the four seasons (dan/blair)
Title: the four seasons
Fandom: gossip girl
Characters/Pairing: dan/blair
Rating: pg
Word Count: ~1800
Summary: one day i was thinking about why i truly believe that dan/blair should be endgame, and developed a thesis of sorts - which i turned into a fanfiction. one-shot. takes place some time after 5x04.
it’s my first fanfiction in a long time - please be gentle!
the four seasons
Serena is glowing in front of him.
Literally - dressed how she usually is, gold dress and a pair of designer coral heels, hair a shade of metallic fire, skin deep and brown, almost glittering.
Maybe four years ago Dan Humphrey would have wanted to drink her sunshine in, open himself up to her so fully that he would most likely get skin cancer, just to catch all her emanating rays. Right now, he desperately wants sunglasses.
“Why, Dan? I need you to explain this to me,” she is holding a copy of his book. It dangles in her tanned hands precariously, as if she is about ready to hurl it at his head.
He stammers, all untimely gulps and scratching his unruly hair, unsure of what to say. She had barged into his loft this afternoon, not satisfied with their sparring at his ridiculously disastrous book release, demanding more. They are uncomfortably perched on his bar stools, Dan clutching a mug of earl grey for moral support, Serena tapping out an even rhythm on the counter with her manicured nails.
“It’s, yknow, it’s a caricature, Serena, a satire - it’s not real,” he says unconvincingly, but she bites his words off with an airy laugh.
“Please, Dan. We dated for a long time. I know when you’re lying.” Her blue eyes are steely but he sees the hurt just threatening to spill over. “And why the fuck did you write about Blair like this? You’ve hated her as long as I’ve known you…is it just a challenge, or something? Trying to get what you can’t have?”
Something snaps within Dan. The last five years flash by - a multicolored whirlwind of secrets and takedowns and bullshit and coffee and empty words…
His mind reels but then, slowly - through the haze,
he focuses in on a set of particular images: Blair Waldorf, green dress pooled around her feet, legs bent like a beautiful broken bird, concentrating hard to remain a perfect picture of disdain to stop the pain from permeating through. He remembers his words, how his heart beat - one, two, desperation, let me help you…
Blair Waldorf, silver silken dress, sitting on an expensive armchair, breathtaking in all her glory. and yet, allowing his hand to linger on hers for a short second…
Blair Waldorf, chestnut hair ablaze, laughing and calling him such a boy, hours filled with the joys of Rosemary’s Baby and Rohmer and inspirational orangutans, gourmet pizza in a comfortable loft, where her shoulders finally relax a bit, and like a small and unexpected gift, she rests her warm head on his shoulder...
“She’s timeless,” whispers Dan, looking at summer-haired Serena van der Woodsen, just as undeniably striking as she’d been when he first saw her, the apple of his eye for what seemed an infinity, but was actually just a frozen summer that lasted a few years. He thought, slightly amused, that their story was not too far from the plot of groundhog day. Indeed, his hair was looking very tom hanks recently.
“What?” she says, but the word isn’t harsh anymore, just a liquid noun dripping with confusion.
He feels ridiculous as he remembers all her outfits in coalescence with the seasons, as if he were Vivaldi and Blair was his violin - had he been categorizing time with her in mind all these years? That green coat in winter with the pink scarf, when she laughed at him for believing in signs, that refreshing mint dress in the summer on a bright field, the tinkering laughter of a scheming Dan and Blair, the autumn, when the leaves start to tremble, so blue in her Constance uniform, headbands aplenty, and spring - oh, spring, he could barely look at her then, it was too much -
“Serena…you’re right. I hated Blair in the beginning. It was pretty much the exact same way I hated the Upper East Side.” The words tumble out before he can stop himself, truth flowing out of his mouth, an ironic poetry to it.
“I judged this place immediately for its wealth and its seeming carelessness, its…I dunno, moral depravity. But Serena, you’re forgetting something. I was a stupid dick then! I was sixteen years old and I didn’t know anything and I was judging a book by its cover.” He hopes that self-deprecation will somehow help his cause, lessen the blow a bit and alleviate Serena’s anger.
She just stares at him. A slow sigh.
“I’m so sorry, Serena.” he really is. He was harsh, mostly just for the fictional necessity of having a vicious and shallow foil for his princess, his prima donna, his gorgeous, untouched hero that he created in the miraculous Claire Carlisle.
“I’m sorry I depicted you that way - I didn’t mean to. You were the Upper East Side I first got to know, the shallow teenaged impression I had of it, the only part of it that I accepted. And I loved you in all my youth and stupidity. Really, I did. As for Blair - I guess she represented what was hidden, the part that I immediately judged and hated, but also the part that I’ve been slowly getting to know since I first came into this world.”
