on the way to you; part 1/2
Title: On the Way to You (1/2)
Rating: PG-ish
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue
Spoilers: Tons! Bits + pieces of everything floating around the interwebs about what's coming next.
Pairing: Dan/Blair
Summary: When Dan learns Blair has been in an accident, his entire world tilts off its axis.
When Dan hears Blair has been in an accident, his entire world tilts of its axis.
Time ceases to exist as he travels to the hospital with Serena and awaits Blair's prognosis. Seconds melt into minutes and minutes flash into hours.
When he is finally able to see her, he's not sure how long he has been waiting. It feels like an eternity, but he's certain he has not breathed since he heard, so it couldn't possibly be that long.
He expects the world to right itself once he sees her.
It doesn't.
Blair is swallowed up by her small hospital bed with tubes zigzagging over her body. Her hair is matted and her face is pale, marred by cuts and bruises. He's never seen her this way - never seen her look so weak. Blair Waldorf is many things, but weak is never one of them. So, to see her this way, catches him off-guard. And in this new topsy-turvy world of his, it makes him sway and struggle to move his feet closer to her.
Slowly, he makes his way to her, nearly tiptoeing over the tile floors. The humming and beeping of the machines around them provide a soundtrack as he falls to the stool at her bedside and carefully places his hand over hers.
Her eyes flutter open and he lets out the breath he's been holding in.
It takes her a few minutes to adjust to the bright lights and the unfamiliar location, but soon enough, her eyes focus on him and she smiles.
"Hi," she whispers.
"Hi," he smiles.
The world is righted again. It spins once more and time moves on and everything is okay.
But then the pain hits her like a lightning bolt. It has the memories flooding back and her shooting up out of her bed, gasping for air.
"Hey, hey, hey," Dan soothes, catching her shoulders and gently guiding her back against the pillows behind her. "It's okay. You're okay." He gingerly places himself on her bed, but doesn't let her go.
"Chuck?" she asks through breaths.
"The doctors are with him now. I'm not sure…"
Before she can even process that, she remembers the other life that was with them in the car and her hand flies to her stomach. "The baby?" she cries desperately.
"They didn't say. I'll buzz for the nurse." He hits the buzzer tucked into bed and calls for the nurse.
The nurse comes and promises to be back with the doctor and an ultrasound machine. The minutes that tick by until their arrival are excruciatingly painful.
"Stay with me?" Blair begs, clinging to his hand. Her eyes are wide and wild - panicked.
"Always," he promises.
They both jump when the door to her room opens again, but it is not the doctor. It is Louis.
"I've got it from here," he says gruffly.
Dan reluctantly lets go of her hand when Louis takes his place beside Blair.
-x-
The next day he comes to see her, hydrangeas in hand, but she is already gone.
-x-
He is not surprised when she shows up in Brooklyn an entire week later.
"I lost the baby," she confesses as soon as he pulls open the door. That's Blair - straight to the point and no false pretenses.
"I'm sorry," he manages to stutter out as he's pulling her into his arms.
But she pushes away from him and sweeps her way into the apartment. "I found out that day in the hospital," she tells him matter-of-factly. "There wasn't a heartbeat."
"Why didn't you tell me?" he searches carefully.
"I couldn't tell you," she whispers, head cast down. "I was so ashamed."
"Blair." He closes the distance between them and cups her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. "You have nothing to be ashamed of."
"Of course I do!" she cries. "I keep doing all the wrong things and making all the wrong choices and this is what it cost me. I deserve this."
"You don't," he tells her with conviction, his eyes locked with hers and his hand against her cheek. "You don't."
Then she breaks down into sobs and all he can do is hold her tightly against his chest while she's choking out, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over.
-x-
Blair ignores him for another week after that afternoon.
(He bought her gourmet pizza. And watched Breakfast at Tiffany's with her for the one-thousandth time.
When they are searching for cat in the rain, Blair says, "I think I would have named her Holly. Or maybe Audrey." But she says it so quietly, without taking her eyes off the screen, he's believes she might not have said anything at all.
