FIC - Future Imperfect - Dan/Blair
Title: Future Imperfect
Words/Rating: 4,285/PG-13
Summary: Future fic about Blair and Dan taking a long time to do basic things - like get together.
Notes: I forever hate Gossip Girl for making me write the sentence “Princess of Monaco.”
2014
“Dan.”
Dan looks at her, trying to think of something clever to say. Something that will make her laugh, or roll her eyes.
“Blair.”
“Where have you been hiding yourself for the last 3 years?”
“I believe it’s called college.”
“365 days a year?”
“Why, did you miss me?”
She doesn’t reply and he tries not to think it means anything.
He’d transferred across the country to California after his book was published. He couldn’t deal with New York anymore, or the real reason, face the people he had written about. He had learned some lessons about himself three years ago. Firstly, that he was not as nice a person as he liked to think he was. Secondly, he needed to get over Blair Waldorf to start functioning as a normal human being again. He had finished college last month and decided it was time to come home. He had made it a point not to meet anyone on the rare occasions he had ventured back. Nate flew out every few months and they drank beer and watched girls together. He saw Serena once or twice a year. Sometimes they fell into bed together, and fewer times they wondered whether they should give it another go, but by the end of the conversation they had usually both already lost interest in the idea. The best thing though, about moving West was that he had re-connected with Jenny. She visited him almost as often as Nate and they had eventually found their way back to the relationship they had before everything went crazy. Before his father married Lily, before she had gotten angry. She had asked about Blair a few times, he wasn’t sure if and what Eric had shared with her. They were always innocuous questions, but Dan would shift and ignore the way they made him feel. He rarely heard her name anymore. And by the beginning of this year he had stopped noticing every brunette with long hair who walked a certain way. He had even dated a couple of girls for around 4 months at a time. But he knew he was always going to move back to New York so he had consciously kept them short-term.
But now here he was, back in the Van der Woodsen penthouse at another party. It was like he had never left. And Blair standing in front of him, slightly less regal, but champagne glass still held high. She had never married Louis of course. Dan never considered she would but when he had heard the news he was still consumed with the kind of relief that suggested that he had thought she might. He had no idea as to the status of her and Chuck’s relationship and he really didn’t want to know. Chuck wasn’t here, business trip to London, his dad had muttered. Dan mentioned it now to Blair, saying he if he was here, it really would be like stepping back three years, not a change visible.
“He’s in London I think.” She said it distractedly and Dan wondered if it could be true. Whether she was finally over him.
“You want to get out of here? Catch up properly?”
“That would assume that we are still friends. I haven’t heard from you for two years.”
“I was across the country.”
“Right, we have never faced that difficulty in our relationship.” She says.
Dan thinks back to that summer of emails and phone calls. I was in love with you, he thinks. That was different.
“I haven’t really been in touch with anyone properly.”
“Nate visits you like you’re having a long-distance relationship. And I know you’ve managed to fall into bed with Serena a couple of times.”
“You know, communication is a two way process.” He says ignoring her jab about Serena. In truth he feels sick that she knows. He never wants her to think of him as predictable.
“As if I would. You made it clear you wanted nothing to do with me,”
“You know why Blair.” He finally says and wonders what she will say.
“Do I?” And he says it so plainly, without malice or anger. He cannot believe she does not know, did not know.
“Can we have this conversation somewhere else?” he asks again
“Here’s fine. Think of your discomfort as payback.”
“Ok. You were engaged to another man. You were probably half-in love with your ex-boyfriend, we were.” He stops, thinking of what he wants to say. “We were confusing.”
“You were confusing. I was always perfectly clear.”
“Right. Like that night in Alphabet. That was totally clear.”
She narrows and then widens her eyes. “Yes, it was Humphrey. It was crystal clear. You said no.” She says the last three words in staccato.
“You were marrying another man. I didn’t want to be another drunken mistake.”
“Another? Are you implying that I have many of them?”
“Certainly not with me.”
“He’s in London Dan. I barely give a shit about him anymore. You should stop too.”