“So…your book isn’t a satire.” Serena says the words slowly. Dan blanches. She is uncommonly perceptive today. Steadying himself, he tries to say the words he has just realized in his mind, the words he really has been trying to say for the last five years.
“No, it’s not. It’s a - ” his breath hitches as he catches a glimpse of the sunset from the window, pink and blue hues aflame in an unstoppable amalgamation of beauty.
“What it really is, it’s a love letter. Maybe you could say it’s from the view of an outsider to an insider. Or maybe I was trying to say that none of that actually mattered, that I fell in love with Manhattan and New York and the Upper East Side and Blair Waldorf and it didn’t matter if I was inside or outside but what counts is just the sheer…just, beauty and art and life of this city and of the people here and everywhere and of human connection. I hated Blair Waldorf and I hated this city and I fell head-over-heels in love with both of them, so fully and completely. God, what a perfect analogy - I never realized, the city and the girl, they’re both so complex and layered and goddamn COOL and smart as hell and funny and ridiculously beautiful and unbelievably strong and humane and everything I was always looking for but didn’t know it.”
Dan stopped talking suddenly. In the midst of his speech, he had gotten excited - he finally realized the thesis statement, the core, nucleus, and tremendous heart of Inside, one that he’d never really understood before. It wasn’t a caricature of upper class socialites; that was merely the backstory. It was a modern-day fairytale, a romantic story of a boy who came to live in a new and scary place, who met a new and even scarier girl there. He was young and kind of stupid and proud and really judgmental and he hated the new place and girl. But as the seasons passed, he found out that he was utterly wrong. The Upper East Side was a place of love and beauty just like anywhere else, and as he claimed his newfound maturity and family there, as he learned his lessons and went to college and read in Latin and listened to great music and ate delicious waffles and purchased his first Marc Jacobs shirt and grew into a published author - he began to realize that the girl was scary but not because she was a tyrant, because she was his true love and how on earth was a 21st century Romeo supposed to deal with that? God, the plot was starting to sound more and more like Pride & Prejudice - he had no idea he’d subconsciously plagiarized Jane Austen and likened himself to Mr. Darcy. But wasn’t Blair always the fiery Lizzie Bennet? And flaxen-haired Serena was Jane Bennet, never a true match for him, still waiting for her charming Mr. Bingley.
Serena interrupted Dan’s reverie by getting up from her stool. He realized in a panic that after he had declared his love for Blair in an embarrassing stream-of-consciousness, he’d been contemplating furiously in silence for the past few minutes.
“Serena - ” he choked out,
“The book. It was beautiful. Definitely the best thing you’ve ever written, and one of the best things I’ve ever even read.” She says seriously, gazing at him as if her life depended on these words.
“You don’t have to say that,” he replies dismissively, but -
“No, Dan. This is important. You …you were the love of my life. And I need to tell you this.” As fucking cliché as it was, Dan swore her eyes were sapphires in that split second.
“If that book was symbolic of the last five years, if that’s what’s in your heart, my god Dan, it’s worth - you’ve gotta fight for her.” The last bit is shy but still declarative. “I know what you’re going to say, too. That Louis is a prince and Chuck is her dark knight and what could you possibly offer.”
The words cut close at his heart, and he tries not to register how fucked up it is to be receiving advice about this from Serena, his ex-girlfriend, his stepsister, whom he has just hurt deeply, who doesn’t deserve this at all -
“Serena, jesus, you don’t have to do this.” The words hang brash in the thick silence, almost turning solid.
She swallows and plows onward. “Maybe you don’t have a fortune to offer her, Dan. Or a stupid title or a crown or a hotel. But you’re a writer, and the pen is mightier than the sword. And you wrote her a really amazing book, okay?”
Dan stares at her in blatant awe. At this particular instant, Serena van der Woodsen is shining her brightest - her good heart is aflame, golden and radiant and outshining her outfit, her hair, her skin.
“Thank you. God…uh, I don’t know what to say.
She smiles all big, the one he used to love so well. “The fact that I rendered Dan Humphrey speechless is enough for now,” she laughs, and he can’t help but join her in a chuckle.
“Hey. Fight for her, okay? Follow your heart. It’s a good one,” and suddenly she’s out the door like a fire extinguished, the words floating mystically in the air.
In the settling dust, the late afternoon seeped in honesty and discovery, Dan takes a moment to muse on what had happened.
Then, with something like a battle cry or a laugh lodged in his throat, he rises from his chair. The sun has set, and evening is striding in with her navy-blue cloak, studded with stars. And now, Daniel Humphrey readies himself to fight for his love - he heads towards her, to the shimmering Upper East Side and its luminous Blair Waldorf, his eternal muses.