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He never expected them to look like this, his soft touch on her back, an unbearable lightness, domestic bliss. He never thought she would find it with anyone else.
Maybe it was all hopeful ignorance, hoping she would be his, hoping only he could make her feel like this. But she hasn’t been his for a long time, and maybe she never even was his in the first place, not completely. Maybe they were never meant to be.
He had hoped she would come back to him, realize what a mistake she’d made not choosing him, and come crawling back. He knows what a horrible person that makes him. He hopes it anyways.
They had kissed, only once, since then, since the seemingly inevitable end of their relationship, unhappy with her life and going to the one person she knew was even more unhappy than her. He’d let her, soft lips on his, daring him to give in, to show her how much she still controlled him. How much he still loved her. He opened his heart for her without thinking, showed her all of his weak spots and daring her to ruin him again, to press on them like bruises, to do her worst. Maybe she already had. Nothing had happened other than that, and neither of them had spoken of it since, not that he talked to her much lately anyways, without Serena making them. Sometimes Dan wonders if it even happened in the first place, or if it was some sick twisted joke his brain made up to punish him.
But she is here now, at the party, Chuck by her side, smiling up at him as if he’s all that matters, as if he’s all she sees. Dan wonders if she ever looked at him like that. He doesn’t think he wants to know.