Fic: Airplanes in the Night Sky (Gossip Girl)
Title: Airplanes in the Night Sky
Fandom: Gossip Girl (TV series)
Pairings: Dan/Georgina, implied!Dan/Blair
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 1504 words
Disclaimer: I do not own Gossip Girl.
Notes: Prompt by stainofmylove: Gossip Girl - Dan/Georgina: But you're my favorite, you know it's tr
Summary: Georgina Sparks talks about lingerie. Dan Humphrey tries to get drunk. They're both horny, and they both want revenge. And that's never a good combination. Post Season 5
-
30,000 feet above the ground, Dan Humphrey stares at Walter Huston and Humphrey Bogart searching for gold in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This is one of the only selections in the airline's "Classics" collection that doesn't remind him of anyone he doesn't want to be reminded of (He can't watch Rhodes to Africa. And certainly not Breakfast at Tiffany's.)
"Still ignoring me, Humphrey?" Georgina sighs. She slaps her empty bag of peanuts on the plastic dinner tray for dramatic effect, only to have the bright red wrapper fly into her face. "Dan," she snaps, her voice high-pitched and irritable. "Are you listening to me?"
"Nope." Dan's face remains expressionless as he presses the flimsy airplane headphones tighter to his ea
Furious, Georgina rips the headphones off his ear so fast she snaps them in two. He stares, shocked, at the broken pieces in her hands
"Oops," Georgina says, unapologetic, dropping them carelessly in Dan's lap
Just then, an air hostess strolls by with a cart of drinks. "Wine or juice, sir -" she starts, before noticing the broken headphones in Dan's lap.
"Did you break these, sir?" The air hostess's lipsticked smile is sickly sweet, and it sort of makes Dan want to vomit his guts out. He shifts uncomfortably in his cramped seat. People all around them have turned to look
"Uh, well, actually -"
"It was an accident," Georgina blurts out. Dan turns to her, [pleasantly] surprised she decided to fess up. "I swear, I was the one who distracted him. He ripped his headphones off so he could hear me, and they just...broke." She shrugs, plastering a stupid puppy-dog look all over her stupid face.
Dan snorts, mentally slapping himself. Of course she wouldn't
"Not a problem," the air hostess says, her big [fake] smile telling him it is, indeed, very much a problem "Would you like those replaced?"
"Uh, no thanks, I'm -"
"But I'll have to ask you not to break them again, sir!" She lets out a [fake] laugh, at which Georgina chimes in with her own amused giggles until Dan shoots her a look that makes her all but stop.
"Anyhow, wine or juice, sir?" the hostess asks again with pursed lips, hostilely grabbing the mauled headphones from Dan.
He sighs. "Wine." (He's on an airplane to Italy with Georgina Sparks. He's gonna need it.)
-
"I hear this one designer store in Rome has thebestlingerie in the world," Georgina is chattering on endlessly about god-knows-what.
(OK, so Dan knows exactly what she's talking about. Hey - he's your everyday heartbroken guy. He's not just going to ignore a girl talking about lingerie, is he? Not that he's going to let her know.).
"Remember what I said, Georgina," he says. "Scandal, not seduction."
He picks up his new headphones (the way the air hostess had handed him the headphones so hesitantly, you'd have thought they'd explode the second his fingers touched them) and presses them to his ears.
Georgina lunges to grab them from him, but thinks better of it this time. She takes to rolling her eyes instead.
"Admit it, Dan. Listening to a hot girl go on about lacy underwear is much more appealing than watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre for like, the twentieth time in a row."
His eyes narrow suspiciously at her. "How would you know I've watched it before?"
"You're forgetting I'm the one who took over Gossip Girl."
He snorts. "For what? Like, three weeks?"
"I lasted a lot longer than Serena Van der Woodsen," she snaps.
Dan fidgets, discomfited at the mention of her name. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Georgina turns away. "Never mind, Humphrey."
He cringes at that. "Don't call me that," he says through gritted teeth
"Why?" The Georgina he knows is back, a self-satisfied smirk dancing on her heavily glossed lips. "Remin you of someone you know?"
"That's actually none of your business."
