Oh, shit, and does this mean that one day I will understand why Zac Efron's face doesn't make people want to fucking throw up because of how it looks? I need to chill out, I'm sorry. t.A.T.u. does something to me, apparently. But this is a very important scene. Dan tries to stop Chuck on the stairwell and Chuck's not having it, because he's about to start crying, which he is not physically capable of doing so the tears come out through his pores in the form of rage rays, and Dan begs him to stop, and Chuck's like, "No, numbnuts, I can hear you, I am choosing to ignore you." And then, despite his current revulsion to Chuck and his lying protestations to the contrary of his feelings for Blair today, he mans up and does the best thing he's ever done. "Don't. Because what just happened with you and Blair..." Chuck assures him it's not of his business but he keeps going, because it is: "Look, I don't know how you feel about her, but I do know how she feels about you, and she was going to tell you. Until I stopped her."

Lest we forget the other thing that's going on here, replace the café walls with those of a jail cell for sec, because this is the second time Dan's looked at one of Them and seen them for what they are and realized they could be loved. Nate was a foregone conclusion, of course, because he's not insane, but the first one Dan loved was Chuck. And Chuck loved it so much, and hated it so bad, that he practically tried to have Dan killed at Yale. Chuck had two friends, once. And now he has none, because first Dan hurt him and then took away Nate too. And that's the man speaking to him now, saying "I intruded into your places three times now, and I've betrayed you three times now, and I am trying to make it up to you, and give you back a piece of your heart."

And that is why Dan wins this week, because he knows exactly what this is, and what it means, and how even saying this to Chuck is asking for it, but that it's also something only Dan can tell him, because only Dan knows the story here. Better than either Blair or Chuck, as it turns out: two people he could look you in the eye and claim to hate, and he wouldn't even be lying, but nothing that's simple, and this is him saying so. All that time Dan and Serena drove themselves nuts trying to make her more like him, when really all he needed was to be a little more like her.