Chapter Text
It starts soon after Kati’s birthday party.
Serena holds what would be the first of many love letters like some sort of prize, sitting on top of their table in the dining hall, showing it off to everyone who would like to see it. Blair doesn’t get what’s the big deal about it. A long-legged blond heiress being adored just because she is a long-legged blond heiress shouldn’t be news anymore. Although Paris Hilton seems to be doing well milking that particular cow still.
That doesn’t mean Blair isn’t curious, though. So, she snatches the letter from Serena’s hand.
“The paper is cheap and the penmanship is atrocious,” she says.
“But what about what it says, B?” Serena asks as she gets down from the table and sits between Blair and Isabel. “It’s really nice, isn’t it?”
“I guess nice is a way to describe it,” Blair says with false disdain. She should have known, if anyone could make a teenage boy write poetry, it would be Serena. Still, Blair can’t help the way she feels. She always wanted to be the receiver of the kind of devoted adoration that leads to someone immortalizing you in prose, and she knows that is something Nate can never give her. She has made amends with that, with the fact she will never be a muse, but it doesn’t make the dark green feeling in the depth of her stomach go away; the jealousy she feels towards Serena is always there, half-sleep. “Comparing your hair to the sun is very fitting, I suppose. Looking directly at it would hurt my eyes to the point of blindness.”
“Will you write him back?” Penelope asks, moving closer to Blair, in an attempt to read the verses about Serena.
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” Serena retrieves the letter from Blair’s hand as she says so. She may have known Penelope for almost as long as she has known Blair, but Penelope isn’t Blair and, as per Serena's logic, that means she isn’t allowed to analyze the verses about her long legs, otherworldly smile, and golden aura. “There’s no signature or address or anything, really.”
“When did you become such a pessimist? If you really want to know who sent you this, there is a way,” Blair smirks and her eyes twinkle with the prospect of a good scheme. “We just need to get some writing samples from all the boys at St. Jude's and see which one is a match. Iz, can you get me the contact of that graphologist we used to fake Serena’s mother’s signature? We should get a sample from the girls at Constance too, just to be safe. Even though I doubt any of our peers would have such disregard for the English language to the point of writing in a hieroglyph-like form.”
“We don’t need to turn this into CSI: Constance, Blair,” Serena says, carefully hiding the letter between the thick pages of her Chemistry book.
“Then you can just remember who you talked to at Kati’s birthday party since that’s where the secret admirer says he met you,” Blair barely gives Serena time to say something before she continues. “Oh, wait. Weren’t you so drunk you forgot to have even attended the party?”
“B, come on.”
“I’m just saying. We can’t count on your memory so, if you want to know who is the Edgar Poe to your Annabel Lee, that’s the way.”
“Wasn’t the thing with Annabel Lee that she was dead?” Hazel asks, only to be ignored by all of them.
“So, S,” Blair rests her chin on her hand, in a gesture of cutesy naïveté that somehow doesn’t clash with the devious look in her eyes. “What’s gonna be?”
*
It takes Blair less than two days to come up with a name.
“Daniel Humphrey,” she says to Serena in between the second and third period. “Or Dan, as he prefers to be called."
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Your secret admirer,” Blair says, as if it is obvious. “He’s the scholarship boy.”
“That was fast.”
“Well, I can count on my hands the number of boys at St. Jude's who knows what limerence is and how to use it in a sentence, so it wasn’t like we had that big of a sample to go through.”
Serena leans on the wall and bites on her lip, in what Blair can only assume is an attempt to not pout. “It seems kinda wrong, don’t you think? Trying to find out who he is.”
“I’m not trying, I did find out who he is,” Blair sighs, already tired of Serena’s ever-changing morals. “Besides, it’s only fair; he knows who you are, after all.”
“But maybe he is a secret admirer for a reason.”
“Yes, and the reason is that he is too much of a coward to talk to you in person.”
The bell rings and Serena straightens herself up, tosses her hair one way and another, becomes the picture of dishevelment.
“So now what?”
“Now you write him a nice rejection letter. Double-spaced. And in cursive, of course,” Blair says, the way she would do if she were dealing with a toddler.
“What if I don’t want to reject him?”
“Then I guess first we should go to your doctor and get you an MRI. The rejection can wait. You heard he is here on a scholarship, right?”