"Oh really? Well then, I'm sure you won't mind me calling you whatever I want, Humphrey."
Sighing, he turns back to his screen. He brought Georgina Sparks along with him so that vengeance could his - not to be incessantly pestered about Blair or Serena. And just to prove he's more than okay, he switches the film to Breakfast at Tiffany's
He doesn't miss the knowing smirk on Georgina's face as Audrey Hepburn takes the stage.
-
They're an hour left to Italy when the airplane goes into severe turbulence. Dan had always been comfortably with the sky: he feels free, powerful, high up in the sky, like a hawk towering over the rest of the world
He never would have guessed quite how much a wobbly aircraft could scare Georgina Sparks. She's pale as a ghost, clutching the armrests tightly, her eyes wide in horror.
She throws a nervous glance at him. "Any idea when this is going to stop?"
He smirks. "Scared, Georgina?"
She straightens up at that. "No," she says defiantly. "It's just, it's messing up my hair. That's all." She laughs, the false soprano ringing through the quiet airplane. Thankfully, most everyone around them is asleep. "Guess the Frederic Fekkai high gloss shampoo just isn't doing it for me -"
"Georgina, it's okay to be scared, you know."
"Scared?" Her voice is high-pitched, like a little girl's (they're all little boys and girls, really, there's no denying that. They pretend they're not, but they'll always be, until they decide they want to grow up). "I'm not scared. I'm telling you, it's my hair."
Five minutes later, she's clutching the armrests again. "For fuck's sake, this is going on forever," she babbles. "What if it never stops? What if we tumble straight into the Atlantic -"
"Georgina, relax, we're almost -"
"-crash landing! I mean, I do read the news you know, and not just the fashion column. There was this one airplane crash where -"
Georgina lunges for a packet of honey roasted peanuts and starts tossing them into her mouth, one-by-one. Dan can't help but think she resembles a rabid hound
"Georgina, you need to just calm -"
"-too young to die. I still haven't done all the things on my bucket list. I haven't even made a bucket list yet -"
The aircraft shakes harder, and even Dan's starting to feel a bit nervous. He pulls off his headphones and turns to face Georgina.
"Look, it's just a bit windy out there -"
"-haven't even brought down the Upper East Side yet. The way they've fucked me up the last few years -"
That gets Dan's attention. He shuts up and listens
"-especially that stupid Serena. She gets everything I want, everything." Her voice trembles ever-so-slightly, and Dan suddenly understands her previous outburst at him. (Worst of all, he realizes he and Georgina Sparks have much more in common than he'd anticipated.) "Everything's all about them, all the fucking time. Never me, no, not once. I work for everything I get, for every tiny second of attention, but they just seem to get all they want on a perfect, pearl-encrusted dinner plate -"
Dan can't possibly count the number of times he'd thought the exact same thing
"-Archibald's okay, I'm willing to spare him my wrath, but Chuck and Blair and Serena? They need to be taught their lesson." She munches furiously on a peanut. The way her words are slurring, Dan has a feeling she's had a bit too much wine to drink
He is thrown aback when she whips her neck around to face him. "We're gonna make them pay, Dan, I'll see to it." She reaches her arm out to stroke his cheek, and the gesture is almost gentle, were it not for the person the hand belonged to. "You were always my favorite, Humphrey." She doesn't say it seductively or or with a bitter edge to her voice- she's just stating a plain and simple fact. "Always will be."
Dan forces out a laugh, pushing her hand away from his face. "I think someone's had a little bit too much to drink," he teases lightly. "Or maybe it's the nerves..." he gestures to the trembling airplane.
Georgina turns away. "You know it's true," is all she says before clutching the armrests again
-
She might have had too much to drink, and it might have been the nerves, but what she'd said to him was true. He was always her favorite, always will be.
(She'll tell him this again, days later. She'll whisper it into his neck as he moves roughly above her one hot summer night in a Milanese hotel room. "You've always been my favorite," she'll gasp into him, everything feeling so right and wrong and deliciously vindictive all at the same time. And later, later they'll sit with a stack of papers, Papermate pen in his hand and a Mont Blanc in hers, and they'll write out the truth of the Upper East Side they should've told the world so, so long ago.)
THE END.