They stand in awkward silence. But if Dan is honest, he’s happy that they’re fighting. It’s better than the alternative which he was worried about, of them pretending that nothing happened. Nothing did happen, he reminds himself. Nothing that would incriminate them in court, but the sort of nothing that stays with you for months afterwards and always keeps you wondering what if, what if.
2011.
“I’m in Brooklyn Humphrey. Rescue me.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“What kind of bachelorette party doesn’t have a stripper to lick whipped cream off? Serena could have got Nate to do it, just for the symbolic value. Or you.”
Dan presses the phone closer to his ear. “Did you just admit you wanted to lick whipped cream off my naked body?”
“Are you drunk?” she says, offended.
“No, but you obviously are. Where is Serena?”
“Somewhere. Who knows. I left them thirty minutes ago. I thought I could trust Serena to make it wild and crazy but instead she is channelling her inner Lily Van Der Woodsen circa 2007.”
“Or maybe she is channelling her inner knowledge of her best friend. You wanted something wild and crazy?”
“Must we continue this stupid conversation on the phone? Just come and meet me at Alphabet bar. It looked the only half-way decent place out here but I can faintly hear reggae from somewhere. And drink something. You can’t be sober tonight.” She hangs up and Dan looks at his phone. He is sober so he knows that the last thing he should be doing is going and getting drunk with Blair Waldorf on her bachelorette party when she wants to be wild and crazy. He goes to his closet and pulls out a white shirt and some black pants. He looks at himself in the mirror.
“Whatever you are thinking. Stop it.” He tells himself. He looks towards the counter where the liquor bottles are lined up in a row. He goes and takes a bottle of tequila and opens the fridge looking for a lime. “It’s a sign,” he says out loud when he doesn’t find one. He looks again at the tequila before pouring a shot and downing it. He shakes his body in disgust and pours another one. He can feel it now and he grabs a blazer that Blair would approve of and walks out.
When he gets to Alphabet bar, 30 minutes later the initial sickness from the tequila has gone but he still feels a little drunk. The bar is classy but rowdy, with people packed in shouting over each other and the music. He loves it. He spots Blair by the bar, sitting on a stool drinking what looks like a martini. He walks quickly over to her and touches her elbow before she has noticed him. She looks up and grins and he is so startled he grins back.
“You came.”
“Of course I came. I had to witness your drunkenness first-hand.”
“And you look almost presentable. I’m touched.”
“Oh, it’s just something I threw on.”
She smirks but keeps her eyes fixed on him.
“Red is your colour by the way.” He says, trying not to stare at her dress, hugging parts of her he tries to forget exist.
She lowers her eyes and touches his sleeve, scratching the fabric of his shirt back and forth.
Dan swallows and looks around the bar. The music seems to get louder and he touches the underside of her wrist with his thumb, stroking it with his nail.
“I’ve never been somewhere like this before. It’s so loud. I should hate it.” She says, almost shouting over the music.
“You should?”
“Yes I should, but I don’t. I like not being able to hear myself think.”
He is still stroking her wrist and she is still playing with his sleeve. He wonders if she is even aware of what they are doing. Maybe she’s too drunk to notice small touches of skin. But then he reminds himself that this is Blair Waldorf.
“You’re an interesting drunk.” Is all he says.
“I am not drunk.” She says, regal like a queen, or a princess. The Princess of Monaco maybe, which she will be when she marries another man. He releases her wrist gently but instead of pulling back she grabs his upper arm and pulls him closer, to talk into his ear.
“Do you think I am making a mistake?”
“You make mistakes? Is that even possible?” he says.
She still has her hand clenched around his arm and he has put his other hand on her shoulder. They are so close now he can smell her shampoo.
“It’s possible Humphrey. On rare occasions.”
“You’ll have to be more specific.”
She looks at him from under her lashes and Dan wishes he could move away to clear his head because right now, it feels like Blair is flirting with him and telling him she doesn’t want to marry her fiancé. She curls an arm round his neck and says into ear, “Do you think I am making a mistake by wanting to kiss you again?”