*
Serena finds Blair pressed into the brick wall beside the stairs of Constance, Nate’s tongue inside her mouth.
“You have to do it,” she says, not really worried about interrupting their very public display of affection.
“I’m sorry, what?” Blair asks, detangling herself from Nate just enough to look at Serena. Although Nate still keeps Blair’s waist firmly under his hands, his eyes can’t help but wander towards Serena.
“Write Dan back. You have to do it.”
“And why is that?”
“Because,” she explains. “You are the one who started this whole thing about discovering who he was. It’s your cross to bear now.”
“What is going on?” Nate asks, thoroughly confused.
“Serena has an admirer,” Blair turns to him, pats his cheek affably. “That’s all.”
“Then what’s with all the fuss?” he narrows his eyes, a gesture that often indicates he doesn’t understand what is going on. “I mean, I’m sure he is not the first one. Why bother?”
“Of course he’s not the first one, she is Serena van der Woodsen,” Blair sighs and rolls her eyes, over the whole thing already. “Why don’t you do it yourself? If you’re worried about your writing abilities I bet that, just like with everything else, you will find you have an innate talent for it.”
“That’s not true, B,” Serena says, earnest.
“I’m sure your grocery list could get you a Pulitzer nomination. If you did your own grocery shopping, that is.”
“I just — I don’t know. I don’t think I can write like he does.”
“Like a pretentious, intellectual snob?”
“Yes! You get it!”
Blair looks at her hands, busy playing with the lapels of Nate’s blazer, as she ponders. “Well, I am looking for a charity case, and letting the Humphrey boy down gently may just be it.”
“It’s not a rejection letter,” Serena reaches for Blair’s shoulders and squeezes it to get her attention. “It’s a thank-you-slash-maybe-write-me-again letter.”
“Oh,” Blair lets go of Nate’s lapels and gently pats his chest, signaling him he ought to move. Which, to his merit, he does. “Then I have no interest in it.”
“But you have to do it!”
Blair leans down to pick up her purse and puts it securely over her shoulder. “What I have to do is go to class. Maybe get a head start on Thanksgiving planning with my dad. Definitely not write sonnets about someone I don’t know.”
“B, please,” Serena holds her by her purse, which works not only to stop Blair but also to give her an idea. “You can have my Birkin.”
“The pink one?” Blair asks and Serena nods. “Okay, fine. But I get to take the original letter home.”
*
“Guess what your secret admirer is doing,” Blair teases and offers Serena her handheld mirror.
“What?” Serena asks as she uses the mirror to see the courtyard in the reflection, waiting for Blair’s answer.
“Admiring you, obviously.”
“Which one is him?”
“I could just say 'the one looking at you', but that wouldn’t really narrow it down,” Blair helps Serena angle the mirror just right, so she can see Dan. “That’s him. The one looking out of place.”
Serena closes the mirror and looks at Blair, a playful smirk on her face. “He’s cute.”
“I guess he has good facial structure. The hair, however, is a lost cause.”
“Why doesn’t he come to talk to me?” Serena pouts. “He could do it, I’m not scary at all. I’m not like you.”
“You shouldn’t bother,” Blair brushes aside the comment and forcefully takes the mirror from Serena’s hand, quickly putting it away in her purse. “Besides, you should enjoy the fact he is keeping it to himself. There’s an inherent romanticism in the yearning, don’t you think?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. Since when does Blair Waldorf yearn?” Serena turns to Blair, pointedly looking at her. “If you want something, you go after it.”
Blair smacks her lips together. Serena is not entirely wrong, but she is not entirely right either. Blair has always longed for things she can’t have; things that are Serena’s.
“He’s still looking,” she finally says. “He must want something. Although if it’s not talking to you…” Blair briefly looks at Dan, wondering what he might want. For some reason, doing that makes her blush. “Have you checked your locker lately?”
“No. Why?”
“I think lover boy may have answered you.”
*
“Serena, give it to me,” Blair says as she reaches for Serena, who is laying on her bed, a letter pressed close to her chest. Serena doesn’t falter, though, and rolls on the mattress until she traps the paper between her body and the bedsheets. “That’s stupid. I can’t answer his letter if you don’t let me read it!”
