of stories and sleep
Title: Of Stories and Sleep
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue
Spoilers: None, but does take place in the not-too-distant future.
Pairing: Dan/Blair
Summary: Dan writes to Blair.
Author's Note: This is a ridiculously short, meaningless little drabble.
As far as authors go, Steinbeck has never been his favorite.
He can appreciate the merits of such a prolific writer, but he would rather spend his days devouring the words of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Though he does have a tattered copy of Pastures of Heaven tucked into his desk drawer.
But Dan has always had a soft spot for things that are easily overlooked.
He is in the midst of a lengthy bout of writer’s block when he stumbles across Steinbeck’s Six Tips On Writing and he’s so incredibly desperate that he memorizes them all.
Number three resonates more than the others.
“Forget your generalized audience. In the first place the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person - a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.”
It takes him half a second to know who he will write to.
There’s no need to scroll through the list of people he knows - loved ones and mentors and professors - none of them will do.
There is only one choice.
He writes through the rest of the afternoon and across the span of the whole night - words coasting furiously across the screen.
He writes to her.
She’s his toughest critic. And his greatest inspiration. So, he tones down the romance (she’s a romantic, but not as romantic as he is) and amps up the wit.
By eleven in the morning, he’s half delirious, but he’s written an entire short story in mere hours. It’s not the chapters of his new novel that are due to his editor in a week, but these words feel far more important that.
He prints the pages of his new story, tucks them under his arm, and hurries to Manhattan under a blinding sun.
Blair is in her bedroom when he arrives. He offers her the crinkled pages and a cup of coffee (and keeps one for himself, taking long drags and watching her brow furrow over the rim).
“What’s this?” she asks before taking a sip of coffee. Her nose crinkles in surprise (he knows how she likes her coffee and this makes her heart stutter over a beat).
Dan shrugs, sinking down onto her bed. His body feels heavy, almost as heavy as his eyes, and the lightness of the bed makes every cell sigh with relief. “A story. I wrote it last night.”
“And you want me to read it?”
He nods, his eyes slowly closing and then snapping open. “Yes. I wrote it to you.”
The last thing Dan sees before the heaviness of sleep claims him is Blair pulling her knees up to her chest and the white pages of his story falling around her.
He can’t remember if this image is a dream when he wakes with a start.
The feel of her bed is familiar and the blue walls are a normal thing for him to open his eyes to these days, but exhaustion still weighs him down and it takes him a minute to remember how he got to her bedroom in the first place.
He looks over the edge of the bed and finds her on the floor, sitting in the middle of scattered sheets of paper.
It wasn’t a dream.
“Hey sleepy head,” she greets him softly (a light tone he rarely hears slip from her lips).
He rolls out of her bed and drops down to the floor. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A few hours. You stayed up all night writing this?” She gestures to the pages in between them.
“Yeah. You’re still reading it?”
Blair lowers her eyes to the sheet directly in front of her, her finger smoothing over the black words covering the page. “For the third time,” she tells him sheepishly.
“You like it?” he asks, surprised. The things he writes in a blaze through the night are not often pieces of quality. And rarely are they ever sensible or sane.
She bites her lip and nods. “You really wrote this to me?” she asks, all doe-eyes and parted lips.
“I stumbled across these writing tips. By Steinbeck of all people. And you know how I feel about…”
“Jesus, Humphrey,” she sighs impatiently. “Brevity. You need to work on brevity. I thought Hemingway would have taught you that by now. This is what you get for listening to Steinbeck.”
He laughs and then answers, “Yes. I wrote it to you.”
She smiles and crawls across the sheets of his story that are scattered between them. Snaking her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to his, she whispers “thank you” before she kisses him.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't sue
Spoilers: None, but does take place in the not-too-distant future.
Pairing: Dan/Blair
Summary: Dan writes to Blair.
Author's Note: This is a ridiculously short, meaningless little drabble.
As far as authors go, Steinbeck has never been his favorite.
He can appreciate the merits of such a prolific writer, but he would rather spend his days devouring the words of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Though he does have a tattered copy of Pastures of Heaven tucked into his desk drawer.
But Dan has always had a soft spot for things that are easily overlooked.
He is in the midst of a lengthy bout of writer’s block when he stumbles across Steinbeck’s Six Tips On Writing and he’s so incredibly desperate that he memorizes them all.
Number three resonates more than the others.
“Forget your generalized audience. In the first place the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person - a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.”
It takes him half a second to know who he will write to.
There’s no need to scroll through the list of people he knows - loved ones and mentors and professors - none of them will do.
There is only one choice.
He writes through the rest of the afternoon and across the span of the whole night - words coasting furiously across the screen.
He writes to her.
She’s his toughest critic. And his greatest inspiration. So, he tones down the romance (she’s a romantic, but not as romantic as he is) and amps up the wit.
By eleven in the morning, he’s half delirious, but he’s written an entire short story in mere hours. It’s not the chapters of his new novel that are due to his editor in a week, but these words feel far more important that.
He prints the pages of his new story, tucks them under his arm, and hurries to Manhattan under a blinding sun.
Blair is in her bedroom when he arrives. He offers her the crinkled pages and a cup of coffee (and keeps one for himself, taking long drags and watching her brow furrow over the rim).
“What’s this?” she asks before taking a sip of coffee. Her nose crinkles in surprise (he knows how she likes her coffee and this makes her heart stutter over a beat).
Dan shrugs, sinking down onto her bed. His body feels heavy, almost as heavy as his eyes, and the lightness of the bed makes every cell sigh with relief. “A story. I wrote it last night.”
“And you want me to read it?”
He nods, his eyes slowly closing and then snapping open. “Yes. I wrote it to you.”
The last thing Dan sees before the heaviness of sleep claims him is Blair pulling her knees up to her chest and the white pages of his story falling around her.
He can’t remember if this image is a dream when he wakes with a start.
The feel of her bed is familiar and the blue walls are a normal thing for him to open his eyes to these days, but exhaustion still weighs him down and it takes him a minute to remember how he got to her bedroom in the first place.
He looks over the edge of the bed and finds her on the floor, sitting in the middle of scattered sheets of paper.
It wasn’t a dream.
“Hey sleepy head,” she greets him softly (a light tone he rarely hears slip from her lips).
He rolls out of her bed and drops down to the floor. “How long have I been asleep?”
“A few hours. You stayed up all night writing this?” She gestures to the pages in between them.
“Yeah. You’re still reading it?”
Blair lowers her eyes to the sheet directly in front of her, her finger smoothing over the black words covering the page. “For the third time,” she tells him sheepishly.
“You like it?” he asks, surprised. The things he writes in a blaze through the night are not often pieces of quality. And rarely are they ever sensible or sane.
She bites her lip and nods. “You really wrote this to me?” she asks, all doe-eyes and parted lips.
“I stumbled across these writing tips. By Steinbeck of all people. And you know how I feel about…”
“Jesus, Humphrey,” she sighs impatiently. “Brevity. You need to work on brevity. I thought Hemingway would have taught you that by now. This is what you get for listening to Steinbeck.”
He laughs and then answers, “Yes. I wrote it to you.”
She smiles and crawls across the sheets of his story that are scattered between them. Snaking her arms around his neck and pressing her lips to his, she whispers “thank you” before she kisses him.