He grips her shoulder instinctively. She moves her face to stare at him, and they are so close that kissing seems to be the only logical next step.
“Let’s go upstairs. They have another room there.” She says, proving him wrong, and takes his hand leading him to the staircase. When they get upstairs, she leads them to a smaller room that is less crowded where Bob Marley is playing and Blair scrunches her nose and raises her eyebrows at him. He just shakes his head smirking. They settle in an alcove that smells of whiskey, coke and cigarettes.
“Blair Waldorf and Bob Marley together for one night.”
“Why do you say my full name like it means something bad?”
“Why do you never call me by my name?”
“Humphrey isn’t your name?”
“My other name.”
“Loser?”
“No, my other one.” He says, but he can’t help smiling.
“Oh, Lonely Boy.” She says and gives a satisfied smirk.
“Whatever Blair Waldorf. I don’t say your full name as a bad thing, more like you’re a famous institution.”
She seems satisfied with his answer and listens to the music for a while. They are not touching like they were doing downstairs but they are still standing close. She suddenly turns to him,
“I can like Bob Marley. I am not who you think I am Humphrey.”
“Which is your favourite Marley song?” he says, testing her, already thinking he should know better than to test Blair on anything.
“This one,” she says as Is This Love comes on.
He wants to make a joke about her liking one of the sappiest tracks he wrote but stops because he hears the lyrics he has heard a hundred times before but everything reminds him of Blair now.
She looks at him as if she is waiting for him to mock her but realises that his face has turned serious. He wants to mention her wanting to kiss him but doesn’t want to ruin whatever this is.
And the part about wanting to love and treat her right comes on and he can’t stop his face from being a picture of the song. Her eyes widen,
“Humphrey,” she whispers sadly.
“I don’t think thoughts count as mistakes.”
“What about actions?” she says drawing him near and kissing him on the mouth. He circles her waist with his arms and pulls her closer and she wraps her arms tighter around his neck. They kiss for what seems like an age but is only the length of the song because when it is over she stops and looks up at him,
“I just want to lose myself tonight,” before leaning up to kiss him again.
And Dan cannot let it go. Not those particular words. Not when he is feeling the opposite. He hates that he is a writer sometimes, that he has to analyse every word, attribute meanings to them that the person speaking them probably didn’t even consider.
“I can’t do this Blair. Not if this is just about you getting lost.”
Her eyes turn angry then and she shoves him away. “Must this go exactly how you want it to go? Can it not be about what I need right now?”
“I care about you too much to just be something you use to forget yourself.”
“No, you care about you too much to just be something for me to use. Which is an admirable level of self-worth I must say.” She says it bitterly but then looks forlorn. She takes a deep breath,
“This is me Dan. Wanting and needing you now.”
And Blair is right. He has a high level of self-preservation because he is going to walk away from her. He knows her too well. He knows that this will be a mistake in the morning and that she will go back to Louis, and then maybe eventually Chuck, and he will be left with the imprint of this night, whatever it would be, and he would never be able to get over it. If only he had known that either way, he was never going to get over it, he would have just given in.
“I’m sorry Blair. The thing is…”
“Save your breath. I don’t want to hear it” and she walks out leaving him with an unfinished sentence reverberating around his head.
2014
She finds him again just before he is about to leave.
“Where are you staying?”
“At the loft. Are you still at the penthouse?”
“Where else would I be?”
Monaco, he thinks, London…
“So, are we still fighting?”
“Yes, but I’m tired of it. I’m just…tired.”
“Come back to the loft. We can order a pizza and watch an old movie.”
“And maybe I could fall asleep on your shoulder.” She says, looking with accusing knowing eyes.
“Maybe you could.” Is all he says.
“I’ll get my coat. Stay here.”
