Fic: All the candles that burn on their own
Title: All the candles that burn on their own
Fandom: Gossip Girl
Rating: PG13
Words: 8,000 [3/12 for 12in2012]
Spoilers: for 5x13, inevitably AU after 5x14.
Summary: [Dan/Blair, Nate] Queen B and Lonely Boy in a log cabin. Sounds a bit like a song you used to know, doesn’t it? Blair and Dan: the retreat, and the rest. Sequel to I tell you all the time.
Notes: this continues to be hariboo’s fault. It picks up where I tell you all the time left off, so you could read it, but if not, all you need to know is that post-wedding, Dan and Blair have run off to a log cabin for Dan’s ‘writing retreat’ and maybe admitted they aren’t entirely platonic, not that they’re talking about it, god forbid.
I could have left the first one alone. But I hated the ending. Mostly because I knew it wasn’t the ending? SO HERE WE ARE AGAIN. Enjoy.
*
Of course, no coy admission of feelings that might be felt has ever helped anyone named Waldorf and even less anyone named Humphrey.
Which is why, New Yorkers, no one can be surprised that things have gone to hell in a log cabin. Queen B and Lonely Boy in a log cabin. Sounds a bit like a song you used to know, doesn’t it? You know you love me.
*
It’s exactly one week since Blair’s wedding day that she wakes up screaming and counts herself lucky not to fall out of the ludicrously small bed. If it were her own bed, there would be none of this nearly falling out nonsense, because she has rugs and people and -
Gossip Girl is narrating her dreams, now, which should totally be illegal, but there is no other logical explanation. There is no way anyone knows Blair Waldorf is in a log cabin and it’s not like the cabin even has a decent internet connection, because that would be a distraction to the writing genius, apparently. She misses Netflix. Dan says he doesn’t but Dan is a horrible liar.
For five seconds Blair genuinely doesn’t know what to be more horrified about in all of that.
And then she falls out of the bed.
*
Dan, having dried and tidied the dinner dishes, is wandering the kitchenette between the living area and the back porch with a towel flipped over his shoulders - he thinks that he might whistle, he thinks he might try to write today - when he hears a scream that’s eight parts drama and two parts Blair Waldorf from the upper landing.
‘Ugh, why do you have a dish cloth? Or is that one of your hipster scarf moments? It looks like a bear chewed it. Oh God, are there bears now?’
He scaled the timber steps without thinking or, as noted, de-accessorising.
‘Gosh darn, I can’t believe I forgot to take off the last thing I put on,’ he retorts and swings the towel over one shoulder like he’s back behind a bar. ‘Disappointing generations of dedicated fashionistas by nine am. The day’s a wash out. Best not bother with the coffee pot.’
Blair narrows her eyes from the centre of the pile of quilts and blankets on the floor. Her hair is orderly until the headband and then all bets are off. Dan knows she’s stolen his soft plaid pj bottoms from the top of his bag because he can see the cuffs of them on the foot that’s poking out of the pile of linens.
‘I knew you were eyeing up those when you crashed at mine,’ he crows, grinning.
‘Humphrey!’ Blair fights her way half out of the blankets and points downstairs. ‘Boundaries! Coffee!’ Like she’s still his fake boss or something, but whatever, he knows who won this round and it’s totally not the person wearing the pants. Ha.
‘Sure you’re gonna be all right? I mean, that’s a pretty impressive fort and you’re only so high on heels, so I could help -’
‘If you do not retire to the kitchenette so help me God we’ll be drinking my coffee and I know that’s not a future you want to experience.’
It only ruins the murderous glare a little that the headband sinks down across Blair’s nose when she nods for emphasis. Dan makes a run for it.
*
Blair comes out of the shower and quickly dresses in the things in her bag that look most like her own. She still feels like a hobo with a goth problem, but there’s hardly any mirrors in the cabin, so she’ll probably deal with it without accidentally blinding herself by catching a glimpse.
With a glare to the top of the stairs, she shoves the plaid pyjama bottoms under the pillow on her side of the bed. (She insisted on sides, even though they don’t sleep in it at the same time most nights. It’s important.)
There’s toast and bread and coffee and eggs and fruit and a steaming sink of hot water with steeping pots.
It reminds her of the time she spent three days not talking to her dad and Roman after she arrived in France and then, when she eventually asked for the other vinegar, a whole shelf of them appeared from the local deli.
She sits at the table and carefully takes a fork or spoonful from every offered delicacy.
Blair would have made one hell of a professional royal diplomat.
*
Dan does the dishes without a word while Blair eats tiny squares of toast. (Who does that? Blair, of course.)
He’s aware she probably thinks he’s pathetic, but they’ve lived the last week on carbs and crying, so the fact that she’s eating a meal of more than cereal and more than ‘no, thank you’ makes him want to mass text everyone they know like Jenny used to.
‘So what do we do with the day?’
Dan shrugs and slings the towel back across his shoulder. ‘Nothing. Anything. It’s a blank slate.’
‘And you’re a bad brochure,’ she points at him with a fork. ‘No, really. What do we do? The last week does not count - I was clearly in shock.’
Dan grins. ‘And yet we engineered a near-perfect escape from New York.’
‘Just tell me that isn’t one of the films on your laptop,’ Blair raises an eyebrow.
‘Nah,’ he answers, turning back to the sink. ‘Never got it. L.A. is so underrated.’
Blair groans and he hears the gurgle of more coffee being poured. ‘Will you write about your experiences as a disenfranchised bar person? Because it looks like you’re researching.’
Dan laughs and turns, throwing a glass over his shoulder and catching it on the turn. ‘Why, would you be impressed?’
‘I’d be impressed if you shaved,’ Blair rolls her eyes. ‘Honestly, even scruffy bar types in sitcoms shave, and don’t say you haven’t got a razor with you, because I saw it when I was stealing your pyjamas.’
*
By eleven am, Blair is running a finger along the bookshelves that are built into the underside of the stairs and along the back wall of the living area. Dan is settled at the desk, typing away on the only laptop they have, and it hits Blair how one turn here and one there and this, this could be a life.
Probably someone else’s and relocated to a decent penthouse, but a life.
It makes her feet itch.
‘I’m going for a run,’ she announces.
Dan pauses and turns half in the chair. ‘Seriously? You run?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ Blair answers, pulling out her bag and his, ‘I have a regime. However, I don’t see a gym with power plate and toning weights in the vicinity, do you? So this week only, I may run. You really didn’t see the interview where they asked how I kept so svelte?’
Dan ducks his head and looks back up, loosely gripping the edge of the chair. ‘Actually, I didn’t. What was it in, Seventeen?’
‘To be fair,’ Blair tosses her hair as she climbs the stairs, ‘I did a lot of interviews.’
Dan is a horrible liar.
‘At least I’m more honest than some princesses. Ha! As if anyone believes she doesn’t work out-’
*
Blair runs in his favourite sweat pants and a plain tight top of Jenny’s. At this rate, he’s going to have nothing left to wear but Jenny’s purple skinny jeans and his dry clean only wedding suit.
He shrugs and turns back to the laptop, where a cursor blinks at him.
When that doesn’t work, he moves his cell (two bars, Blair has hers) to the desk next to the laptop.
What’s really missing is coffee. He makes a pot, then sets the steel pot on the warm ring so it’ll keep.
He looks back at the desk and the mid-sentence cursor and grimaces. On Inside, he had material he’d never run out of and no real care for the feelings at stake. Considering the last six months of his life he’s had a bizarre friendship, a fake relationship and two full time jobs (royal moral support and burgeoning author), he shouldn’t be short of it now. But protecting the people in his stranger-than-fiction life has never felt like so keenly like a duty of his.
He flashes back to the pitch meeting from hell and groans, pushing through the kitchen back door with a mug in hand.
The view is a panorama of hill, hill, green and the odd roof poking through, like the cover of his first copy of The Hobbit. For a minute he thinks, freedom. Remnants. Then he thinks, fuck it.
*
Blair makes a note in her iPhone to fire the personal trainer. She looks great, yes, but if the zombie apocalypse cometh, she’s screwed, because she’s out of breath after two sweet alpine hills. How did he think this was somehow prepared for royal life? Ridiculous.
It’s funny, though, how much lighter she feels than when she’s trying to achieve harmony and a centre of balance on a machine with blinking lights.
A gulp of water later, and a quick look at her phone (three bars, no roaming), she forces herself up the next hill, old buds in her ears and a Serena playlist on shuffle (DJ phase. Of course Serena had a DJ phase).
It’s funny how much lighter she feels with nothing but borrowed clothes and things she thought she’d left behind.
*
Dan doesn’t register Blair coming back in, headphones in and fingers flying across the keys.
Blair stops at the bottom of the stairs. There’s a part of her mind screaming at her to get upstairs, get in the shower, before he sees, but the rest is staring at the way his little finger stretches from the keyboard every time he pauses to touch the edge of the phone. His head doesn’t turn, so she assumes it’s like that thing he does with his hair that he doesn’t seem to know about, either.
She smiles and heads up to the shower.
*
‘We should put in a load of washing,’ Dan says later, unplugging his headphones and turning to look at Blair, who’s curled up on the sofa with a book, wearing Jenny’s purple jeans. He’s surprised: he thought she was allergic to denim that wasn’t a high-fashion tribute to actual denim.
‘Yes,’ she replies without looking up, ‘you should.’
‘Dinner dishes or no dice,’ Dan bargains. He figures he’s going to lose spectacularly, but it’s worth a shot.
An eyebrow followed by another and eventually Blair’s eyes appear over the top of the book that looks thick and translated. ‘Use less than two pots cooking it and we might be getting somewhere.’
Dan turns back to the document. ‘Deal.’
‘I said ‘might’,’ Blair reminds him absent-mindedly, ‘and you will rinse them out so the sauces don’t stick while we eat.’
*
After dinner, the laptop migrates from the desk to the coffee table and Dan uses the word ‘budge’ to Blair’s feet.
He doesn’t question when she skips straight past Funny Face and Roman Holiday on his hard drive, despite the Audrey factor, and puts her feet across his lap.
Brief Encounter still feels like self-indulgent punishment the second time around.
*
‘You made a complete noise in that corner, you know.’
