To Be Without Your Being
Summary: Dan wonders when he started covering his broken heart with different names and transparent allusions.
A/N: My first Dair fic! You may remember me as a Chair aficionada, but I have changed. Maybe it was Dan's muppet-hair. Either way, Dair angst/fluff/goodness awaits. The title comes from a beautiful Pablo Neruda poem entitled "Perhaps Not to Be is to Be Without Your Being." I'm sure Dan reads it sullenly every single night. This takes place shortly after "Riding in Town Cars With Boys." Follow AprilDirects417!
Disclaim: I do not own, but I will say that those who do are utterly irresponsible with it. DAIRFTW.
He wonders.
Sometimes, in the dead of the night, when the loft is pitch black and The Black Keys play softly in the background (because he has a habit of garnishing his misery), he wonders.
He wonders about himself. There is still so much he does not know beneath all the Robert Frost and the Mia Farrow. He does not know what provoked him to start writing, or what he looks for in a friend. He does not know when he will hear from his mother again, or why he's so uncomfortable in a room full of people.
He wonders when everything changed.
When he stopped gazing at Serena across the table at those ridged family dinners Rufus insists he attend. When he gave up trying to force Vanessa to be his triangle when she had always been a square. When he stopped giving a damn about anything and anyone except for one single person.
When he had stopped cutting his hair on a regular basis, and shaving, and behaving like a normal person. When he started spending night after night held up in the loft, covering up his broken heart with different names and transparent allusions.
When he fell in love with her.
He wants to know. Desperately.
Somewhere, deep inside of his battered, aching heart (to the left of his warped sense of reality, but just south of his self deprecation), he still holds on to the hope that maybe if he knew the exact moment, he could change it. Fix it. Invent a time machine, and go back, and not look at her for a moment too long, or let his knee rest carelessly next to hers, or do whatever it is he has done that has landed him here, at rock bottom.
Because rock bottom, he has slowly come to realize, is not a place that he thinks he can survive much longer.
Rock bottom is here, in his loft, with him on the edge of his couch. He sits with his head in his hands, his heart hammering all over the place. He's not ready for this moment. For the millionth time, he's held prisoner in his own head, torn in two (and three and four). All for her.
She's been in his bedroom for hours, back from the hospital, broken. Not ready to let go of the baby or Chuck or her fairytale. No one really expects her to be. She seeks refuge here, a creature of habit, and he and his broken heart have never been (and will never be) able to say no to her.
She emerges, like the moon, and his mouth goes dry in an instant. He feels her watching his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows, nervously.
"You were expecting me," she states plainly. Faint curiosity dances in her eyes, and it's the most emotion he's seen her show in weeks.
"I, uh, wasn't actually. But you have a second home here. You know that."
"I mean the bed…it looks…untouched."
She knows.
"Oh, that. I…haven't slept on it in awhile."
She takes seven cautious steps towards him before she speaks again. He hates himself for holding his breath.
"Well, where have you been sleeping, Humphrey?" She sits.
"It doesn't matter, Blair."
"Well clearly, it does, otherwise I wouldn't be asking."
He looks up at her, hopeless. He cannot be talking about this right now. Not with anyone, especially not with her.
"I guess I just haven't been tired," he lies.
She shifts, facing him, her quiet concern growing as the moments pass.
"You should sleep. You look like shit."
He chuckles. His Blair chuckle. He has come to terms with the fact that they both know there is such a thing.
"Thanks for the advice."
She nods slowly, sure of herself, and crosses her legs on the couch. Fiddling idly with the hem of her skirt (only Blair Waldorf would leave the hospital, broken but bereft with Marc Jacobs) before she speaks again.
"I never thanked you. I never thank you."
"What do you mean?"
She closes her eyes, the ghost of a wince present on her delicate features.
"For everything. You are…all that's been holding me together these past few months."
He coughs past his heart swelling. Covering things up is his natural reflex.
"Really, you don't-"
"And with Chuck," she opens her eyes suddenly. He closes his.
"No one has ever done anything like that for me. No one."
"You're my friend, Blair." He half-smiles down at her.
"You may be the truest friend I have, Dan."
Her head falls back onto his chest yet again, and he holds her together. A reflex.
"I just want you to be okay." He kisses her head for the thousandth time. A reflex.
"I will be. Here, it's good for me. I just…need to be away from everything for awhile."
A comfortable silence envelops them, and she slowly falls asleep atop his pounding, blistering heart. He wonders if the day where he stops putting her first will come. He does not wish for it – in some ways, he fears it. He finds that he does not know how to be without her, even when being with her is being shattered. He takes in her lavender scent (only she can emerge from a place that morbid and still be lovely) and finally, settles for sleep.
REVIEW PLEASE! I haven't written in forever, and I have never written for Dair, but I am passionate about this ship and I hope it comes through in my writing. I'll be home for winter break for a month and I'll be writingwritingwriting, so PLEASE review, it makes me want to write some more! Happy Dairing!