A Dair/Mad Men crossover? Insane, you say? Random, you say? Yes. This idea was born out of the Dair thread on the Couples Board at FanForum when we were all distraught over recent events and wondering what they could be like on a much, much better show than GG. The initial idea and premise came from the lovely Katie and I dedicate this mess/masterpiece? to her, because she's wonderful. Now, I of course do not own Dair, but I like to borrow them and put them to better use from time to time. And I definitely don't own Mad Men and can only hope I do it justice. I hope you enjoy, review (talk to me! tone, world, atmosphere, characterization...everything!) and come back for more updates. xoxo Air

Blair Waldorf nodded politely to the other passengers in her elevator before stepping out onto her floor in the pristine Manhattan building where she now worked. Her heel clicked against the tile and for the first time it felt familiar instead of foreign. She no longer felt that click was invasive or jarring. She was beginning to settle in. It was her thirty-sixth day and she was starting to find a groove.

She reached a hand to push open the glass doors of Sterling Cooper Draper Price, but it swung open for her. Open sesame.

"Ladies first."

Blair craned her neck to find Ken Cosgrove, arm outstretched with intent to hold the door open for her. He had a warm smile.

"Thank you," she said and slowed her step once inside in order to exchange niceties.

She settled down behind her desk, puny and cramped in a corner with the rest of the copywriters.

"Good morning," she said in a chipper voice, more confident than tentative.

"I don't see what's so good about it," Ginsburg grumbled in his strong Brooklyn accent.

There were already about thirty files on her desk.

"Oh," Blair's voice fell at the prospect.

"Buck up, kiddo," Stan said, pulling at the waistband of his pants and leaning far back in his seat for a morning stretch. Blair grimaced at the sight. "It means mama bird's under duress and leaving you alone in the nest to spread your wings."

Blair batted her eyelashes and her lips extended into a tight smile. "And I suppose I'm the only chick in the nest, as it were?" she asked saccharinely.

"What now?" Stan asked, already distracted by something on the ceiling.

But Ginsburg was quicker than he looked and chuckled. "Oh, she's sharp," he said and Blair had to fight hard to suppress a sly smile.

"What?" Stan said, now becoming aware that perhaps he was out of the loop. But before he could break into a whine Peggy barreled into the office in a huff, coffee in one hand and a folder under her other arm. Her hair was mussed and teeming with fly-aways and the collar of her blouse rumpled.

"Geez," Ginsburg said. "I'd say you look like you woke up on the wrong side of the bed but…"

"You don't look like you woke up in a bed at all," Stan finished.

"Stan, I cannot put up with your bullshit right now," Peggy snapped.

Blair quickly ejected from her seat and hooked her hand into the crevice of Peggy's elbow. "I have an idea," she said. "Let's go freshen up. My mother always says a splash of cold water is just as effective but far more refreshing than a slap in the face."

The two women settled into the ladies' room together, Peggy's hip rested her weight against the rim of the sink. Blair wet her fingertips and began to smooth out Peggy's frazzled hair.

"Why are you doing this?" Peggy asked.

Blair prepared her most soothing, calming voice. "Let's just say I have a thing for proper grooming," she said. "Rough night?"

Peggy's shoulders slumped. "Playtex is killing me. And Ginsburg is not helping." She waved her hand dismissively. "He's very old world."

Blair was smoothing out Peggy's collar when she caught her looking on anxiously. She was biting the inside of her cheek and tapping her foot and making it very hard for Blair to help her.

She sighed in exasperation. "Look, I promise I can handle all of the work on my desk," Blair said and Peggy reeled back the slightest bit at her force.

"I wasn't implying—"

"It's okay. Just worry about Playtex," Blair said with a smile. She patted her shoulders. All done.

Blair and Peggy were back en route to the conference room, and Blair desperately wanted to break away for a cup of coffee but thought it better to remain in step when—

"Blair," Ken Cosgrove's voice called out to her and she jumped.

She swiveled around on her toes and tried to recover, willing the spike in her heart rate to calm. "Hi, Mr. Cosgrove," she said.

"Don wants to see you in his office," Ken said. He was always cheery, with a spring in his step, but it was never overbearing. For a moment Blair wanted to wring his neck. How could he be so nonchalant about delivering that message? She'd hardly even spoken to Don and now she was being beckoned to his office?

"Oh," she said, flustered. "Of…of course." She caught Peggy giving her a pointed look before she shuffled down the hall to follow Ken.

The door clicked shut behind her. Don's office was pristine, quiet. She feared it would echo.

"Hello, Mr. Draper," she said as he shuffled a pile of papers at his desk and Ken trailed around her to sit on the couch.

"Playtex is taking meetings with other firms. They're unhappy," Don said. Right to the point.

Blair wasn't sure why he felt the need to tell her this, she really only knew one thing about the Playtex account. "Peggy's been running herself ragged. I'm sure she'll have something soon enough—"

"Peggy needs to go home for more than four hours a night," Don said.

Ken cleared his throat from the couch. "Uhh, if you don't mind my asking, what kind of bra do you wear?"

Blair hesitated. Her eyes shifted between the men, trying to figure out their game. She was no longer feeling very comfortable. She almost crossed her arms but caught herself and thought better of it, bringing them back to her sides and smoothing out her already smooth skirt.