Dan doesn’t react, but he doesn’t move his hand from around her ankle, either.
‘What were you writing? Escapades of the rich and famous, act two?’
There’s an edge in her voice and Dan smooths a thumb across her ankle.
‘Furthest thing from it, actually.’ He wonders if she’s going to ask to hear the pages. She looks like she’d like a story: her head is over the arm of the couch, her legs across his lap, one arm loose and voice blurred.
‘Whatever, Humphrey, just leave me out of your three act fantasies.’
He swallows. She doesn’t move her legs.
*
Blair wakes up in the true dark of the cabin and reaches out a hand for her phone. 0412.
She sits up with a groan, a crick in her neck complaining.
There’s blankets and the couch.
She finds her way to the stairs and uses the light from the phone to avoid crawling up them.
‘Dammit, Humphrey, that’s my side,’ she hisses. ‘And your paws are on my pillow - ugh.’
After rolling her eyes at the ceiling, Blair slides into the bed on the wrong side and uses Dan’s shoulder as a pillow. It’s somehow better than using his actual pillow, since he’s stolen hers.
*
The next morning, when someone’s alarm goes off, and someone falls over the other warm body to turn it off! now! and ends up with arms around them and head on their stomach, they add the whole night to the list of things they aren’t talking about.
*
‘Clearly you just want to come running with me so that I can illustrate the acute disadvantages of a posture practiced at a laptop six hours a day,’ Blair ties the sneakers she once left at the loft and looks at him.
‘Maybe I just need the endorphin rush of winning to keep writing,’ Dan says, tying his own shoes and grinning. ‘Positive reinforcement.’
‘Ha! As if. You obviously see a gym membership as a tax on good intentions, not a tool to be used,’ Blair rolls her eyes. ‘It’s too mainstream to show up once in a while.’
‘Oh, it is so on,’ Dan turns and walks to the door, tossing her a bottle of water he filled up in the sink. ‘Ready? Wait, where’s my phone?’
‘Probably where you left it this morning. I’m sure if you whistle for it-’ Blair glances meaningfully at the door. ‘Oh, come on, Humphrey, who are we going to call?’
*
Blair bites off three sexual frustrations jokes on the first incline. It doesn’t do to cut too close to the quick, after all.
*
They do a circuit of the lodges.
They have to duck behind a tree to stop laughing at number fourteen - my publisher says they always give it to eccentrics - where the window is open and a shredder is sitting by it. They sneak closer, Dan tugging her sleeve to pull her behind a tree trunk when they see a cartload of shredded paper come out of the window and into a white tub waiting there. A few strands drift off like freed wisps of smoke, curling joyfully along the path until they disappear from view.
‘That’s littering,’ Blair hisses.
‘And he’s evil, clearly,’ Dan nods, tugging her when she starts to move towards the window to give the eccentric a piece of her mind.
‘I wonder if it’s a site-specific installation,’ Dan tilts his head, arms still around Blair.
Who says, ‘Continue.’
‘Well, he’s feeding the pages from the typewriter straight into the shredder and the shredder straight into the white, weather-exposed tub, so anything made from the tub would be a commentary on the ephemeral nature of prose as an art form - you know, how they only exist as a whole for a moment, figuratively speaking, before they become something else to other eyes, losing nuance and small pieces on the way.’
Blair stares at him until he meets her eyes and shakes her head very slowly. They’ve never agreed on some kinds of art, after all.
Then she breaks away and runs, stray shredded curls dancing around her feet and Dan struggling to catch up.
*
They tumble back down the hill towards their cabin, grinning, leaf-tossing and bumping shoulders like five year olds.
Blair pauses on the porch and looks out across the hills and greenery. She can suddenly see where she would be, could be, could have been a thousand times: New York balconies that are her own, European hotel suites, and of all of them to actually come to pass, she’s on a cabin porch in the middle of nowhere. It is beyond unexpected.
Dan holds the door open and gestures.
Blair looks at him. ‘You know I’m totally Bogarting the shower for a good twenty minutes and I won’t even be sorry about it.’
Dan shakes his head, which of course leads to a hair situation she can’t even acknowledge. ‘You’re going to beat me anyway.’
*
Except it’s like daylight is Manhattan and Brooklyn is night and they’re 2010/11 all over again, because they do talk about it, just not when they have to admit it and just not when they have to look at each other. But backs flat on the bed and hands close enough to touch, they can manage.
It starts the day after they have the argument on the porch that Blair storms away from.
‘Everybody knows. Who is ‘everyone’?’
He lists them.
‘Serena. Serena knows.’
‘How?’
‘Georgina. Why am I not surprised.’
‘It’s funny how you’re using everybody else’s opinions to get to your own and they aren’t even here.’
‘Because it’s the easiest thing to talk about and I could use a bit of easy communication lately.’
*
Blair feels like her eyes are straining when she finishes her third book in two days that could double as retro-attractive doorstops (in someone else’s house. Someone who frequents Regretsy without shame in their heart).
‘You know, I’ve been wondering what I’ve been waiting on all day, but you don’t even miss it at all, do you? Emails, phone calls and going, I don’t know, out.’
Dan turns in his seat at the desk. ‘Hey, I miss it. Well.’ He frowns and looks at the floor. ‘I miss knowing I can walk out of the door and in five minutes I can get lost in a crowd, or go into an art gallery, or find a used bookstore, or a cafe I haven’t tried. The rest, not so much.’
‘Thank God,’ Blair puts the book down and points at him. ‘I never thought I’d say this about someone from Brooklyn, Humphrey, but I thought for a day there you’d gone all woodman on me and it was Blair Waldorf vs. Nature: the showdown.’
‘Never,’ Dan says with one side of his mouth quirking. ‘You’ve got me, Waldorf, and I can wield a frying pot in our defense as well as you if I have to.’
*
After one of the quiet, nothing kind of days Blair finds foreign to her experience:
‘Chuck loves you. In his own diabolical way.’
‘Serena loves you. In her own trying-to-be constant way. I can’t decide which one of them hates us more right now.’
‘....’
‘And yet we seem to be so much better for them when we’re not trying to be with them.’
‘It does keep me awake at night, thinking about a Chuck Bass wholly lacking in redeeming features, even if those features are mainly other people.’
‘And Serena?’
*
From: Chuck Bass
To: Dan Humphrey, Blair Waldorf, Blair Waldorf
Time: 1030
Clearly you are not within the range of Gossip Girl. You must tell me how you achieved this someday, when I’m not telling you that you should check it.
From: Dan Humphrey
To: Chuck Bass
Time: 1119
Wow. How does it feel to be Monaco’s most recent high profile mass employer? I’m not even going to ask you how much that public apology/stunt cost. I just hope you didn’t have to sacrifice putting three houses and a hotel on Mayfair for it.
From: Chuck Bass
To: Dan Humphrey
Time: 1121
You really need to investigate the difference between show and tell, paperback writer, as well as the rules of Monopoly as played in decent circles.
From: Dan Humphrey
To: Chuck Bass
Time: 1122
Go away, Chuck. /Some/ of us don’t have international roaming packages and I don’t feel like paying $4 per witticism.
*
Dan scowls up at the screen of his phone, which he’s holding above his head while he lies on the sofa reading pages of longhand drafts of the Inside sequel.
‘No, that’s it, put the phone- Dan, phone in the drawer. In the drawer, now.’
Blair picks up his running shoes from the side of the couch with a wrinkle of her nose. She throws them at him and walks up the stairs.
‘We’re going out. At least try to dress appropriately.’
Dan looks down at the shoe that landed on his chest, sole flat, as if it can offer advice. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
*
The day after her first run:
‘Serena and I have been apart long enough that I can see how it ended, and that’s enough, now.’
‘...I can see how that happens. You’ll have to write the book. It’s not something I’m going to be able to explain to Chuck without Abelard and Heloise references.’
“‘....You know, beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you?’”
‘That would do it.’
*
Blair takes the second shower after the run. Dan moves from the sofa as he hears the shower stop, boiling the water for tea. After the baby, Blair had begun ordering caffienated coffee again without ever mentioning it, but he knows she still has a soft spot for decent herbal tea.
There’s two steaming mugs on the coffee table by the time Blair makes her way down the stairs.
Blair’s fingertips are nearly touching the handle of the mug when they curl back into a clenched fist at a knock on the door.
Dan looks at her - he can’t imagine he’s as pale as she is. He gestures to the kitchen with a questioning glance. Blair nods and moves quietly off of the sofa, feet padding lightly on the wooden floor and rugs.
‘Dan! Buddy! Open the damn door. Nobody knows I’m here and it’s just me out here. Freezing my toes off.’
Blair looks around the corner, rolling her eyes, and walks to the door without a care for the sound of her feet on the floor. She yanks the door open and puts herself in the middle of the doorway.
‘Nate, what the heck are you doing here? And what the hell are you wearing?’
Dan scrambles up from the sofa and walks to the front door, where Blair is looking Nate up and down like he’s teleported in from Planet WTF. Dan can’t deny he’s a picture, all right. Hill walking boots, so clearly lying about the toes, plaid shirt and red quilted body warmer with an incongruous white woolen hat Dan has totally seen before, but he can’t remember where.
‘What? I didn’t want to draw attention. Besides, unlike some people, I had time to get in the zone and pack before I drove up here.’
‘This-’ Blair gestures, then sees Dan leaning against the door frame, ‘is the twilight zone of attire. I can’t deal with this. He’s yours today,’ she says to Dan, then turns. ‘Where did you even come from? Where’s your car?’
Nate grins wider, if that was even possible and tells them.
‘YOU are the madman in number fourteen?’ Blair blinks and Dan laughs, holding on to the door frame because of course Nate is. ‘I take it back, you’ll just encourage whatever this is. And it’s a good thing you have your own accommodation sorted, because this-’ Blair gestures to the three of them, ‘would be an entirely unacceptable bathroom to people ratio. I mean, it sucks already, but this would be beyond reasonable.’
‘I think I’m insulted, Blair. Wounded,’ Dan replies, straightening.
‘Hurt, even,’ Nate finishes, and if they were the type to high five, this would be a moment.