But then she looks over at him and says with a smile, "it was a girl. I just know it."
He grasps her hand and squeezes, saying, "Holly would have been nice.")
After countless hours spent waiting for her to show up in Brooklyn again, he treks across the bridge to Manhattan.
The Waldorf residence is a flurry of activity when he steps off the elevator. There are people buzzing everywhere with arms full of flowers and seas of fabric. He overhears Eleanor talking about seating arrangements as he makes his way up the steps to Blair's room.
"So you're really going through with it?" Dan asks from the doorway, finding Blair curled up in bed with a book (a tattered copy of The House of Mirth).
She sets the book across her lap and smiles. "I was wondering when you were going to show up, Humphrey."
"Here I am." He crosses the room and perches himself on the side of her bed. "You're going to marry Louis?"
"Yes," she sighs, unable to meet his eyes.
"Even after everything?"
"Especially after everything!" she hisses, eyes snapping back to his. They are narrowed and dark - angry, but he knows it is not him she's angry with.
"Blair…"
"I lost our baby. Because I chose to run away with Chuck. Chuck almost died and I did this and… I don't think I need a better sign telling me I made the wrong choice. I owe him this much."
"You don't owe him anything."
Blair laughs, but it is breathy and bitter. She picks up the book in her lap and flicks through the pages. "I love this book," she says absently. "I love Lily, but she's so stupid. She's always on the verge of having everything she wants, but then she ruins it. Over and over again. Until she has nothing."
"That's never going to be you, Blair."
"Isn't it already? I keep ruining everything. I almost lost it all, but I refuse to make the same mistake twice."
"Even if you're not happy?"
She shrugs. "It's better than having nothing at all. It's a small price to pay."
She looks so broken sitting there in her big bed with a frayed book in her hands and a dark curtain of hair falling around her face. He wants to take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into - shake some life and some of that fighting Blair Waldorf spirit into her.
Instead he gets up, unable to look at this girl who only seems a shadow of herself, and makes his way to the door. He pauses just before he leaves and says quietly, "You'll always have me."
-x-
He is surprised when Louis asks him to write his vows for the wedding. And he is enraged that this is the man who Blair is about to marry. A man who doesn't have it within him to pen a few lines about what she means to him and what he's willing to give her.
He's prepared to tell Louis no; to tell him how outrageous it is that he'd even ask. But then he remembers that he has more than a few lines about Blair Waldorf within him. He's got novels full of words just for her.
Dan realizes he can write the words - he can tell her absolutely everything that's been building inside of him since he met her - he just won't be the one saying them.
And that has to be good enough.
He tells Louis yes, because it's all he has left.
-x-
Dan stares at a blank sheet of paper for two days.
There's a million things he'd like to say to Blair Waldorf. Yet he can't convince any of those words to transfer onto the paper to be read by another man.
It's late in the afternoon when he grows tired of trying to write vows for another man. He's restless and hopeless and all he can do is dial Blair's number and say, "I need to see you."
She must hear the desperation in his voice, because she doesn't even pause before she rattles off her coordinates and tells him she'll still be there when he gets there.
So, he quickly pulls on his coat and leaves the paper sitting blankly on his desk.
There's a lot of things he'd like to say to Blair Waldorf and as he's rushing out the door on his way to Manhattan, Dan is determined to say them to her face.
-x-
Within the hour, Dan finds himself walking into Vera Wang. He's trying to explain to the expressionless girl he finds sitting inside what he's doing there and he's just about to turn around and leave when he hears Blair call out, "Back here, Humphrey."
He finds her on a pedestal dressed in white.
It robs him of his breath when she turns, her hair in waves around her shoulders, and she smiles at him.
"Wow," he murmurs, unable to help himself.
Blair smiles nervously smoothing the fabric of the dress around her hips. "A dress fit for a princess?"
All he can do is nod, swallowing thickly.
She turns back to the face the mirror again, studying the details of the dress.
"Where have you been? I've tried calling you."
