to put together now from numerous newspaper headlines he can remember from over the years and halves of phone conversations with Serena and something resembling sadness that occasionally makes a brief appearance in her eyes. And he forms stories and assembles the puzzle that is Blair Waldorf, but he’s never really sure if he has all the pieces, or if the pieces are even her.
But he still remembers the stolen bits of memories that came through a crack in time and space, obviously, because they're not something that ever should have existed in this universe. Blair Waldorf belongs to the Upper East Side and to no one else, the same way that every queen belongs to her queendom.
But he remembers things anyway, grand things like the face she made just before they kissed the first time, and little things, like the tone of her voice when she criticized his choice of ties and jackets.
He remembers other things as well, countless things, and sometimes at night when he's rereading his different drafts of different stories, he's terrified to find her still in them. Not as the main character this time, no, those time have passed, she is not the lead female character of his life anymore, so naturally she got moved to the sidelines of his stories too, but it scares him how he wasn't aware that she still remained there, somewhere. In minor female characters everywhere, brunettes married to wrong men, with sad eyes and flawless taste, who look down on everyone and everything they consider unworthy.
She stayed.
He wonders if -
stops.
He opens the window then, breathes in deeply. He will not make a big deal out of this; he will not turn this into something it is not. Blair and him, they’re going out to dinner, and that’s that. It’s ridiculous to spend time eating alone when you could talk to someone while you eat. It’s pragmatic, it’s more fun. It’s nothing more than that.
His phone rings again, and there’s a second when he thinks it might be Blair (this is awful, this hasn't happened to him in years, hoping for Blair everywhere) but it’s Jenny, and things fall into place in his mind once again.
“I know why you've been calling more lately,” he informs her.
“I saw Blair today,” he continues, when she doesn't respond.
He should have realized this earlier, of course. The constant worrying and checking up on him for the last two weeks, either Jenny on the phone or Nate writing him three e-mails in the last two weeks (Jenny probably coerced him some way or another, Nate’s not that much of a worrying guy on his own). But Jenny worries, because Jenny is his sister, and Jenny works in Waldorf Designs and Jenny always knows when and where Blair travels. He should have known it was all about Blair being in Paris. (Doesn't it seem sometimes like all of it is?)
He hears her sigh, an ocean away.
“Just be careful, okay.“
“Jenny, there's nothing to worry about, “he says. He likes to think he's telling the truth --
even though maybe he isn't.
Because he gets off the phone with Jenny and sits and stares through the window after that, doesn't even eat, though he drinks a lot of coffee. He turns on his laptop and writes pages upon pages of something, maybe his new novel, maybe something he will burn later, nothing particular about it. He writes Blair until he's not sure what to write anymore or if he'll ever be able to write anything else.
He's turned off the laptop, and as if a result of some sort of divine inspiration, his phone rings. The caller ID says Serena and the screen of his phone displays the picture of her that he took one lazy Sunday morning when she tried to make breakfast and burnt the pancakes. He ate them anyway and she laughed, „You must really love me if you would eat this,“ she said and he swallowed and smiled and said „I do“.
He doesn't know what he would say to someone today if they asked him if he loved his wife. It's worrying that he can't pin point the moment when it all went wrong, because there must have been something along the way, some sentence or a look or a lack of a smile. There must have been something, because Dan's a writer and Dan knows things don't just happen out of nowhere, and nothing ever changed between him and Serena.
Maybe that was it, though; maybe that's the whole point. No one likes a novel without a plot, and their marriage has been 3 years without any sign of a plot whatsoever.
He inhales and exhales and inhales once again and then he doesn't pick up and the phone simply stops ringing after a while. There, taken care of, just like that.
It's almost time to go then, so Dan showers and changes his clothes. He puts on his nicest blue jeans and a black shirt, realizes this is the most he's spent picking out clothing in a while. This should worry him, but it's the opposite, it feels like it's all clicking into place, whatever wasn't right before.
There.
It's as easy as breathing.