fic: her hair spread out in fiery points.
her hair spread out in fiery points
gossip girl, blair/dan, rated pg- 13, words- 2339
Caught between two opposites and her heart thumps in response.
She fears she'll never be ready.
notes: i got the idea for this while kateinslacks and i talked about the weather and eliot- hence the titles.
april is the cruelest month
They say you never forget your first love.
It’s a popular theory, expounded on time after time, by the romance novelists, the script writers, the playwrights.
Selling a pipe dream, as it were, but it’s the same dream Blair’s crafted out for herself since she was a child. Her nose pressed against another’s and “always have, always will,” because maybe promises were meant to be broken but not by her.
She reaches up for his hair, soft as ever under her fingers. Cold. She can taste snowflakes on his lips, his tongue and she shivers her body closer to his and sniffs.
Sniffs deep and she inhales winter, breathing in the ice.
It’s the month of spring. The month of new beginnings, new happiness.
Of young men’s hearts turning to fancy, of skirts flouncing out of closets, of birds singing, sun peeping and all the world is washed anew.
Blair Waldorf’s coat is buttoned to the very top.
Snowflakes fall around her and she can only breathe in the cold.
All the world says it’s spring. She can only smell winter in the air.
***
She brings him breakfast.
So, she brings him breakfast and this is all innocent and all friendly and when he slips an arm over he shoulders- it’s pleasingly chaste.
But only for a little while because then in whirls Mr. Bass- all smarmy mirks and hurt eyes and “we were fireworks”.
He’s right, too. They were fireworks.
Pretty and fading, the perfect contrast to the eternity of corseted lies that the Archibald heir offers.
Caught between two opposites and her heart thumps in response.
She fears she'll never be ready.
***
She tries celibacy.
It worked rather well for seventeen years, before she dropped her panties for the devil and maybe all Nate needs is to touch her hair.
She tries celibacy, for a while.
Her fingers twitch all the time because Chuck’s glare burns and simmers- he always creeps to the core of her need- and Nate’s skin looks like it could melt under her fingers but she’s stubborn if nothing else, so-
-
yes, She tries celibacy for a while.
a tedious argument (of insidious intent)
The smoke drifts from her lips and over the balcony, she watches it swirl with the same intense concentration that one ex gave to weed and the other to rising hemlines.
Her eyes glow a little and she takes another drag but it doesn’t really achieve its purpose, she thinks. A low male voice at her back and her bones leap from her skin.
Neck twists back and a sigh joins the tendrils of smoke. She spies him through the haze and sighs “Dan.”
He approaches her hesitantly- either frightened as they all are, of the new Blair, with the cigarette perched between her smooth lips or he’s doing that thing again where he peers right through her.
His hand reaches forward and snaps back.
It’s the latter. She’s a bundle of nerves beneath the icy façade and he already knows this so she bows her head. Half shame, half crooked arrogance.
“Don’t tell Nate.”
“Hello to you, too, Waldorf,” and he claims the other half of the small balcony. They teeter over the edge of the building and she waits patiently because Dan Humphrey is nothing if not consistent, self righteous at best and moralistic at worst.
Soon, she guesses the interrogation will come and out of some misplaced sense of duty to her beautiful blonde friend he will feel obliged to try and stop her from burning out her lungs.
He reaches for the pack at her elbow, instead and helps himself.
“When did you-“
“When my mother left.” He places the cigarette in his mouth. Eye brows float upward and he appears to be waiting.
She leans forward, sliding up the strap of her midnight blue gown with one hand and lighting his cigarette with the other, dark eyes locked as she does so and his lips curl as he puffs, half smile, half smoke. It flickers between them- understanding and it surprises them both how easily it slides into place.
Like he’d told her about his mother only yesterday.
Backs pressed against the granite banisters, the proof of their sin floating into the city and the two wordiest people in all of New York are silent.
She doesn’t want to talk about any of their paramour, the tight little circle of indiscretions that they are both a part of and she can’t quite look him in the eye at the moment, so she settles for fixing her gaze on the tiny little rip in his tie and he bites his lip but won’t drop his gaze.
It’s a lull. She’s missed those.
“I should probably tell you to quit.” He sounds resigned, tossing the butt of his cigarette to the side.
She doesn’t respond.
Stands up and her pointy heel grinds out the remains of their time. She steps back into the party, final glance swung over her shoulder and he thinks she looks less morose than when he joined her.
He’s trying hard to not take credit for that- his solicitude means nothing at all to the ice princess but his lips curve all the same.
He should have told her to quit.
He thinks she probably expected him to.
that strain again
She breaks it off with Nate on a Tuesday.
They’re sitting at her favorite sushi restaurant, center stage from the door, as always. The waiter rolls in drink when she says- “I just don’t think it’s our time.”
He looks incredulous, not just because she quoted Dan Humphrey, (just like fidelity-memory has never been Nate’s strong suit) but because it’s not even the first course and she couldn’t possibly be leaving. He looks so lost, she almost calls him Nathaniel but she’ll bite her lip till it bleeds before a Bass-ism passes her mouth.
She reaches forward, brushes the hair out of his little boy blue eyes but she doesn’t look backs exits.
Standing at the curb and she can feel her heart wrench a little because she’s fairly certain she knows who’ll be comforting him. It doesn’t matter anyway because she climbs into a cab and it’s raining and he’s still inside.
Maybe Holly never meant to end up with Paul.
End scene.
***
They say you never forget your first love.
It’s something along the same line for first times- all nostalgia and significance but the bottom line is this- first time, first love and don’t ever forget.