‘Oh please, you were justifying his actions before you even knew it was him!’ Blair sticks out a hand and raises her eyebrow, looking between the two of them as Nate grins. ‘You’re ridiculous! Give me - that is my woolen hat, and if anyone needs me, I’ll be using it to cover my ears.’ The door closes quite firmly behind her, hat in hand.
Nate turns Dan, still grinning. ‘So she seems better than expected. How’re you, man? Oh, where’s your fridge? I have beer in my backpack with your name on it, and some pink stuff in a bottle that I know Blair will deign to swallow.’
Dan runs a hand through his hair and looks down the two steps. He gestures to Nate’s outfit. ‘Is that a - no, I’m not even gonna ask about the - jacket. Beer sounds good. Come on in.’
Nate does.
*
After they’ve fed Nate leftovers and toast - what do you mean you’ve been living on take out. We’re in the middle of nowhere! There’s no such thing as take out! - Blair dispatches Dan to fourteen to retrieve the contents of Nate’s trunk.
‘Spill it,’ Dan says flat out as they walk down the track to Nate’s cabin, hands in his pockets. ‘Who gave us up?’
‘Your dad held out for about a day then forwarded the email from your publisher with all the maps,’ Nate replies, shrugging. ‘I phoned and they said nobody wanted fourteen for some reason, so I could head straight on up. Don’t give your dad too much hell for it - I was kinda a pain the ass.’
‘Shocker,’ Dan replies, already composing the start of a phone rant. ‘But thanks.’
Nate’s cabin is the one with the tub of shredded papers after all. Dan shakes his head. ‘Please tell me I’m not responsible for the death of a thousand trees.’
‘One of those exhibitions you dragged me to when Blair was busy - yeah, I didn’t think I was your first choice art buddy - gave me the idea,’ Nate pushes the front door open. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve already set up a tree planting programme in your name and it’s all recycled paper in the first place. Besides, it’s the ideal cover for being here without producing anything that anyone will actually try to read.’
Dan shakes his head. ‘If you say so.’ Just because he has a trust fund of his own and years of experience with the Upper East Side doesn’t mean he can always tell when they’re joking.
And stops.
‘You’ve been here a week, right?’
Nate nods, picking his way through the cabin. ‘Something like that.’
Dan looks around at the stuff piled up on various surfaces. ‘I thought you were, you know, a neat freak.’
‘I live with Chuck Bass, maniacal minimalist,’ Nate shrugs, ‘and you know, I like to keep things neat when I’m working. But this is a vacation so whatever, I’ll find it when I pack it. Hey, do you think we’ll have time to play paintball?’
Nate throws Dan a paintball rifle, which he stares at.
‘It’s cool if we won’t. I had my xbox and HD plasma sent up on Friday because it was too quiet to sleep. You can come round for Call of Duty if you want and I won’t even mention that you’re checking on your phone like it’s a wounded bird.’
Dan throws the rifle back at him and grins, putting the phone back in his pocket. He points at the hollow under the stairs that looks like the one in his and Blair’s cabin. ‘Suitcases are over there, right?’
Blair claps her hands together like it’s Christmas when they come back up the hill with three suitcases and a hold all between them.
She stares behind them and looks at Dan with reproach. He frowns. Then he hears Nate say, ‘Hey buddy. Much better than the luxury kennel Chuck wanted me to drop you off at, right?’
Dan turns to see Nate greeting the dog that everyone is surprised Chuck has managed to keep alive without hiring a nanny. Dan grins and uses his foot to balance the case against his hip and pets Monkey behind the ears. ‘Hey old pal. How’s life on the Upper East Side treating you?’
He looks at Blair when Monkey is finished circling him like a long lost friend. ‘Okay, this is actually my fault. But hey! Suitcases!’
*
Blair directs them to put the suitcases upstairs and then shoos them off the upper level.
‘I feel like I’m interrupting something,’ Nate says, flopping down on the couch.
Dan looks up at him from where he’s rifling through his own suitcase and hold all. ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’
‘Shut up, I meant Blair’s love affair with her care packages,’ Nate shoots back. ‘Gonna get me one of those beers I brought all the way up the hill for you?’
Dan stands up and starts another round of tea. Nate rolls his eyes but takes the mug anyway. Blair hugs her hairdryer to her chest as he steps onto the upper level and relaxes when she spots the mug. He leans across to sit it down by the pile of carefully folded and extremely expensive jumpers. Blair makes a noise and points. He moves it to the left. She makes another noise. He gives her a look that he hopes says really in anyone’s language.
‘If anything’s missing it’s not my fault!’ Nate shouts up. ‘Serena and Dorota packed yours and Rufus packed Dan’s!’
Dan frowns and leans over the wooden railing that stops them falling ten feet in the morning. ‘God, is everyone in on this?’
‘Pretty much,’ Nate replies. ‘Well, this place is need to know, but they did want to be sure you had supplies. Serena was deeply saddened by my lack of space for multiple coats in particular.’
Blair and Dan mutter something about ‘traitors’ at the same time.
*
After that night when they talk about Serena and Chuck, they don’t talk so much about it.
It’s like they’ve gone so far on a flow chart, but all of the arrows are pointing at blank bubbles. They’ve cleared the ground, so now what?
*
The next morning, Nate shows up at the door with wide eyes, a rumbling stomach, and his food basket.
Dan waves him in with a yawn, shouts up to Blair, and puts him to work making the coffee.
By the time Blair has made herself suitably presentable, there’s food on the table.
Dan doesn’t realise how often he just reaches when Blair’s around until he sees Nate following the movements every time. Blair walks behind his chair and her hand grazes his shoulder.
‘Wait, B,’ Nate calls, grabbing the last bit of toast from the little rack, ‘I’ll run with you. Leave Secret Window.com with the dishes.’
Nate calls to Monkey from the door. Monkey tilts his head at him and looks at Dan, standing at the bin with the plates and the leftovers, and his tongue rolls out of his mouth.
Nate shrugs. ‘Your loss, buddy.’
*
Dan never finds out what they talk about, if they talk at all, just that Blair leaves Nate at the porch, hugging him from the higher ground. Nate shakes his head, looking serious for once, and walks down the track.
Blair walks into the cabin and shouts, ‘Monkey! Follow!’
Monkey gives Dan a sad look from his position across his legs while Blair says, ‘Humphrey I cannot believe you let him up on the sofa. Monkey, follow. Nate has sticks. Dogs like sticks!’
Dan shrugs and points at the door, loose sheets in the other hand and pen behind his ear. ‘Sorry, pal. You heard the lady.’
Blair sighs and closes the door behind him, then gives his legs a look. Dan moves onto Monkey’s patch without a word. Blair sits and swings her legs up across his, plucking her latest book from the side table.
Dan sits his papers on his lap and tilts his head at her.
Without looking up, Blair says, ‘You look like Monkey when you do that, which is appropriate given your attitude to hair upkeep is similar.’
‘First thing you’ve done after every run for the past fortnight is hit the shower until the birds migrate,’ Dan comments. ‘What gives?’
Blair still doesn’t look up. ‘Didn’t do much running. More walking. If I’d been thinking ahead I would have luxuriated in my newly-returned coat.’ She turns the page. ‘Nate is going to come over tonight with some reading material. You don’t have to read it.’
Dan narrows his eyes but picks up his papers again. ‘I’ll be around.’
Blair turns another page.
*
After dinner, Nate arrives with his laptop bag, a canvas shopper full of newspapers and magazines, and his backpack.
Dan clears his notebooks and loose papers off of the coffee table. Blair’s hands curl around the mug that she’s holding with both hands and she exhales. ‘Right then. You know the drill.’
With the single-minded efficiency of three people with print media experience and public relations headaches, they set to splitting the hard copies into piles. Nate opens a folder on his desk top which turns out to be screenshots of Gossip Girl articles from the past week and a half.
Halfway through, they switch to beer and wine.
Nate takes a walk to the kitchen and takes a geological era to put olives and chips in a couple of bowls when they get to the pile designated ‘Chuck’s adventures in Monaco’ and Blair slips a hand into Dan’s. There’s pictures of him meeting his new executives, pictures of him at press conferences with Blair’s - God, her mother in law - in expensive hotel lobbies. And of course, there's candid 'exclusives' of him with women, different every time.
‘He’s doing an excellent job of occupying his time, investing his inheritance and distracting the global media,’ Nate comments as he sits down. ‘They’re so focused on him they haven’t noticed how thin that ‘secluded honeymoon’ story actually is, or noticed that they’d usually have got their hands on one leaked bikini shot by now.’ He gestures at the pile for the fake honeymoon press.
‘Louis shouldn’t have gone through with it,’ Blair says after a moment, eyes hard when she looks up. ‘It was like showing your neck to a viper - I didn’t know how far their pride would go, but they won’t do anything to show that they’re less than forgiving. He’s working that public apology angle for all its worth - probably all the way to the bank.’
‘And Serena is holding fort in the Upper East Side,’ Nate taps his finger on the pile for ‘friends and family stalked by press since the wedding’.
Dan holds up an article, ‘and all without confirming or denying that we’ve “broken up,” with the help of my publishers, of course, which keeps them from even thinking to look for both of us.’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘I admit I’m impressed. This is seriously competent mobilisation.’
Nate holds up a mocking toast.
Blair smiles a little sadly. ‘You say it like we’re lacking in practice.’
There’s a beat of silence before they all stand up at once. They open another bottle of the fizzy pink by general consensus and clear away the proof that the world goes on.
*
After that, it’s a sad, inevitable slide into inebriation.
Blair curls up around the arm of the sofa, laughing hard and holding on for balance. ‘No, no, there will be no sympathetic beard growth! I forbid it. And you both love me, so you won’t. And I love you both, so I won’t let you.’
‘But Blair-’ Nate argues from the other side of the sofa, ‘Blair, you’re not seeing my point of view here. We’re in the woods with a dog!’
Monkey raises his head from his post by the door and then puts it back down again.
‘At a writer’s- writer’s -’ Blair frowns and looks at Dan, who is sitting on the floor with his head tilted and leaning on his arms, which are folded on the coffee table. ‘Humphrey! What-’
‘Retreat - park - place,’ Dan blinks slowly and answers. ‘Creative space.’ He sounds utterly stoned, which is funny, because they’re drinking. But each to their own.