"I've, uh, been writing. Or trying to anyway. I've had a bad case of writer's block."
"Is that why you called me?" She looks over her shoulder, smirking, "Needed a muse again?" Her tone is playful and light. He thinks this is the happiest he's seen her in a month.
"Something like that."
Dan watches Blair watch herself in the mirror. He sees her brow furrow when she spots an imperfection in the dress (or her own body) and the way she allows a smile to grace her lips when she's pleased with some little detail. When she's finally done, she turns to him and extends her hand.
"Help me down?"
His hand closes around hers and he helps her off her pedestal, the white fabric of the dress swishing around them
"Was there something you wanted to tell me?" Blair asks.
His hand slips away from hers. Everything he had been rehearsing to say to her - every confession and promise - is gone now. The white dress has made his mind go blank.
He can't take this away from her.
"No. Nothing important, anyway. I think I just missed you… harassing me."
Blair smiles. A dazzling smile and she even laughs. He thinks she poised and ready to make fun of him - deal out some witty comeback or snide remark about Brooklyn - but she doesn't. Instead she says, "Wait for me to take this off. You can come with me to the florist."
When he gets home that night, after spending the day traipsing all over the city with Blair (and being forced to buy her dinner) he writes out the vows Louis will say on his wedding day.
It's his wedding gift to her: these words he'll never be able to say.
-x-
The weather in the city is dipping lower with each passing day that leads up to her wedding. Some are calling for flurries on Saturday while some are making grand proclamations of it being the coldest day in January on the books.
It doesn't really phase Blair. She's in control of absolutely every aspect of her wedding, so she doesn't really bother with trying to control the weather, too.
On a bitterly cold day, two days before the wedding, Blair finds herself in Brooklyn. Dan kept mentioning this first edition copy of his favorite Kerouac they spotted running wedding-related errands, so she thinks getting it for him would be the proper thank you for helping. She wraps it up with a gold bow and hand delivers it to the loft.
When she flutters into his apartment, hands waving, her mouth moving a mile-a-minute about something-or-other that's wrong with Brooklyn and how on earth she thought she had the time to come here while she's planning a royal wedding that must rival Kate's, Dan pops off the couch and just laughs, "Hi Blair" and it's enough to shut her up.
"This is for you," she says, pushing the perfectly wrapped package into his hands.
"Shouldn't I be getting you the gifts?"
She glares at him before rolling her eyes. "It's a thank you. Just open it."
So he does. And he even gasps quietly when he reveals the tattered book beneath the shiny paper. "I can't believe you did this."
"You've been a good friend, Humphrey. The best friend, really. Ever since I…" she trails off, her eyes snapping away from his, unable to say the words aloud again. "Anyways," she says with a wave of her hand, "it's the least I could do."
"Thank you."
She smiles. "You're welcome. Now, I must get back to the city. I'm running late for an appointment." She pauses, just for a second, to watch him turn the book over in his hands and she revels in the look of delight and surprise on his face.
Just as Blair's about to march right out of the loft (Dan thinks he might be the last time she ever sets foot there. In two days she'll be a princess and princesses don't have much use for Brooklyn. Or Humphreys) Dan calls out, "Blair, wait!"
She stops, hand on the doorknob, and looks back at him. "Yes?"
"I don't think you should marry Louis."
He says it before he can even think to stop the words from coming. He regrets them as soon as her hand falls away from the handle and her mouth is forming into a little "o" of shock.
"What?" she gasps.
Dan takes two steps towards her. Closer, but there is still a gap and she is out of his reach. "Don't marry him."
"How can you say this? There are two days before my wedding. I don't understand…"
"Blair," he sighs.
"Is this because of Chuck?"
"No! No it's not because of Chuck. It's because…"
"Because what?" she searches, but when his eyes meet hers and he's taking another step closer to her (close enough now that if he did reach out to her, he'd be able to take hold of her) she decides she doesn't want to know (even though she might already have her answer).
"I'm getting married on Saturday," she tells him firmly. "I'm sorry."
