gossip girl fic: a date with ben and jerry
a date with ben and jerry. gossip girl. dan humphrey/blair waldorf. 1220 words. pg. Blair gets married. Blair doesn’t get married. Dan has always believed in alternate universes.
“So,” Dan said, rocking back on his feet, his tie hanging limply around his neck, “what do we do now?”
A bottle of Moet dangles from his fingers, bumping against his thigh as he nervously taps his leg. The room is small.
Blair shrugs, her shoulder dwarfed by his tuxedo jacket. The white of her dress peeks out underneath his jacket and she grabs the bottle of out his hands.
She takes a long gulp, Dan watching wide-eyed, and Blair wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.
“You’re the writer, “ she says pointedly, a hint of exasperation coloring her tone, “I’m sure you’ve imagined this.”
Dan throws an arm around her shoulder and dips her into a kiss. The bottle drops to the floor, a mess for someone else to clean up. Her phone vibrates against the stone floor, loud, disturbing, and the screen flashes, Serena.
Blair whispers let’s go into his ear, hands fisted into the wrinkles of his white shirt and Dan smiles along her jaw, kissing greedily up her face.
This is, of course, when he wakes up. Cedric’s arm is lodged underneath his shoulder blade and his phone repeats so please, please, please, let me let me, get what I want this time.
Dan grumbles, to himself, “Not gonna happen today.”
He thinks, talking to yourself is never a good sign.
Cedric stares at him blankly and Dan falls back into his pillows.
Serena gets to his apartment at ten, wearing something tight and sparkly. Dan is in a ratty t-shirt from his dad’s first tour and for once he looks at Serena, with her full face of makeup and stupid expensive clothes and thinks, Do less.
Her eyes are sad when she says, Are you okay? her hand resting on his knee.
Dan feels bad right after he thinks it.
“I’m contemplating chain smoking cigarettes,” he says, deadpan.
Serena throws a pillow at him, hard. He rubs at where it hit him on his chest, pouting at her.
She rolls her eyes.
“Get out of this apartment already,” she warns, “or else I’m sending reinforcements.”
“Ooh, I’m so worried,” he mocks.
“You should be,” Serena tries to yell at him. It fails, dissolving into giggles.
She kisses him on the corner of his mouth, hand under his chin.
“Seriously though,” she worries, hand scruffing up his hair, “Get out of this cave.”
Dan promises okay and looks around the room when she leaves. He gets up, goes into his room, and gets back into bed.
“Dude,” Nate exclaims, arms spread in disbelief, “Get it together.”
To Catch a Thief is playing quietly on the TV in the background. Dan is still in his plaid pj’s, a worn copy of To Kill A Mockingbird crumpled in his palm, the whorls of his fingertips stained with ink. There’s a mug of instant coffee in the other palm, an hour old and cold. Dan drinks it anyways.
“You’re the reinforcements?” Dan scoffs, “You’re more harmless than a golden retriever puppy.”
“Have you showered?” Nate asks, ignoring Dan’s half-assed barb, nose crinkled.
Dan shrugs.
“Oh my god,” Nate manages, leaning in and taking a whiff. He leans back away from Dan, eyeing him warily from the other side of the room, arms crossed tightly.
Dan smells himself and recoils a little, takes a look around his surroundings and sighs.
“I can’t believe she did it,” Dan moans into his cupped hands, elbows on his knees.
Nate claps him on the shoulder twice before pushing Dan off the couch.
“Yes, it sucks,” he sympathizes, “but -“
“I knew there was a but coming,” Dan interjects through the half-open bathroom door.
“If you would stop interrupting me,” Nate says teasingly, checking his phone, “you would hear me say that we’re going to go out, we’re gonna get some food, meet some cute girls -“
Dan says, “Well, you know how well that usually works out for me.”
Then he slips on the bar of soap. No, seriously, he couldn’t make this up if he tried. Nate hears his muffled scream and bends over in laughter.
“Thanks for all the help, Nate,” Dan scowls, the beginning of a bruise blossoming on his hip, purple and ruined, “It’s good to know I can count on you in life threatening situations.”
At lunch, Korean food, down the street, a cute girl named Sofie leaves her name and number on a napkin and slips it into Dan’s lap.
Nate’s face does that “hot guy from an 80’s movie” thing it always does, eyes wide, jaw dropped.
He says, “Dude, she is hot.”
Dan mutters, “You take her out then,” into the remainder of his bibimbop.
Nate blinks at him twice, shrugs, and takes the napkin out of Dan’s hand.
“Hey,” Dan whines, the end of a noodle dangling out of his mouth.
Nate grins and finishes the rest of his Diet Coke, the ice rattling around in the bottom of the glass.
“You snooze you lose, Humphrey,” he gloats.
Blair comes back on a Wednesday and the weather is unusually cold. Dan would like to think they have nothing to do with each other, but he wouldn’t rule it out.
She comes back on a Wednesday and she’s wearing a navy blue dress, red lipstick, hair high off her neck.
“Humphrey,” she addresses him, the brisk nod of her head once before she ducks under his arm and into his apartment.
“Well hello to you too, Waldorf,” he retorts, the smell of her lingering on his shirt where he brushed against him. Get it together, he thinks briefly, just in time for Blair to turn around briskly on her heel and face him.
“Can I help you?” he asks, scrubbing at the back of his head, stretching an arm, anything to keep from moving.
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks, perched on a stool, one ankle tucked behind the other. “How could you possibly have gotten more spastic in the short period of time I was away?”
Dan stops staring and leans on the countertop, fingers rapping anxiously as she frowns delicately.
“Are you an idiot?” she snaps, eyeing him cautiously as she rapidly types up a message to someone.
Dan presses the heels of his hands into the edge of the countertop and smiles at her.
“Yeah, I guess I am, Blair,” he concedes, her heel dangling off the end of her foot. “How about a movie? I have To Catch a Thief in the DVD player already.”
Blair tilts her head for a moment, before her lips split into a smile and she jumps off the seat.
“Well, if it’s already in the machine,” she says, already grabbing the blanket off the side of the couch, “I do feel as if it would be rude to turn down Grace Kelly.”
She’s curled into his the cushion before he has time to react.
Blair says, “Don’t forget the popcorn,” over her shoulder, ready and waiting for him to turn on the movie.
Dan scoffs and asks, “Kettle korn or movie butter?” sarcastically, an eyebrow raised for effect.
Blair responds, “Movie butter,” quickly, a smirk lifting the ends of her mouth up, "and if you have Earl Grey, I wouldn't hate a cup."
He doesn't; she warms her hands on his instead.