‘Heeeeey, we’re neighbours. I’m being neighbourly. We never have neighbours back home,’ Nate says, sitting up and imparting this realisation gravely.
‘We are!’
‘We are!’
Blair and Dan look at each other.
‘JINX.’
They glare at each other. Silently.
‘Creepy,’ Nate draws out, then lurches to his feet. ‘Well, if you’re gonna be like that, I’m going back to my cabin to not shave.’
‘That makes no sense,’ Dan says, pushing himself to his feet. ‘And anyway, it’s not like your midnight shadow will make a beard.’
‘Spoiling it, Dan!’
Blair pokes Dan in the arm. ‘You should- you should go to the door. Watch him walk down the hill. With Monkey.’
Dan nods and points at the door. ‘Good plan. Excellent plan. Laptop - tomorrow, come back.’
Nate nods mournfully. ‘You know, if your cabin weren’t prehistoric, I’d have emailed you.’
They look at him. ‘You have internet?!’
He looks at them. ‘So young. So young. You have a phoneline, don’t you? I phoned somebody. They gave me internet.’
They kick him out.
Nate yawns on the porch and looks between them. ‘You know, if they find us, I’ll totally do a Shall Not... Pass. With my paintball gun. So you can... run away again. Because you’re like, the best people I know. The best.’
Blair hugs Nate and sniffs. ‘That’s a really stupid idea that you shouldn’t do at all but it’s nice that you thought it. I worry about you, Nate.’
Dan and Nate have a man hug one shoulder thing and Blair ‘hmmphs’ and pushes Dan’s lower back. Dan says, ‘’preciate it,’ and steps back. ‘You’re just worried Dan likes me better and would stay.’
‘He doesn’t.’
‘I don’t.’
‘See?’ Nate throws a stick ahead of him and waves his phone. ‘I’ll do the thing. When I get to the …. place.’
They nod seriously.
‘THE BEST,’ he shouts from the edge of the trees.
*
It’s because they’re completely drunk that talking about not talking about something seems to make sense.
‘Maybe, maybe it’s like this book I’m trying to write.’
‘I don’t know if I want to be in your book this time. But sorry, what do you mean?’
‘You’re not in this one. No, wait, you’re in the other one. Not you you, if you know what I mean -’
‘I really don’t.’
‘There’s two. The you from Inside is in one. You’re not in the other one. Nobody’s in the other one. That one is my favourite.’
‘You need wall charts and coloured post it notes.’
‘I do.’
‘Also it sounds like one of those books where nothing happens, so the New York Times will love it, since it doesn’t have anybody in it and nothing happens and you’re a pretty young man.’
‘Heeeeey, I mean nobody we know is in it. Do you really think?’
‘God, Humphrey, we were - you were - maybe we should talk about this instead.’
‘No, no, I remember. We’re not talking about things, but that doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about it. I mean, sometimes I sit down to write and think-’
‘’This is the day I rewrite the great American novel?’”
‘Ha, you’re funny. What I mean is, it’s all already there, because you’ve been thinking about it when you didn’t mean to, like it’s in the oven and you’re doing something in another room.’
‘That sounds like a plan. I like this plan.’
‘It’s a plan?’
‘It’s a bit of a plan, and I’m going to improvise, and it’ll be fine.’
‘You’re warm.’
‘I’m sleepy. Stop moving around and keep me that way.’
*
Blair wakes up and grabs the first phone, then extricates herself from Dan and crawls to the bathroom. She does not look at the mirror. She doesn’t want to know. The tiles are white and bright and glint in the winter sun streaming in. Blair thinks lustfully of tall buildings and cloud cover.
She sees a text from Nate and clicks it.
dog barking dog ow head this is not happening immediate evac
And another:
why did you have to be in the one up the hill whyyyy dude
And another:
better be fried things when I get there I’m telling you
And yet another:
fine you’re not up your head must not hurt like mine or else you WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO SLEEP i’m going back to bed i hate you and your works
She laughs, winces at the sound and then realises it’s Dan’s phone.
Then she shrugs and slips the phone back to his side of the bed. When she checks her own she finds similar plaintive cries. As she turns back to the bathroom Dan he reaches for his phone and clutches the cool touch screen to his forehead.
*
Nate arrives two hours later with the blanket from his bed and camps out in their living room. Then he illustrates the way that take out can be obtained (this is a hotel in bits. you phone room service) and Blair keeps out of the sightline from the doorway while Nate receives three different kinds of pizza.
They rewatch the last five episodes of season two of The West Wing on Nate’s laptop and everybody cries. Nate and Dan mouth along with the speech in the cathedral. Dan and Nate mouth along with the speech in the cathedral.
Blair pauses between the kitchen and the living area on a chip bowl run and realises that she was drunk last night, but she isn’t checking the internet for pictures. She sits the plate down on the coffee table to positive mutters and Dan hitting the space bar on the laptop.
‘Imagine nights without Gossip Girl.’
Dan and Nate look at each other.
‘There might be something we want to do about that,’ Nate says.
*
They’re lying as if they’re about to have a conversation when Blair slips her hand into Dan’s. He pulls her across onto her own side of the bed with him and they sleep.
*
One phone rings.
Then another.
Then Blair’s again.
And the cabin phone.
They snap into waking with their eyes locked on each other’s and break apart to take a phone each.
Dan frowns at the handset, holds it against his ear again as Blair takes her own.
‘I’m phoning all the phones with both of mine,’ Nate says, ‘the guy I paid off at the site office and Chuck and your dad just woke me up, in that order. They’re coming. Security, no press.’
Dan and Blair look at each other. ‘Shit.’
*
Ten minutes later, Dan finishes throwing anything remotely incriminating into the hollow under the stairs. He lifts two hold alls as quickly as he can while Blair showers. He runs up the stairs. ‘How am I packing these?’
Blair holds up a dress, pale and determined in the dark blue bathrobe.
He nods and pauses at the top of the stairs. ‘I’m with you until you say the word.’
Blair nods.
Dan hears a noise downstairs and runs down. The more recognisable form of Nate Archibald slips into the kitchenette, toeing off hiking boots and putting on the six hundred dollar shoes in his hand.
Nate puts out three mugs and sets to work on the coffee, nodding to Dan. ‘I’ll keep an eye out.’
Dan heads back up the stairs, ignores his phone, which is ringing again, and throws open his own bag. Blair pauses in applying her make up to lean over the railing, ‘Nate, did you pack that blue blazer with the white shirt?’
‘Blue suit carrier,’ he shouts back.
Blair walks over to Dan, shoulders him slightly to the side and goes through the bag until she finds it laid flat. She pushes it to his chest. ‘Trust me.’
*
When they come, they come in blacked out cars.
Dan and Nate flank Blair as she faces down the man who would have been the head of her security.
Nate clasps his hands behind his back and mildly repeats that he’ll be staying, thank you, and his people can handle the baggage, until they mutter curses and turn on Blair and Dan.
Blair pointedly repeats, ‘my friend will accompany me’ until they mutter about phoning the prince and someone replies, ‘if you think he’ll answer.’
Blair negotiates until there’s a compromise everyone hates, which is, apparently, the very core of diplomacy. She calls the mayor and hands over her wedding ring and jewelry piece by piece. Then adds a birthday gift from Louis with a smile.
The mayor sends a helicopter and four NYPD officers.
Dan presses his foot against Blair’s in the back of the helicopter as they leave the Grimaldi security on the ground, getting smaller and smaller.
*
Four days later, Dan and Blair stand in the foyer of her apartment and hug each other - hard.
‘Good luck for today,’ they say.
‘Thanks,’ they say.
They walk in different directions.
*
Blair walks into the room with the lawyers with her mother beside her, her phone in her pocket, and one fabulous hat on her head.
She sits down and looks coolly at the suits across the table, none of them her in laws, none of them her husband by law. This is how it’s done, she can hear an adviser saying to her in another life. You send people. You preserve the image. They say things you shouldn’t, do unsavoury things so you don’t have to and the people will love you.
Blair takes a breath, nods to her mother and raises her head.
People love her. She’d rather be her own kind of drama and her own kind of brave than bravely make peace to preserve someone else’s image, or come to the point where she goes through a divorce in another room between bites of toast and calls it efficiency.
She uses the word ‘separation’ without a hitch in her voice.
*
Dan meets his agent in the foyer of the building with his publisher in it.
She nods tightly and gestures to the elevator.
They walk through the rows of cubicles to the office where the editors are waiting behind the glass.
Dan waves off a cup of their ridiculous coffee in take out cups.
He takes a breath and sits two brown A4 envelopes on the table. ‘One of these has the first half of the sequel to Inside, and it’s yours, and I wrote it, because it was easy. The other has something I give a damn about, and it’s just the first four chapters and a pitch, because it’s not easy, but it is better. They are both worth your time.’
*
Dinner at the penthouse is a group affair.
Dan takes a yellow cab from the New York Public Library, where he’s secreted himself between stacks and read and read all day; Chuck comes straight from the airport; Nate sends the rest of his convoy on and comes upstairs.
Blair takes the longest, hottest shower of her life after the endless meetings of the day, then takes a cup of sweet tea from Serena. There’s apologies there, on both sides, and she leans her head on her best friend’s shoulder to make them. Serena says, ‘It’s okay - it’s going to be okay. And it’s okay, B.’
Nate, Dan and Serena sit on the sofas in the parlour and talk about what they know about Gossip Girl. Dan thinks about the last time they did that in a waiting room and shudders, hand tightening around his beer bottle. He turns to the door with a hand on the phone at his hip in time to see Blair’s head drop, and her hand squeezing Chuck’s. He takes a breath and turns back to Serena and Nate.
Chuck comes in a moment later and says, ‘You’re in my seat.’
Dan raises an eyebrow but stands and walks out into the corridor. Mindful of the sightline, he pulls the door closed behind him.
Blair stands in the middle of the corridor and lets out a breath when she sees him. He slips his arms around her and says, ‘So that was today. What’s next?’
He feels her hands lightly pressing his sides and drops his forehead to her shoulder. Blair says, ‘Tomorrow. Obviously.’
END.