And then she's gone.
Rating: PG-ish
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue
Spoilers: Tons! Bits + pieces of everything floating around the interwebs about what's coming next.
Pairing: Dan/Blair
Summary: When Dan learns Blair has been in an accident, his entire world tilts off its axis.
When Dan hears Blair has been in an accident, his entire world tilts of its axis.
Time ceases to exist as he travels to the hospital with Serena and awaits Blair's prognosis. Seconds melt into minutes and minutes flash into hours.
When he is finally able to see her, he's not sure how long he has been waiting. It feels like an eternity, but he's certain he has not breathed since he heard, so it couldn't possibly be that long.
He expects the world to right itself once he sees her.
It doesn't.
Blair is swallowed up by her small hospital bed with tubes zigzagging over her body. Her hair is matted and her face is pale, marred by cuts and bruises. He's never seen her this way - never seen her look so weak. Blair Waldorf is many things, but weak is never one of them. So, to see her this way, catches him off-guard. And in this new topsy-turvy world of his, it makes him sway and struggle to move his feet closer to her.
Slowly, he makes his way to her, nearly tiptoeing over the tile floors. The humming and beeping of the machines around them provide a soundtrack as he falls to the stool at her bedside and carefully places his hand over hers.
Her eyes flutter open and he lets out the breath he's been holding in.
It takes her a few minutes to adjust to the bright lights and the unfamiliar location, but soon enough, her eyes focus on him and she smiles.
"Hi," she whispers.
"Hi," he smiles.
The world is righted again. It spins once more and time moves on and everything is okay.
But then the pain hits her like a lightning bolt. It has the memories flooding back and her shooting up out of her bed, gasping for air.
"Hey, hey, hey," Dan soothes, catching her shoulders and gently guiding her back against the pillows behind her. "It's okay. You're okay." He gingerly places himself on her bed, but doesn't let her go.
"Chuck?" she asks through breaths.
"The doctors are with him now. I'm not sure…"
Before she can even process that, she remembers the other life that was with them in the car and her hand flies to her stomach. "The baby?" she cries desperately.
"They didn't say. I'll buzz for the nurse." He hits the buzzer tucked into bed and calls for the nurse.
The nurse comes and promises to be back with the doctor and an ultrasound machine. The minutes that tick by until their arrival are excruciatingly painful.
"Stay with me?" Blair begs, clinging to his hand. Her eyes are wide and wild - panicked.
"Always," he promises.
They both jump when the door to her room opens again, but it is not the doctor. It is Louis.
"I've got it from here," he says gruffly.
Dan reluctantly lets go of her hand when Louis takes his place beside Blair.
-x-
The next day he comes to see her, hydrangeas in hand, but she is already gone.
-x-
He is not surprised when she shows up in Brooklyn an entire week later.
"I lost the baby," she confesses as soon as he pulls open the door. That's Blair - straight to the point and no false pretenses.
"I'm sorry," he manages to stutter out as he's pulling her into his arms.
But she pushes away from him and sweeps her way into the apartment. "I found out that day in the hospital," she tells him matter-of-factly. "There wasn't a heartbeat."
"Why didn't you tell me?" he searches carefully.
"I couldn't tell you," she whispers, head cast down. "I was so ashamed."
"Blair." He closes the distance between them and cups her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. "You have nothing to be ashamed of."
"Of course I do!" she cries. "I keep doing all the wrong things and making all the wrong choices and this is what it cost me. I deserve this."
"You don't," he tells her with conviction, his eyes locked with hers and his hand against her cheek. "You don't."
Then she breaks down into sobs and all he can do is hold her tightly against his chest while she's choking out, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," over and over.
-x-
Blair ignores him for another week after that afternoon.
(He bought her gourmet pizza. And watched Breakfast at Tiffany's with her for the one-thousandth time.
When they are searching for cat in the rain, Blair says, "I think I would have named her Holly. Or maybe Audrey." But she says it so quietly, without taking her eyes off the screen, he's believes she might not have said anything at all.