When they walk out into the chill evening air he moves closer to her, walking shoulder to shoulder. He hails a cab and they sit silently in the taxi, which Dan doesn’t mind. He enjoys looking out to the city lights with Blair Waldorf next to him. He resists the urge to grab her hand but catches her eye and smiles. She leans back and seems to relax before giving him a quick smile in return.
When he opens the door to the loft he steps aside dramatically looking for her reaction.
“This is like the place that time forgot.”
“It hasn’t been changed much,” Dan admits. “I keep telling my Dad to sell it but he can’t bring himself to.”
“I’m glad,” Blair says softly. “It’s grown on me.”
Dan looks at her and stops himself from making a sarcastic remark.
“Yes, well. It’s got some good memories.”
She stops in the middle of the room and turns to face him. “What were you going to say to me that night?”
“What night?”
“You know. That night. You said, the thing is and then you stopped.”
“As I recall you ordered me to stop and flounced out.”
“I do not flounce Humphrey. That would be you. I made a forceful exit.”
“Whatever, the point is…”
“What were you going to say? Was it something important?”
“What do you think I was going to say?”
“This is becoming a ridiculous conversation.”
“Is there something you would like to ask me Blair?”
“I thought I just was.”
“I mean , what do you really want to know?”
“I really want to know what you were going to say.” She says rolling her eyes and raising her voice.
“Are you sure? Because once it’s out there it’s out there.”
“God could you be any more dramatic? I am one minute away from leaving this loft. Please just take a deep breath and only use words that are necessary. That admittedly cuts out large swathes of your vocabulary but nonetheless…”
“I was going to say that the thing is that I am in love with you.”
And Blair keeps her perfect poker face intact but Dan can see a blush rising on her chest.
“Were.”
“Right. Were.”
“Well, that would have been awkward, with me getting married to another man.”
“Right. And you not being in love with me.”
“Of course. There’s that.” She looks down to her fingers and then up again, “You must have hated me.” It’s not a question so Dan stays silent. “I mean, feeling that way and me being… Well. It must have been difficult.”
“I didn’t hate you. I was more frustrated with myself. But you don’t have to worry, I’m quite the expert on unrequited love.” He smiles to show her that it’s ok.
“That’s true.” She smirks but then looks down again. “But you know, if it wasn’t requited, it wasn’t totally unrequited either.”
Dan had always known that whatever he felt wasn’t one-sided. He knew their kisses meant something, that he wasn’t something for her to use to forget her problems, but he was never sure to what extent. He still wasn’t.
“It’s ok. I just think that we were probably never meant to be in that way. I think if it was meant to be, it would have happened.”
She looks like she is about to reply but stops herself as her phone rings. She goes quiet and mumbles softly and Dan knows it’s Chuck. When she gets off the phone he can see she is going to try and explain which makes it worse.
“It’s ok Waldorf, old habits die hard. I know.”
“You don’t know anything at all.” She says and walks out.
2015
Blair reads Dan’s book exactly 4 years after it is first published. She feels ready to read in detail the words he has written. She knows the outline, various people have told her over the years. Boy hates girl, boy gets to know girl, Boy likes girl, girl is a bitch who doesn’t like boy and ruins a perfectly good ending. The last part is what she imagines the subtle message is that you are supposed to take away from the whole clichéd story.
Eric asked her once why she had never read it. She said she didn’t need to read someone else’s observations about her life, she had lived it. She knew what happened and what didn’t happen. He had told her she might be surprised. She had doubted that. Humphrey was nothing if not predictable. But now, sitting in her bedroom, she reads the final chapter. She is curious as to how their story is supposed to end.
She thinks back to the last time they saw each other, with her leaving the loft in anger. She hadn’t contacted him after that and neither had he. She had heard from Nate that he had a girlfriend now. Ruby. She figures it must be around 8 months now. And knowing Humphrey and his romantic sensibilities he was probably contemplating marriage. Nate had told her about Ruby as if he was announcing a death. She had told him to never assume she gave a shit about Humphrey’s love life. He had just said her name in that resigned way of his and she had changed the subject. Or course she had googled her as soon as she got home but couldn’t find any pictures. It went without saying that Humphrey would date someone without any online presence - she probably didn’t own a computer and only ate fallen fruit. When she had told this to Nate he had said that she shouldn’t be jealous, she had had her chance. And Blair wondered where everybody had got the notion that she had been the one to say no, to deny Dan his perfect ending. Unless she was remembering wrong, neither of them declared anything.