Fandom: Gossip Girl
Rating: PG13
Words: 8,000 [3/12 for 12in2012]
Spoilers: for 5x13, inevitably AU after 5x14.
Summary: [Dan/Blair, Nate] Queen B and Lonely Boy in a log cabin. Sounds a bit like a song you used to know, doesn’t it? Blair and Dan: the retreat, and the rest. Sequel to I tell you all the time.
Notes: this continues to be hariboo’s fault. It picks up where I tell you all the time left off, so you could read it, but if not, all you need to know is that post-wedding, Dan and Blair have run off to a log cabin for Dan’s ‘writing retreat’ and maybe admitted they aren’t entirely platonic, not that they’re talking about it, god forbid.
I could have left the first one alone. But I hated the ending. Mostly because I knew it wasn’t the ending? SO HERE WE ARE AGAIN. Enjoy.
*
Of course, no coy admission of feelings that might be felt has ever helped anyone named Waldorf and even less anyone named Humphrey.
Which is why, New Yorkers, no one can be surprised that things have gone to hell in a log cabin. Queen B and Lonely Boy in a log cabin. Sounds a bit like a song you used to know, doesn’t it? You know you love me.
*
It’s exactly one week since Blair’s wedding day that she wakes up screaming and counts herself lucky not to fall out of the ludicrously small bed. If it were her own bed, there would be none of this nearly falling out nonsense, because she has rugs and people and -
Gossip Girl is narrating her dreams, now, which should totally be illegal, but there is no other logical explanation. There is no way anyone knows Blair Waldorf is in a log cabin and it’s not like the cabin even has a decent internet connection, because that would be a distraction to the writing genius, apparently. She misses Netflix. Dan says he doesn’t but Dan is a horrible liar.
For five seconds Blair genuinely doesn’t know what to be more horrified about in all of that.
And then she falls out of the bed.
*
Dan, having dried and tidied the dinner dishes, is wandering the kitchenette between the living area and the back porch with a towel flipped over his shoulders - he thinks that he might whistle, he thinks he might try to write today - when he hears a scream that’s eight parts drama and two parts Blair Waldorf from the upper landing.
‘Ugh, why do you have a dish cloth? Or is that one of your hipster scarf moments? It looks like a bear chewed it. Oh God, are there bears now?’
He scaled the timber steps without thinking or, as noted, de-accessorising.
‘Gosh darn, I can’t believe I forgot to take off the last thing I put on,’ he retorts and swings the towel over one shoulder like he’s back behind a bar. ‘Disappointing generations of dedicated fashionistas by nine am. The day’s a wash out. Best not bother with the coffee pot.’
Blair narrows her eyes from the centre of the pile of quilts and blankets on the floor. Her hair is orderly until the headband and then all bets are off. Dan knows she’s stolen his soft plaid pj bottoms from the top of his bag because he can see the cuffs of them on the foot that’s poking out of the pile of linens.
‘I knew you were eyeing up those when you crashed at mine,’ he crows, grinning.
‘Humphrey!’ Blair fights her way half out of the blankets and points downstairs. ‘Boundaries! Coffee!’ Like she’s still his fake boss or something, but whatever, he knows who won this round and it’s totally not the person wearing the pants. Ha.
‘Sure you’re gonna be all right? I mean, that’s a pretty impressive fort and you’re only so high on heels, so I could help -’
‘If you do not retire to the kitchenette so help me God we’ll be drinking my coffee and I know that’s not a future you want to experience.’
It only ruins the murderous glare a little that the headband sinks down across Blair’s nose when she nods for emphasis. Dan makes a run for it.
*
Blair comes out of the shower and quickly dresses in the things in her bag that look most like her own. She still feels like a hobo with a goth problem, but there’s hardly any mirrors in the cabin, so she’ll probably deal with it without accidentally blinding herself by catching a glimpse.
With a glare to the top of the stairs, she shoves the plaid pyjama bottoms under the pillow on her side of the bed. (She insisted on sides, even though they don’t sleep in it at the same time most nights. It’s important.)
There’s toast and bread and coffee and eggs and fruit and a steaming sink of hot water with steeping pots.
It reminds her of the time she spent three days not talking to her dad and Roman after she arrived in France and then, when she eventually asked for the other vinegar, a whole shelf of them appeared from the local deli.
She sits at the table and carefully takes a fork or spoonful from every offered delicacy.
Blair would have made one hell of a professional royal diplomat.
*
Dan does the dishes without a word while Blair eats tiny squares of toast. (Who does that? Blair, of course.)
He’s aware she probably thinks he’s pathetic, but they’ve lived the last week on carbs and crying, so the fact that she’s eating a meal of more than cereal and more than ‘no, thank you’ makes him want to mass text everyone they know like Jenny used to.
‘So what do we do with the day?’
Dan shrugs and slings the towel back across his shoulder. ‘Nothing. Anything. It’s a blank slate.’
‘And you’re a bad brochure,’ she points at him with a fork. ‘No, really. What do we do? The last week does not count - I was clearly in shock.’
Dan grins. ‘And yet we engineered a near-perfect escape from New York.’
‘Just tell me that isn’t one of the films on your laptop,’ Blair raises an eyebrow.
‘Nah,’ he answers, turning back to the sink. ‘Never got it. L.A. is so underrated.’
Blair groans and he hears the gurgle of more coffee being poured. ‘Will you write about your experiences as a disenfranchised bar person? Because it looks like you’re researching.’
Dan laughs and turns, throwing a glass over his shoulder and catching it on the turn. ‘Why, would you be impressed?’
‘I’d be impressed if you shaved,’ Blair rolls her eyes. ‘Honestly, even scruffy bar types in sitcoms shave, and don’t say you haven’t got a razor with you, because I saw it when I was stealing your pyjamas.’
*
By eleven am, Blair is running a finger along the bookshelves that are built into the underside of the stairs and along the back wall of the living area. Dan is settled at the desk, typing away on the only laptop they have, and it hits Blair how one turn here and one there and this, this could be a life.
Probably someone else’s and relocated to a decent penthouse, but a life.
It makes her feet itch.
‘I’m going for a run,’ she announces.
Dan pauses and turns half in the chair. ‘Seriously? You run?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ Blair answers, pulling out her bag and his, ‘I have a regime. However, I don’t see a gym with power plate and toning weights in the vicinity, do you? So this week only, I may run. You really didn’t see the interview where they asked how I kept so svelte?’
Dan ducks his head and looks back up, loosely gripping the edge of the chair. ‘Actually, I didn’t. What was it in, Seventeen?’
‘To be fair,’ Blair tosses her hair as she climbs the stairs, ‘I did a lot of interviews.’
Dan is a horrible liar.
‘At least I’m more honest than some princesses. Ha! As if anyone believes she doesn’t work out-’
*
Blair runs in his favourite sweat pants and a plain tight top of Jenny’s. At this rate, he’s going to have nothing left to wear but Jenny’s purple skinny jeans and his dry clean only wedding suit.
He shrugs and turns back to the laptop, where a cursor blinks at him.
When that doesn’t work, he moves his cell (two bars, Blair has hers) to the desk next to the laptop.
What’s really missing is coffee. He makes a pot, then sets the steel pot on the warm ring so it’ll keep.
He looks back at the desk and the mid-sentence cursor and grimaces. On Inside, he had material he’d never run out of and no real care for the feelings at stake. Considering the last six months of his life he’s had a bizarre friendship, a fake relationship and two full time jobs (royal moral support and burgeoning author), he shouldn’t be short of it now. But protecting the people in his stranger-than-fiction life has never felt like so keenly like a duty of his.
He flashes back to the pitch meeting from hell and groans, pushing through the kitchen back door with a mug in hand.
The view is a panorama of hill, hill, green and the odd roof poking through, like the cover of his first copy of The Hobbit. For a minute he thinks, freedom. Remnants. Then he thinks, fuck it.
*
Blair makes a note in her iPhone to fire the personal trainer. She looks great, yes, but if the zombie apocalypse cometh, she’s screwed, because she’s out of breath after two sweet alpine hills. How did he think this was somehow prepared for royal life? Ridiculous.
It’s funny, though, how much lighter she feels than when she’s trying to achieve harmony and a centre of balance on a machine with blinking lights.
A gulp of water later, and a quick look at her phone (three bars, no roaming), she forces herself up the next hill, old buds in her ears and a Serena playlist on shuffle (DJ phase. Of course Serena had a DJ phase).
It’s funny how much lighter she feels with nothing but borrowed clothes and things she thought she’d left behind.
*
Dan doesn’t register Blair coming back in, headphones in and fingers flying across the keys.
Blair stops at the bottom of the stairs. There’s a part of her mind screaming at her to get upstairs, get in the shower, before he sees, but the rest is staring at the way his little finger stretches from the keyboard every time he pauses to touch the edge of the phone. His head doesn’t turn, so she assumes it’s like that thing he does with his hair that he doesn’t seem to know about, either.
She smiles and heads up to the shower.
*
‘We should put in a load of washing,’ Dan says later, unplugging his headphones and turning to look at Blair, who’s curled up on the sofa with a book, wearing Jenny’s purple jeans. He’s surprised: he thought she was allergic to denim that wasn’t a high-fashion tribute to actual denim.
‘Yes,’ she replies without looking up, ‘you should.’
‘Dinner dishes or no dice,’ Dan bargains. He figures he’s going to lose spectacularly, but it’s worth a shot.
An eyebrow followed by another and eventually Blair’s eyes appear over the top of the book that looks thick and translated. ‘Use less than two pots cooking it and we might be getting somewhere.’
Dan turns back to the document. ‘Deal.’
‘I said ‘might’,’ Blair reminds him absent-mindedly, ‘and you will rinse them out so the sauces don’t stick while we eat.’
*
After dinner, the laptop migrates from the desk to the coffee table and Dan uses the word ‘budge’ to Blair’s feet.
He doesn’t question when she skips straight past Funny Face and Roman Holiday on his hard drive, despite the Audrey factor, and puts her feet across his lap.
Brief Encounter still feels like self-indulgent punishment the second time around.
*
‘You made a complete noise in that corner, you know.’
Dan doesn’t react, but he doesn’t move his hand from around her ankle, either.