But then she looks over at him and says with a smile, "it was a girl. I just know it."
He grasps her hand and squeezes, saying, "Holly would have been nice.")
After countless hours spent waiting for her to show up in Brooklyn again, he treks across the bridge to Manhattan.
The Waldorf residence is a flurry of activity when he steps off the elevator. There are people buzzing everywhere with arms full of flowers and seas of fabric. He overhears Eleanor talking about seating arrangements as he makes his way up the steps to Blair's room.
"So you're really going through with it?" Dan asks from the doorway, finding Blair curled up in bed with a book (a tattered copy of The House of Mirth).
She sets the book across her lap and smiles. "I was wondering when you were going to show up, Humphrey."
"Here I am." He crosses the room and perches himself on the side of her bed. "You're going to marry Louis?"
"Yes," she sighs, unable to meet his eyes.
"Even after everything?"
"Especially after everything!" she hisses, eyes snapping back to his. They are narrowed and dark - angry, but he knows it is not him she's angry with.
"Blair…"
"I lost our baby. Because I chose to run away with Chuck. Chuck almost died and I did this and… I don't think I need a better sign telling me I made the wrong choice. I owe him this much."
"You don't owe him anything."
Blair laughs, but it is breathy and bitter. She picks up the book in her lap and flicks through the pages. "I love this book," she says absently. "I love Lily, but she's so stupid. She's always on the verge of having everything she wants, but then she ruins it. Over and over again. Until she has nothing."
"That's never going to be you, Blair."
"Isn't it already? I keep ruining everything. I almost lost it all, but I refuse to make the same mistake twice."
"Even if you're not happy?"
She shrugs. "It's better than having nothing at all. It's a small price to pay."
She looks so broken sitting there in her big bed with a frayed book in her hands and a dark curtain of hair falling around her face. He wants to take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into - shake some life and some of that fighting Blair Waldorf spirit into her.
Instead he gets up, unable to look at this girl who only seems a shadow of herself, and makes his way to the door. He pauses just before he leaves and says quietly, "You'll always have me."
-x-
He is surprised when Louis asks him to write his vows for the wedding. And he is enraged that this is the man who Blair is about to marry. A man who doesn't have it within him to pen a few lines about what she means to him and what he's willing to give her.
He's prepared to tell Louis no; to tell him how outrageous it is that he'd even ask. But then he remembers that he has more than a few lines about Blair Waldorf within him. He's got novels full of words just for her.
Dan realizes he can write the words - he can tell her absolutely everything that's been building inside of him since he met her - he just won't be the one saying them.
And that has to be good enough.
He tells Louis yes, because it's all he has left.
-x-
Dan stares at a blank sheet of paper for two days.
There's a million things he'd like to say to Blair Waldorf. Yet he can't convince any of those words to transfer onto the paper to be read by another man.
It's late in the afternoon when he grows tired of trying to write vows for another man. He's restless and hopeless and all he can do is dial Blair's number and say, "I need to see you."
She must hear the desperation in his voice, because she doesn't even pause before she rattles off her coordinates and tells him she'll still be there when he gets there.
So, he quickly pulls on his coat and leaves the paper sitting blankly on his desk.
There's a lot of things he'd like to say to Blair Waldorf and as he's rushing out the door on his way to Manhattan, Dan is determined to say them to her face.
-x-
Within the hour, Dan finds himself walking into Vera Wang. He's trying to explain to the expressionless girl he finds sitting inside what he's doing there and he's just about to turn around and leave when he hears Blair call out, "Back here, Humphrey."
He finds her on a pedestal dressed in white.
It robs him of his breath when she turns, her hair in waves around her shoulders, and she smiles at him.
"Wow," he murmurs, unable to help himself.
Blair smiles nervously smoothing the fabric of the dress around her hips. "A dress fit for a princess?"
All he can do is nod, swallowing thickly.
She turns back to the face the mirror again, studying the details of the dress.
"Where have you been? I've tried calling you."