She could be caught between the two for a long time.
She thinks it’s about time the rules were hers and didn’t you know Blair Waldorf’s a romantic?
Hit pause, ladies and gentlemen.
Hit stop.
i do not think they will sing to me
Serena van der Woodsen breaks his heart for the fourth time on a Brooklyn balcony. She doesn’t cry this time and neither does he and they don’t kiss good bye, they hug instead.
He catches a glimpse of her, later that week at some bar he’s rescuing Jenny from. Her golden head (sort of green in the clubs bad lighting) is thrown back and she’s laughing while some guy’s arm slips round her shoulders.
He waves, she smiles but he doesn’t think she sees him. She looks happy, he thinks and not entirely sober.
She isn’t drunk either and they both know the guy whose holding her so he isn’t worried, per se.
He thinks his Serena never was the real Serena after all.
***
He takes a train to New Haven.
Yale finally comes through with the financial aid, so he decides to splurge and travel nice because the last time he took a bus out of the city, things didn’t end up so well. Vanessa drops him off at the station.
(Rufus has to stay home in order to preserve his man hood and Jenny has places to go, people to be.)
So Vanessa drops him to the station and it’s nice, just the two of them. She hugs him good bye, hands him a book to read and sends him off with a secret. (Nate called and he’s going to Columbia- going to be Columbia so he can be with her and no prizes for guessing who got his place at Yale.)
Dan can’t decide who he did for his first girlfriend or his current one.
But it seems to work out for both, so he wishes V luck as he climbs into the carriage and takes his seat.
Leans back and shuts his eyes. This is he what he loves about train- about Yale, about life.
Anything can happen.
As it happens, she’s on the train, too.
All ninety five pounds of girly evil, curled into her seat and she’s sleeping. He spots her on the way to the bathroom, her tiny frame all rigid and tight like she’s cold. So he fetches a patchwork blanket from his seat- drapes it over her.
Later, she’ll complain that it clashes with her sweater or it’s tacky and Brooklyn and it infected. But in this semi conscious state she just snuggles into it and Dan almost smiles.
Anything, remember.
Anything.
***
It takes him all of three days at Yale to remember that Blair’s a bitch.
She stomps into his dorm, their first Saturday to toss back his blanket with a stiff “thank you” and no other greetings beside and huffs out like he’s a stranger she met on the way side not the only boy here she actually knows and no, she informs him- New Yorkers don’t stick together. Because Brooklyn as she sees it, isn’t really New York.
Snotty, self absorbed and down right disdainful, he remember why he hates her- cursing rather fluently under his breath when he walks into his Philosophy class to find her in the first row.
She waits for his odd gay wave
- it never comes.
***
She drags him out on the balcony at a New Year’s Eve party but instead of kissing her, he holds back her hair while she pukes.
It’s a party at the Bass mansion and their host has an arm wrapped around a model, so he supposes that’s why one Martini became two and now, she can barely walk.
She tugs on his waistcoat, pouting like a child and says she’d like to go home- so he bundles her into a cab and takes her home, walking her to the door like a gentleman.
She stays upright till they reach the lift, the collapses against him. The elevator doors ding and no one seems to be home. Dan scoops her up in his arms. She’s light as a feather, but no he’s not impressed, he’s worried.
Worried enough to spend the night propped against the door of her enormous closet, while she cries into her pillow, mumbling into boys with bad hair cuts and spilt milk till he can’t help but hold her. She quiets down then. Settling for sobs against his sleeve and silent shudders shaking both their bodies.
She wakes up in her own bed, tucked in amongst the duvet and pillows with a glass of water on the night stand and his jacket draped over her chaise.
Later, she blush scarlett at the mention of his gallantry and he’ll claim he never did more than Dorota herself would have done.
They acted a little in high school and they’ve only got better since.
***
She sends him a note at the end of the week.
It reads thank you and not much more but Dan’s the only person in their world who’s a bigger romantic than she is so he tucks into his copy of Truman Capote’s Tiffanys and leaves it there.
her hair spread out in fiery points
The first time they have sex, it’s an accident.
Final thrust and he can’t remember how he got here, with her dark hair twisted into his fingers and her eyes beaming beneath him.
It’s a mistake of course and he’s just waiting for her to say it, to scramble on to her feet, into her little black dress and on to the streets- cursing him and Martinis to the high heavens.
(He’ll follow her of course, if she does. But a sheet around his waist might get him kicked off campus and no, Dan’s come to like Yale.)
She sighs and wraps a leg around his hips, almost lazy now in post coital bliss and he nearly rolls off the bed in shock because Blair Waldorf is smiling at him- smiling- and he never thought that was possible.
***
The brunette’s limbs are still tangled with his own when he wakes and it wasn’t drink or desperation that got them there making this situation more surreal than anything should be. He remembers fighting with her all evening over Austen and Dickens and Serena and Chuck and he thinks she may have thrown a vase at his head.
Her vase, of course and he traces the scar on the inside of her wrist because Blair always manages to cut herself and he remembers binding it for her and maybe the cooling down heated up because all further recollections consist of angry mouths and moans that sound like sirens.
He thinks he can remember pushing her up against a wall, her head bent down towards him and she’s never looked less like herself.
His fingers, ink stained and bruised, run through the dark locks spread out on her pillow.
Eyes flick open and he flinches his hand away.
Her lips rise closer to his.
She doesn’t run, any more. Just reaches up to kiss him and say good morning.
Good morning, Blair Waldorf.