‘What were you writing? Escapades of the rich and famous, act two?’
There’s an edge in her voice and Dan smooths a thumb across her ankle.
‘Furthest thing from it, actually.’ He wonders if she’s going to ask to hear the pages. She looks like she’d like a story: her head is over the arm of the couch, her legs across his lap, one arm loose and voice blurred.
‘Whatever, Humphrey, just leave me out of your three act fantasies.’
He swallows. She doesn’t move her legs.
*
Blair wakes up in the true dark of the cabin and reaches out a hand for her phone. 0412.
She sits up with a groan, a crick in her neck complaining.
There’s blankets and the couch.
She finds her way to the stairs and uses the light from the phone to avoid crawling up them.
‘Dammit, Humphrey, that’s my side,’ she hisses. ‘And your paws are on my pillow - ugh.’
After rolling her eyes at the ceiling, Blair slides into the bed on the wrong side and uses Dan’s shoulder as a pillow. It’s somehow better than using his actual pillow, since he’s stolen hers.
*
The next morning, when someone’s alarm goes off, and someone falls over the other warm body to turn it off! now! and ends up with arms around them and head on their stomach, they add the whole night to the list of things they aren’t talking about.
*
‘Clearly you just want to come running with me so that I can illustrate the acute disadvantages of a posture practiced at a laptop six hours a day,’ Blair ties the sneakers she once left at the loft and looks at him.
‘Maybe I just need the endorphin rush of winning to keep writing,’ Dan says, tying his own shoes and grinning. ‘Positive reinforcement.’
‘Ha! As if. You obviously see a gym membership as a tax on good intentions, not a tool to be used,’ Blair rolls her eyes. ‘It’s too mainstream to show up once in a while.’
‘Oh, it is so on,’ Dan turns and walks to the door, tossing her a bottle of water he filled up in the sink. ‘Ready? Wait, where’s my phone?’
‘Probably where you left it this morning. I’m sure if you whistle for it-’ Blair glances meaningfully at the door. ‘Oh, come on, Humphrey, who are we going to call?’
*
Blair bites off three sexual frustrations jokes on the first incline. It doesn’t do to cut too close to the quick, after all.
*
They do a circuit of the lodges.
They have to duck behind a tree to stop laughing at number fourteen - my publisher says they always give it to eccentrics - where the window is open and a shredder is sitting by it. They sneak closer, Dan tugging her sleeve to pull her behind a tree trunk when they see a cartload of shredded paper come out of the window and into a white tub waiting there. A few strands drift off like freed wisps of smoke, curling joyfully along the path until they disappear from view.
‘That’s littering,’ Blair hisses.
‘And he’s evil, clearly,’ Dan nods, tugging her when she starts to move towards the window to give the eccentric a piece of her mind.
‘I wonder if it’s a site-specific installation,’ Dan tilts his head, arms still around Blair.
Who says, ‘Continue.’
‘Well, he’s feeding the pages from the typewriter straight into the shredder and the shredder straight into the white, weather-exposed tub, so anything made from the tub would be a commentary on the ephemeral nature of prose as an art form - you know, how they only exist as a whole for a moment, figuratively speaking, before they become something else to other eyes, losing nuance and small pieces on the way.’
Blair stares at him until he meets her eyes and shakes her head very slowly. They’ve never agreed on some kinds of art, after all.
Then she breaks away and runs, stray shredded curls dancing around her feet and Dan struggling to catch up.
*
They tumble back down the hill towards their cabin, grinning, leaf-tossing and bumping shoulders like five year olds.
Blair pauses on the porch and looks out across the hills and greenery. She can suddenly see where she would be, could be, could have been a thousand times: New York balconies that are her own, European hotel suites, and of all of them to actually come to pass, she’s on a cabin porch in the middle of nowhere. It is beyond unexpected.
Dan holds the door open and gestures.
Blair looks at him. ‘You know I’m totally Bogarting the shower for a good twenty minutes and I won’t even be sorry about it.’
Dan shakes his head, which of course leads to a hair situation she can’t even acknowledge. ‘You’re going to beat me anyway.’
*
Except it’s like daylight is Manhattan and Brooklyn is night and they’re 2010/11 all over again, because they do talk about it, just not when they have to admit it and just not when they have to look at each other. But backs flat on the bed and hands close enough to touch, they can manage.
It starts the day after they have the argument on the porch that Blair storms away from.
‘Everybody knows. Who is ‘everyone’?’
He lists them.
‘Serena. Serena knows.’
‘How?’
‘Georgina. Why am I not surprised.’
‘It’s funny how you’re using everybody else’s opinions to get to your own and they aren’t even here.’
‘Because it’s the easiest thing to talk about and I could use a bit of easy communication lately.’
*
Blair feels like her eyes are straining when she finishes her third book in two days that could double as retro-attractive doorstops (in someone else’s house. Someone who frequents Regretsy without shame in their heart).
‘You know, I’ve been wondering what I’ve been waiting on all day, but you don’t even miss it at all, do you? Emails, phone calls and going, I don’t know, out.’
Dan turns in his seat at the desk. ‘Hey, I miss it. Well.’ He frowns and looks at the floor. ‘I miss knowing I can walk out of the door and in five minutes I can get lost in a crowd, or go into an art gallery, or find a used bookstore, or a cafe I haven’t tried. The rest, not so much.’
‘Thank God,’ Blair puts the book down and points at him. ‘I never thought I’d say this about someone from Brooklyn, Humphrey, but I thought for a day there you’d gone all woodman on me and it was Blair Waldorf vs. Nature: the showdown.’
‘Never,’ Dan says with one side of his mouth quirking. ‘You’ve got me, Waldorf, and I can wield a frying pot in our defense as well as you if I have to.’
*
After one of the quiet, nothing kind of days Blair finds foreign to her experience:
‘Chuck loves you. In his own diabolical way.’
‘Serena loves you. In her own trying-to-be constant way. I can’t decide which one of them hates us more right now.’
‘....’
‘And yet we seem to be so much better for them when we’re not trying to be with them.’
‘It does keep me awake at night, thinking about a Chuck Bass wholly lacking in redeeming features, even if those features are mainly other people.’
‘And Serena?’
*
From: Chuck Bass
To: Dan Humphrey, Blair Waldorf, Blair Waldorf
Time: 1030
Clearly you are not within the range of Gossip Girl. You must tell me how you achieved this someday, when I’m not telling you that you should check it.
From: Dan Humphrey
To: Chuck Bass
Time: 1119
Wow. How does it feel to be Monaco’s most recent high profile mass employer? I’m not even going to ask you how much that public apology/stunt cost. I just hope you didn’t have to sacrifice putting three houses and a hotel on Mayfair for it.
From: Chuck Bass
To: Dan Humphrey
Time: 1121
You really need to investigate the difference between show and tell, paperback writer, as well as the rules of Monopoly as played in decent circles.
From: Dan Humphrey
To: Chuck Bass
Time: 1122
Go away, Chuck. /Some/ of us don’t have international roaming packages and I don’t feel like paying $4 per witticism.
*
Dan scowls up at the screen of his phone, which he’s holding above his head while he lies on the sofa reading pages of longhand drafts of the Inside sequel.
‘No, that’s it, put the phone- Dan, phone in the drawer. In the drawer, now.’
Blair picks up his running shoes from the side of the couch with a wrinkle of her nose. She throws them at him and walks up the stairs.
‘We’re going out. At least try to dress appropriately.’
Dan looks down at the shoe that landed on his chest, sole flat, as if it can offer advice. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
*
The day after her first run:
‘Serena and I have been apart long enough that I can see how it ended, and that’s enough, now.’
‘...I can see how that happens. You’ll have to write the book. It’s not something I’m going to be able to explain to Chuck without Abelard and Heloise references.’
“‘....You know, beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you?’”
‘That would do it.’
*
Blair takes the second shower after the run. Dan moves from the sofa as he hears the shower stop, boiling the water for tea. After the baby, Blair had begun ordering caffienated coffee again without ever mentioning it, but he knows she still has a soft spot for decent herbal tea.
There’s two steaming mugs on the coffee table by the time Blair makes her way down the stairs.
Blair’s fingertips are nearly touching the handle of the mug when they curl back into a clenched fist at a knock on the door.
Dan looks at her - he can’t imagine he’s as pale as she is. He gestures to the kitchen with a questioning glance. Blair nods and moves quietly off of the sofa, feet padding lightly on the wooden floor and rugs.
‘Dan! Buddy! Open the damn door. Nobody knows I’m here and it’s just me out here. Freezing my toes off.’
Blair looks around the corner, rolling her eyes, and walks to the door without a care for the sound of her feet on the floor. She yanks the door open and puts herself in the middle of the doorway.
‘Nate, what the heck are you doing here? And what the hell are you wearing?’
Dan scrambles up from the sofa and walks to the front door, where Blair is looking Nate up and down like he’s teleported in from Planet WTF. Dan can’t deny he’s a picture, all right. Hill walking boots, so clearly lying about the toes, plaid shirt and red quilted body warmer with an incongruous white woolen hat Dan has totally seen before, but he can’t remember where.
‘What? I didn’t want to draw attention. Besides, unlike some people, I had time to get in the zone and pack before I drove up here.’
‘This-’ Blair gestures, then sees Dan leaning against the door frame, ‘is the twilight zone of attire. I can’t deal with this. He’s yours today,’ she says to Dan, then turns. ‘Where did you even come from? Where’s your car?’
Nate grins wider, if that was even possible and tells them.
‘YOU are the madman in number fourteen?’ Blair blinks and Dan laughs, holding on to the door frame because of course Nate is. ‘I take it back, you’ll just encourage whatever this is. And it’s a good thing you have your own accommodation sorted, because this-’ Blair gestures to the three of them, ‘would be an entirely unacceptable bathroom to people ratio. I mean, it sucks already, but this would be beyond reasonable.’
‘I think I’m insulted, Blair. Wounded,’ Dan replies, straightening.
‘Hurt, even,’ Nate finishes, and if they were the type to high five, this would be a moment.