"I've, uh, been writing. Or trying to anyway. I've had a bad case of writer's block."
"Is that why you called me?" She looks over her shoulder, smirking, "Needed a muse again?" Her tone is playful and light. He thinks this is the happiest he's seen her in a month.
"Something like that."
Dan watches Blair watch herself in the mirror. He sees her brow furrow when she spots an imperfection in the dress (or her own body) and the way she allows a smile to grace her lips when she's pleased with some little detail. When she's finally done, she turns to him and extends her hand.
"Help me down?"
His hand closes around hers and he helps her off her pedestal, the white fabric of the dress swishing around them
"Was there something you wanted to tell me?" Blair asks.
His hand slips away from hers. Everything he had been rehearsing to say to her - every confession and promise - is gone now. The white dress has made his mind go blank.
He can't take this away from her.
"No. Nothing important, anyway. I think I just missed you… harassing me."
Blair smiles. A dazzling smile and she even laughs. He thinks she poised and ready to make fun of him - deal out some witty comeback or snide remark about Brooklyn - but she doesn't. Instead she says, "Wait for me to take this off. You can come with me to the florist."
When he gets home that night, after spending the day traipsing all over the city with Blair (and being forced to buy her dinner) he writes out the vows Louis will say on his wedding day.
It's his wedding gift to her: these words he'll never be able to say.
-x-
The weather in the city is dipping lower with each passing day that leads up to her wedding. Some are calling for flurries on Saturday while some are making grand proclamations of it being the coldest day in January on the books.
It doesn't really phase Blair. She's in control of absolutely every aspect of her wedding, so she doesn't really bother with trying to control the weather, too.
On a bitterly cold day, two days before the wedding, Blair finds herself in Brooklyn. Dan kept mentioning this first edition copy of his favorite Kerouac they spotted running wedding-related errands, so she thinks getting it for him would be the proper thank you for helping. She wraps it up with a gold bow and hand delivers it to the loft.
When she flutters into his apartment, hands waving, her mouth moving a mile-a-minute about something-or-other that's wrong with Brooklyn and how on earth she thought she had the time to come here while she's planning a royal wedding that must rival Kate's, Dan pops off the couch and just laughs, "Hi Blair" and it's enough to shut her up.
"This is for you," she says, pushing the perfectly wrapped package into his hands.
"Shouldn't I be getting you the gifts?"
She glares at him before rolling her eyes. "It's a thank you. Just open it."
So he does. And he even gasps quietly when he reveals the tattered book beneath the shiny paper. "I can't believe you did this."
"You've been a good friend, Humphrey. The best friend, really. Ever since I…" she trails off, her eyes snapping away from his, unable to say the words aloud again. "Anyways," she says with a wave of her hand, "it's the least I could do."
"Thank you."
She smiles. "You're welcome. Now, I must get back to the city. I'm running late for an appointment." She pauses, just for a second, to watch him turn the book over in his hands and she revels in the look of delight and surprise on his face.
Just as Blair's about to march right out of the loft (Dan thinks he might be the last time she ever sets foot there. In two days she'll be a princess and princesses don't have much use for Brooklyn. Or Humphreys) Dan calls out, "Blair, wait!"
She stops, hand on the doorknob, and looks back at him. "Yes?"
"I don't think you should marry Louis."
He says it before he can even think to stop the words from coming. He regrets them as soon as her hand falls away from the handle and her mouth is forming into a little "o" of shock.
"What?" she gasps.
Dan takes two steps towards her. Closer, but there is still a gap and she is out of his reach. "Don't marry him."
"How can you say this? There are two days before my wedding. I don't understand…"
"Blair," he sighs.
"Is this because of Chuck?"
"No! No it's not because of Chuck. It's because…"
"Because what?" she searches, but when his eyes meet hers and he's taking another step closer to her (close enough now that if he did reach out to her, he'd be able to take hold of her) she decides she doesn't want to know (even though she might already have her answer).
"I'm getting married on Saturday," she tells him firmly. "I'm sorry."
And then she's gone.