“It’s that it is… It’s so personal.” Serena gets up and lovingly runs her hands over the object of discussion, smoothing the wrinkles. She turns to face Blair, her eyes big and earnest. “He sees me, B.”
“Yes, as does everyone with functioning eyes,” Blair answers as she sits by her desk, tired of fighting when she is doing Serena a favor. “You’re hard to ignore.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
Blair does, actually. How could she not when she had been on this charade for almost a month? When, even though Dan addresses his letters to Serena, Blair is the one he actually sees?
Serena never even bothered to actually read what Blair wrote to the Humphrey boy, only caring to know the words written about her. She doesn’t know that Blair hasn’t been personifying her, hasn’t even tried. All Blair wrote, since the beginning, was how she felt. It had been so liberating to talk without restraints, not having to put one of her carefully crafted masks, a different one for each occasion.
And it was even better than therapy because she didn’t have to hold anything back like she does with Dr. Herman. This particular boy could never hold anything she wrote against her. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t; he doesn’t even know he is talking to her, after all.
It was like she could submit herself to the mortifying ordeal of being known without it being such a mortifying ordeal.
“And if you want to keep being seen, you need to let me read that letter so I can write an appropriate response to it.”
Serena huffs but gives the letter to Blair, even if begrudgingly so.
Sporting her victory smile, Blair takes the letter and carefully lies it on her desk, ready to devour it.
To my dear Serena, it reads.
Blair turns on her chair to look at Serena, who is too busy braiding a small section of her hair to notice how Blair’s heart has been wounded. She couldn’t help thinking that once again, without even trying, Serena had what she wanted.
*
With the holidays just around the corner, Blair’s duties as Serena’s messenger come to a halt. It’s not only that she wouldn’t have time to write, but also that Serena takes her two-month winter vacation around that time - just after Thanksgiving at the Waldorfs - and it would be weird if she kept corresponding with Dan when out of the country.
That’s why, when Thanksgiving comes, is a surprise that her first in-person interaction with Dan also comes with it.
Especially when that interaction starts when Blair catches him holding a not all there Serena, who had just ran away from her grasp. She is so surprised to see him there, to see them together, that she snaps.
“My savior,” she hears Serena saying to a star-struck Dan. A box of what once was perfectly good pie on the ground.
“What are you doing?” Blair asks as she snatches Serena away from his grasp. “Taking advantage of her on the holidays, tsk,” Blair adds, with the kind of bark that is supposed to be playful and not show that she can bite, too.
Dan doesn’t seem to know if she is messing with him or if she is really mad, and she has to remind herself that he doesn’t really know her. That he doesn’t think he knows her, at least, and wouldn’t know when she is joking.
“No, B, it’s Dave. From the letters!” Serena says, all smiles and glossy eyes. If even Serena didn’t get Blair was supposed to be joking, then how could Dan? But then, Serena is hammered, so Blair tries not to dwell on all of that.
“His name is Dan,” Blair corrects, not at all surprised that Serena didn’t remember but, at the same time, kind of surprised she didn’t. Blair assumes that it’s not an unforgivable offense; Serena isn’t the one writing Dear Dan once every two days for almost two months, after all.
“Is this your pie?” she nods to the box on the ground, more than ready to move along the conversation and leave before she - or, more probably, Serena - says something that reveals way too much. Dan, God bless him, just nods. “You should be more careful,” she adds as she pulls Serena away, already signaling to get a cab.
“I was too busy trying to not get her ran over,” is his answer, and it all makes a little more sense to Blair now. It doesn’t mean she approves their interaction even a bit, though. So, she gives him a once-over and puts on her mean girl act.
“For a knight in shining armor, you sure have lackluster shoes,” she says as she pushes Serena inside the cab, leaving Dan alone and confused in the middle of the road.
It takes everything in her not to look back.
*
After New Year’s, on their first day back to school, the first thing Blair does is deliver Dan a letter.
This one a special request by Serena, the only time she actually cared about what Blair wrote to Dan. It isn’t her best work, not by a mile, but it gets the job done. Only twelve words are enough to get her point across, after all. Well, Serena’s point.
On the folded piece of paper she leaves at his locker it’s written:
your hair is a mess
your poetry terrible
let’s go out Friday