‘Oh please, you were justifying his actions before you even knew it was him!’ Blair sticks out a hand and raises her eyebrow, looking between the two of them as Nate grins. ‘You’re ridiculous! Give me - that is my woolen hat, and if anyone needs me, I’ll be using it to cover my ears.’ The door closes quite firmly behind her, hat in hand.
Nate turns Dan, still grinning. ‘So she seems better than expected. How’re you, man? Oh, where’s your fridge? I have beer in my backpack with your name on it, and some pink stuff in a bottle that I know Blair will deign to swallow.’
Dan runs a hand through his hair and looks down the two steps. He gestures to Nate’s outfit. ‘Is that a - no, I’m not even gonna ask about the - jacket. Beer sounds good. Come on in.’
Nate does.
*
After they’ve fed Nate leftovers and toast - what do you mean you’ve been living on take out. We’re in the middle of nowhere! There’s no such thing as take out! - Blair dispatches Dan to fourteen to retrieve the contents of Nate’s trunk.
‘Spill it,’ Dan says flat out as they walk down the track to Nate’s cabin, hands in his pockets. ‘Who gave us up?’
‘Your dad held out for about a day then forwarded the email from your publisher with all the maps,’ Nate replies, shrugging. ‘I phoned and they said nobody wanted fourteen for some reason, so I could head straight on up. Don’t give your dad too much hell for it - I was kinda a pain the ass.’
‘Shocker,’ Dan replies, already composing the start of a phone rant. ‘But thanks.’
Nate’s cabin is the one with the tub of shredded papers after all. Dan shakes his head. ‘Please tell me I’m not responsible for the death of a thousand trees.’
‘One of those exhibitions you dragged me to when Blair was busy - yeah, I didn’t think I was your first choice art buddy - gave me the idea,’ Nate pushes the front door open. ‘But don’t worry, I’ve already set up a tree planting programme in your name and it’s all recycled paper in the first place. Besides, it’s the ideal cover for being here without producing anything that anyone will actually try to read.’
Dan shakes his head. ‘If you say so.’ Just because he has a trust fund of his own and years of experience with the Upper East Side doesn’t mean he can always tell when they’re joking.
And stops.
‘You’ve been here a week, right?’
Nate nods, picking his way through the cabin. ‘Something like that.’
Dan looks around at the stuff piled up on various surfaces. ‘I thought you were, you know, a neat freak.’
‘I live with Chuck Bass, maniacal minimalist,’ Nate shrugs, ‘and you know, I like to keep things neat when I’m working. But this is a vacation so whatever, I’ll find it when I pack it. Hey, do you think we’ll have time to play paintball?’
Nate throws Dan a paintball rifle, which he stares at.
‘It’s cool if we won’t. I had my xbox and HD plasma sent up on Friday because it was too quiet to sleep. You can come round for Call of Duty if you want and I won’t even mention that you’re checking on your phone like it’s a wounded bird.’
Dan throws the rifle back at him and grins, putting the phone back in his pocket. He points at the hollow under the stairs that looks like the one in his and Blair’s cabin. ‘Suitcases are over there, right?’
Blair claps her hands together like it’s Christmas when they come back up the hill with three suitcases and a hold all between them.
She stares behind them and looks at Dan with reproach. He frowns. Then he hears Nate say, ‘Hey buddy. Much better than the luxury kennel Chuck wanted me to drop you off at, right?’
Dan turns to see Nate greeting the dog that everyone is surprised Chuck has managed to keep alive without hiring a nanny. Dan grins and uses his foot to balance the case against his hip and pets Monkey behind the ears. ‘Hey old pal. How’s life on the Upper East Side treating you?’
He looks at Blair when Monkey is finished circling him like a long lost friend. ‘Okay, this is actually my fault. But hey! Suitcases!’
*
Blair directs them to put the suitcases upstairs and then shoos them off the upper level.
‘I feel like I’m interrupting something,’ Nate says, flopping down on the couch.
Dan looks up at him from where he’s rifling through his own suitcase and hold all. ‘Do you really want me to answer that?’
‘Shut up, I meant Blair’s love affair with her care packages,’ Nate shoots back. ‘Gonna get me one of those beers I brought all the way up the hill for you?’
Dan stands up and starts another round of tea. Nate rolls his eyes but takes the mug anyway. Blair hugs her hairdryer to her chest as he steps onto the upper level and relaxes when she spots the mug. He leans across to sit it down by the pile of carefully folded and extremely expensive jumpers. Blair makes a noise and points. He moves it to the left. She makes another noise. He gives her a look that he hopes says really in anyone’s language.
‘If anything’s missing it’s not my fault!’ Nate shouts up. ‘Serena and Dorota packed yours and Rufus packed Dan’s!’
Dan frowns and leans over the wooden railing that stops them falling ten feet in the morning. ‘God, is everyone in on this?’
‘Pretty much,’ Nate replies. ‘Well, this place is need to know, but they did want to be sure you had supplies. Serena was deeply saddened by my lack of space for multiple coats in particular.’
Blair and Dan mutter something about ‘traitors’ at the same time.
*
After that night when they talk about Serena and Chuck, they don’t talk so much about it.
It’s like they’ve gone so far on a flow chart, but all of the arrows are pointing at blank bubbles. They’ve cleared the ground, so now what?
*
The next morning, Nate shows up at the door with wide eyes, a rumbling stomach, and his food basket.
Dan waves him in with a yawn, shouts up to Blair, and puts him to work making the coffee.
By the time Blair has made herself suitably presentable, there’s food on the table.
Dan doesn’t realise how often he just reaches when Blair’s around until he sees Nate following the movements every time. Blair walks behind his chair and her hand grazes his shoulder.
‘Wait, B,’ Nate calls, grabbing the last bit of toast from the little rack, ‘I’ll run with you. Leave Secret Window.com with the dishes.’
Nate calls to Monkey from the door. Monkey tilts his head at him and looks at Dan, standing at the bin with the plates and the leftovers, and his tongue rolls out of his mouth.
Nate shrugs. ‘Your loss, buddy.’
*
Dan never finds out what they talk about, if they talk at all, just that Blair leaves Nate at the porch, hugging him from the higher ground. Nate shakes his head, looking serious for once, and walks down the track.
Blair walks into the cabin and shouts, ‘Monkey! Follow!’
Monkey gives Dan a sad look from his position across his legs while Blair says, ‘Humphrey I cannot believe you let him up on the sofa. Monkey, follow. Nate has sticks. Dogs like sticks!’
Dan shrugs and points at the door, loose sheets in the other hand and pen behind his ear. ‘Sorry, pal. You heard the lady.’
Blair sighs and closes the door behind him, then gives his legs a look. Dan moves onto Monkey’s patch without a word. Blair sits and swings her legs up across his, plucking her latest book from the side table.
Dan sits his papers on his lap and tilts his head at her.
Without looking up, Blair says, ‘You look like Monkey when you do that, which is appropriate given your attitude to hair upkeep is similar.’
‘First thing you’ve done after every run for the past fortnight is hit the shower until the birds migrate,’ Dan comments. ‘What gives?’
Blair still doesn’t look up. ‘Didn’t do much running. More walking. If I’d been thinking ahead I would have luxuriated in my newly-returned coat.’ She turns the page. ‘Nate is going to come over tonight with some reading material. You don’t have to read it.’
Dan narrows his eyes but picks up his papers again. ‘I’ll be around.’
Blair turns another page.
*
After dinner, Nate arrives with his laptop bag, a canvas shopper full of newspapers and magazines, and his backpack.
Dan clears his notebooks and loose papers off of the coffee table. Blair’s hands curl around the mug that she’s holding with both hands and she exhales. ‘Right then. You know the drill.’
With the single-minded efficiency of three people with print media experience and public relations headaches, they set to splitting the hard copies into piles. Nate opens a folder on his desk top which turns out to be screenshots of Gossip Girl articles from the past week and a half.
Halfway through, they switch to beer and wine.
Nate takes a walk to the kitchen and takes a geological era to put olives and chips in a couple of bowls when they get to the pile designated ‘Chuck’s adventures in Monaco’ and Blair slips a hand into Dan’s. There’s pictures of him meeting his new executives, pictures of him at press conferences with Blair’s - God, her mother in law - in expensive hotel lobbies. And of course, there's candid 'exclusives' of him with women, different every time.
‘He’s doing an excellent job of occupying his time, investing his inheritance and distracting the global media,’ Nate comments as he sits down. ‘They’re so focused on him they haven’t noticed how thin that ‘secluded honeymoon’ story actually is, or noticed that they’d usually have got their hands on one leaked bikini shot by now.’ He gestures at the pile for the fake honeymoon press.
‘Louis shouldn’t have gone through with it,’ Blair says after a moment, eyes hard when she looks up. ‘It was like showing your neck to a viper - I didn’t know how far their pride would go, but they won’t do anything to show that they’re less than forgiving. He’s working that public apology angle for all its worth - probably all the way to the bank.’
‘And Serena is holding fort in the Upper East Side,’ Nate taps his finger on the pile for ‘friends and family stalked by press since the wedding’.
Dan holds up an article, ‘and all without confirming or denying that we’ve “broken up,” with the help of my publishers, of course, which keeps them from even thinking to look for both of us.’ He runs a hand through his hair. ‘I admit I’m impressed. This is seriously competent mobilisation.’
Nate holds up a mocking toast.
Blair smiles a little sadly. ‘You say it like we’re lacking in practice.’
There’s a beat of silence before they all stand up at once. They open another bottle of the fizzy pink by general consensus and clear away the proof that the world goes on.
*
After that, it’s a sad, inevitable slide into inebriation.
Blair curls up around the arm of the sofa, laughing hard and holding on for balance. ‘No, no, there will be no sympathetic beard growth! I forbid it. And you both love me, so you won’t. And I love you both, so I won’t let you.’
‘But Blair-’ Nate argues from the other side of the sofa, ‘Blair, you’re not seeing my point of view here. We’re in the woods with a dog!’
Monkey raises his head from his post by the door and then puts it back down again.
‘At a writer’s- writer’s -’ Blair frowns and looks at Dan, who is sitting on the floor with his head tilted and leaning on his arms, which are folded on the coffee table. ‘Humphrey! What-’
‘Retreat - park - place,’ Dan blinks slowly and answers. ‘Creative space.’ He sounds utterly stoned, which is funny, because they’re drinking. But each to their own.