“He wrote you a book Blair.”
“He didn’t write me a book. He wrote a book where I featured amongst others. Stop making it sound like something it wasn’t.”
“So it wasn’t an extended love letter to you.”
“No, it wasn’t. It was a satire of the Upper East Side. Or so I read on the book jacket, I’m just on the first chapter.”
“You’re reading the book.” Nate had said in a flat voice.
“Yes, well. I thought I would give it a try,”
“Dan is happy now. Don’t stir anything up.”
“What makes you think I would stir anything up?”
“You’ve suddenly decided to read his book. You don’t do things on a whim.”
“Look, you make too much out of nothing. There was a brief moment in time where Humphrey and I could have been something else but that passed. Don’t make it into something more than it is.”
Nate had given a resigned sigh and started to talk about Serena.
...
She called Humphrey as soon as she finished the book. He answered just as she was about to hang up and she wondered what he had been doing.
“It’s me.”
“I’m sorry, who is this?”
“Blair Waldorf.”
“Blair. This is a surprise.”
“I just finished reading your book. Please reassure me that it’s fiction.” She stopped but continued before he could respond, “because if it isn’t, then you have memory problems which you should probably get checked out.”
She hears him sigh and she is so sick of people sighing at her when she discusses Dan, as if she doesn’t know her own mind or isn’t the only one who knows what actually happened.
“It’s not my fault you fell in love with me and it’s not my fault that I didn’t feel exactly the same way with the same intensity at the time you wanted me to.”
“I never said it was.”
“There is a 300 page opus which begs to differ.”
“You come out of it looking good. You can’t deny that.”
“Maybe, but I still break your heart in the end.”
“Well, I was pretty miserable there for a while.”
“The thing is Humphrey, you didn’t give me the chance to break your heart.”
And that finally shuts him up. She continues, “You never told me how you felt. You just gave me contradictory signs which admittedly is what I was doing as well but I never pretended I did anything else. You can’t make us up.”
“That night at the Alphabet bar, you knew how I felt Blair, you knew.”
“So why didn’t you kiss me when I wanted you to.”
“You may never believe me but that is actually one of the more stupid decisions I have made in my life. But you can’t deny that the next day you would have pretended that nothing had happened.”
“So?”
“What?”
“I said so? So what if I did? I wasn’t ready then.”
“Are you implying that that has changed?”
“No. I know you are very happy with some eco warrior named Ruthie.”
“It’s Ruby actually and she is not an eco-warrior. And more to the point, she is not my girlfriend anymore.”
“Why is this so difficult between us? Do you remember when you said that maybe we were just not meant to be. Do you believe that?”
“I don’t know Blair, you call me up after a year of silence wanting to continue a conversation you walked out on. I don’t know what you want.”
“I want you.” And Blair puts her hand over her mouth because that definitely had not been planned. “I want you to stop being an idiot.”
“I know you added that last part in to save face.”
“Don’t be presumptuous.”
And Dan laughs low in her ear and she holds the phone tighter. “I’m seriously insane Humphrey, you will want to break up with me after 2 weeks.”
“I like insanity in a woman. You have met my ex girlfriends haven’t you?”
“A confirmation of my insanity was not the correct response to that statement.”
“Us being a couple cannot be more painful than whatever the hell we’ve been doing for the last year and longer.”
“Famous last words.”
“I’m booking a flight back to New York as we speak. Does that meet with your approval?”
“I suppose,” she says but she can’t stop her self from grinning.
“What made you finally read it?”
I was miserable without you she wants to say, I was sick of thinking in hypotheticals, I was insanely jealous of whoever had your heart. But she settles with, “I was just ready. That’s all.”