‘Heeeeey, we’re neighbours. I’m being neighbourly. We never have neighbours back home,’ Nate says, sitting up and imparting this realisation gravely.
‘We are!’
‘We are!’
Blair and Dan look at each other.
‘JINX.’
They glare at each other. Silently.
‘Creepy,’ Nate draws out, then lurches to his feet. ‘Well, if you’re gonna be like that, I’m going back to my cabin to not shave.’
‘That makes no sense,’ Dan says, pushing himself to his feet. ‘And anyway, it’s not like your midnight shadow will make a beard.’
‘Spoiling it, Dan!’
Blair pokes Dan in the arm. ‘You should- you should go to the door. Watch him walk down the hill. With Monkey.’
Dan nods and points at the door. ‘Good plan. Excellent plan. Laptop - tomorrow, come back.’
Nate nods mournfully. ‘You know, if your cabin weren’t prehistoric, I’d have emailed you.’
They look at him. ‘You have internet?!’
He looks at them. ‘So young. So young. You have a phoneline, don’t you? I phoned somebody. They gave me internet.’
They kick him out.
Nate yawns on the porch and looks between them. ‘You know, if they find us, I’ll totally do a Shall Not... Pass. With my paintball gun. So you can... run away again. Because you’re like, the best people I know. The best.’
Blair hugs Nate and sniffs. ‘That’s a really stupid idea that you shouldn’t do at all but it’s nice that you thought it. I worry about you, Nate.’
Dan and Nate have a man hug one shoulder thing and Blair ‘hmmphs’ and pushes Dan’s lower back. Dan says, ‘’preciate it,’ and steps back. ‘You’re just worried Dan likes me better and would stay.’
‘He doesn’t.’
‘I don’t.’
‘See?’ Nate throws a stick ahead of him and waves his phone. ‘I’ll do the thing. When I get to the …. place.’
They nod seriously.
‘THE BEST,’ he shouts from the edge of the trees.
*
It’s because they’re completely drunk that talking about not talking about something seems to make sense.
‘Maybe, maybe it’s like this book I’m trying to write.’
‘I don’t know if I want to be in your book this time. But sorry, what do you mean?’
‘You’re not in this one. No, wait, you’re in the other one. Not you you, if you know what I mean -’
‘I really don’t.’
‘There’s two. The you from Inside is in one. You’re not in the other one. Nobody’s in the other one. That one is my favourite.’
‘You need wall charts and coloured post it notes.’
‘I do.’
‘Also it sounds like one of those books where nothing happens, so the New York Times will love it, since it doesn’t have anybody in it and nothing happens and you’re a pretty young man.’
‘Heeeeey, I mean nobody we know is in it. Do you really think?’
‘God, Humphrey, we were - you were - maybe we should talk about this instead.’
‘No, no, I remember. We’re not talking about things, but that doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about it. I mean, sometimes I sit down to write and think-’
‘’This is the day I rewrite the great American novel?’”
‘Ha, you’re funny. What I mean is, it’s all already there, because you’ve been thinking about it when you didn’t mean to, like it’s in the oven and you’re doing something in another room.’
‘That sounds like a plan. I like this plan.’
‘It’s a plan?’
‘It’s a bit of a plan, and I’m going to improvise, and it’ll be fine.’
‘You’re warm.’
‘I’m sleepy. Stop moving around and keep me that way.’
*
Blair wakes up and grabs the first phone, then extricates herself from Dan and crawls to the bathroom. She does not look at the mirror. She doesn’t want to know. The tiles are white and bright and glint in the winter sun streaming in. Blair thinks lustfully of tall buildings and cloud cover.
She sees a text from Nate and clicks it.
dog barking dog ow head this is not happening immediate evac
And another:
why did you have to be in the one up the hill whyyyy dude
And another:
better be fried things when I get there I’m telling you
And yet another:
fine you’re not up your head must not hurt like mine or else you WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO SLEEP i’m going back to bed i hate you and your works
She laughs, winces at the sound and then realises it’s Dan’s phone.
Then she shrugs and slips the phone back to his side of the bed. When she checks her own she finds similar plaintive cries. As she turns back to the bathroom Dan he reaches for his phone and clutches the cool touch screen to his forehead.
*
Nate arrives two hours later with the blanket from his bed and camps out in their living room. Then he illustrates the way that take out can be obtained (this is a hotel in bits. you phone room service) and Blair keeps out of the sightline from the doorway while Nate receives three different kinds of pizza.
They rewatch the last five episodes of season two of The West Wing on Nate’s laptop and everybody cries. Nate and Dan mouth along with the speech in the cathedral. Dan and Nate mouth along with the speech in the cathedral.
Blair pauses between the kitchen and the living area on a chip bowl run and realises that she was drunk last night, but she isn’t checking the internet for pictures. She sits the plate down on the coffee table to positive mutters and Dan hitting the space bar on the laptop.
‘Imagine nights without Gossip Girl.’
Dan and Nate look at each other.
‘There might be something we want to do about that,’ Nate says.
*
They’re lying as if they’re about to have a conversation when Blair slips her hand into Dan’s. He pulls her across onto her own side of the bed with him and they sleep.
*
One phone rings.
Then another.
Then Blair’s again.
And the cabin phone.
They snap into waking with their eyes locked on each other’s and break apart to take a phone each.
Dan frowns at the handset, holds it against his ear again as Blair takes her own.
‘I’m phoning all the phones with both of mine,’ Nate says, ‘the guy I paid off at the site office and Chuck and your dad just woke me up, in that order. They’re coming. Security, no press.’
Dan and Blair look at each other. ‘Shit.’
*
Ten minutes later, Dan finishes throwing anything remotely incriminating into the hollow under the stairs. He lifts two hold alls as quickly as he can while Blair showers. He runs up the stairs. ‘How am I packing these?’
Blair holds up a dress, pale and determined in the dark blue bathrobe.
He nods and pauses at the top of the stairs. ‘I’m with you until you say the word.’
Blair nods.
Dan hears a noise downstairs and runs down. The more recognisable form of Nate Archibald slips into the kitchenette, toeing off hiking boots and putting on the six hundred dollar shoes in his hand.
Nate puts out three mugs and sets to work on the coffee, nodding to Dan. ‘I’ll keep an eye out.’
Dan heads back up the stairs, ignores his phone, which is ringing again, and throws open his own bag. Blair pauses in applying her make up to lean over the railing, ‘Nate, did you pack that blue blazer with the white shirt?’
‘Blue suit carrier,’ he shouts back.
Blair walks over to Dan, shoulders him slightly to the side and goes through the bag until she finds it laid flat. She pushes it to his chest. ‘Trust me.’
*
When they come, they come in blacked out cars.
Dan and Nate flank Blair as she faces down the man who would have been the head of her security.
Nate clasps his hands behind his back and mildly repeats that he’ll be staying, thank you, and his people can handle the baggage, until they mutter curses and turn on Blair and Dan.
Blair pointedly repeats, ‘my friend will accompany me’ until they mutter about phoning the prince and someone replies, ‘if you think he’ll answer.’
Blair negotiates until there’s a compromise everyone hates, which is, apparently, the very core of diplomacy. She calls the mayor and hands over her wedding ring and jewelry piece by piece. Then adds a birthday gift from Louis with a smile.
The mayor sends a helicopter and four NYPD officers.
Dan presses his foot against Blair’s in the back of the helicopter as they leave the Grimaldi security on the ground, getting smaller and smaller.
*
Four days later, Dan and Blair stand in the foyer of her apartment and hug each other - hard.
‘Good luck for today,’ they say.
‘Thanks,’ they say.
They walk in different directions.
*
Blair walks into the room with the lawyers with her mother beside her, her phone in her pocket, and one fabulous hat on her head.
She sits down and looks coolly at the suits across the table, none of them her in laws, none of them her husband by law. This is how it’s done, she can hear an adviser saying to her in another life. You send people. You preserve the image. They say things you shouldn’t, do unsavoury things so you don’t have to and the people will love you.
Blair takes a breath, nods to her mother and raises her head.
People love her. She’d rather be her own kind of drama and her own kind of brave than bravely make peace to preserve someone else’s image, or come to the point where she goes through a divorce in another room between bites of toast and calls it efficiency.
She uses the word ‘separation’ without a hitch in her voice.
*
Dan meets his agent in the foyer of the building with his publisher in it.
She nods tightly and gestures to the elevator.
They walk through the rows of cubicles to the office where the editors are waiting behind the glass.
Dan waves off a cup of their ridiculous coffee in take out cups.
He takes a breath and sits two brown A4 envelopes on the table. ‘One of these has the first half of the sequel to Inside, and it’s yours, and I wrote it, because it was easy. The other has something I give a damn about, and it’s just the first four chapters and a pitch, because it’s not easy, but it is better. They are both worth your time.’
*
Dinner at the penthouse is a group affair.
Dan takes a yellow cab from the New York Public Library, where he’s secreted himself between stacks and read and read all day; Chuck comes straight from the airport; Nate sends the rest of his convoy on and comes upstairs.
Blair takes the longest, hottest shower of her life after the endless meetings of the day, then takes a cup of sweet tea from Serena. There’s apologies there, on both sides, and she leans her head on her best friend’s shoulder to make them. Serena says, ‘It’s okay - it’s going to be okay. And it’s okay, B.’
Nate, Dan and Serena sit on the sofas in the parlour and talk about what they know about Gossip Girl. Dan thinks about the last time they did that in a waiting room and shudders, hand tightening around his beer bottle. He turns to the door with a hand on the phone at his hip in time to see Blair’s head drop, and her hand squeezing Chuck’s. He takes a breath and turns back to Serena and Nate.
Chuck comes in a moment later and says, ‘You’re in my seat.’
Dan raises an eyebrow but stands and walks out into the corridor. Mindful of the sightline, he pulls the door closed behind him.
Blair stands in the middle of the corridor and lets out a breath when she sees him. He slips his arms around her and says, ‘So that was today. What’s next?’
He feels her hands lightly pressing his sides and drops his forehead to her shoulder. Blair says, ‘Tomorrow. Obviously.’
END.