"What he means is—we need fresh eyes on this. And we need a woman," Don explained.

Blair snapped back to life. "Oh! Yes, yes I do actually wear Playtex. Yes." She cut herself off before she could run on any longer and say one too many yesses.

"Good," Don said. "You'll take the new model home. Come in with some initial ideas tomorrow."

Blair grinned, so much so that her cheeks hurt. On day thirty-six, she'd been assigned her first account to lead.

Daniel Humphrey was in the middle of a very important aircraft-engineering project when he was rudely interrupted by a firm rapping across his open office door.

"Got a minute?" a smooth, deep voice asked. It was Nate Archibald, a junior account man at BBDO.

"Hey, check this out," Dan said, removing his feet from his desk and planting them on the floor before sailing a paper airplane across the room. It took a nose-dive somewhere between the sofa and Nate's feet and Dan shrugged at its sudden, yet anticlimactic failure.

Nate shifted his gaze from the floor back to Dan. "I've landed a meeting with Playtex, you up for the job?" He held out his arms, inviting congratulations but Dan frowned.

"Like…tampons?" he asked.

"Like bras, dumbass," Nate said with a smile.

Dan felt nervous excitement build up in his chest and then a curious skepticism. "Isn't that Sterling Cooper Draper Price's account?"

"It sure is," Nate said with an impish smile.

"Holy shit," Dan said softly, his gaze transfixed on some mark on the wall that grew hazy and out of focus.

"You know what this means, don't you?" Nate asked.

Of course he knew what it meant. It meant he had the chance to steal this campaign away from the one and only Don Draper. And though he liked to pride himself on his immense superiority to most copywriters and ad men, Draper was not one with which to regard with an inch of arrogance or bravado.

"It means we're collecting research tonight," Nate continued. "Huh? Soho? Drinks. Dancing. Getting women of…varying…endowments to show us their braziers in order to help us with our oh-so-important-cause?"

Dan whipped his hand behind his ear and materialized with a pencil that he pointed in Nate's direction. "I like the way you think, Archibald."

Blair stood with her hands on her hips in front of her vanity mirror in her Upper East Side apartment. It was nine at night and she'd been making various gestures and striking various poses in the mirror for two hours. She had on her slip and the new Playtex bra that Ken had given her to take home, and despite all of her efforts, she couldn't think of any remotely exciting way to sell this thing. Sure, it lifted without much padding, but in truth she needed padding. And otherwise it was just a plain old regular bra. She wore them every day, there was nothing exciting about them.

This was getting nowhere.

When she walked into the bar in Soho she had one purpose and one purpose only. Find a promising male, flirt shamelessly, let him think he's lucky enough to be getting her blouse off, and proceed to interview him.

She sat at the bar and ordered a gin martini, coyly eyed the patrons sitting to her left and right and caught the eye of two men nearly instantaneously. One was wearing a suit, blonde and had a dashing smile. He was almost too pretty. The other had dark brown hair combed over fashionably, but the grease used to tame it was slowly losing out to a few curly tendrils along his forehead. He had on a hideous (to her) tweed like jacket, cream button down and slacks. But he had a jaw line to die for and his eyes were deep and dark.

The bar was dim and hazy with smoke but once she made eye contact with the man in the suit, she saw him tap the other one's arm and they stood up, making their way over to her.

"Buy you a drink?" The one in the suit asked. They had her sandwiched, one standing on each side of her.

"Sure, this one cost five dollars," she said with a touch of condescension and raised her nearly full martini glass, but he didn't seem to pick up. The other one chuckled softly.

The man in the suit delivered a shining black wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket and delivered a crisp five on the counter. "I'm Nate Archibald and this is Daniel Humphrey. Pleasure," he said and extended a hand.

"Dan," the other one corrected indignantly and Blair shot him a sidelong once over.

Blair shook Nate's hand with a feather light and dainty hand. "Blair," she said. "Blair Waldorf."

Nate leaned against the bar. "Now, Blair Waldorf, what's a nice girl like you doing at a place like this?"

It's true that this particular bar was not very well known for its ability to uphold a sense of moral character. One did not go here to go wife hunting. And everyone knew it. It was why she had chosen the damn place.

She let out a small, incredulous scoff. "Nice has never been a word prescribed to me, Mr. Archibald. You can save your flattery for a more naïve and…frightening insecure girl. There are about ten of them in here, waiting to be hunted."

She caught the other man…Dan…bring his hand to his mouth and try to suppress a laugh at his friend's expense. Nate's brow furrowed and it was clear he was unused to such prickly creatures as herself. She felt bad for an instant, thinking him a perfectly nice man.

"Now," she continued commandingly, down to business. "Given that it's now been established that I'm not very nice, I'm obviously here alone and my next course of action is to ask one of you fine young men to show me to the ladies' room under the pretense that I'm too helpless to find it alone…"

She looked pointedly back and forth between the two of them.

Nate was lost. Dan was intrigued.

Dan slammed her against the floral wallpaper of the ladies powder room and crushed his lips upon hers. And she didn't just succumb to his intensity, but matched it, dueled with him and surged forward, ravaging him equally.

He pulled away, breathing heavily and overwhelmed by her immense life force. His lips explored her jaw line and along her neck, and he delighted in the staccato gasps she emitted.

"You're so…" he kissed the groove of her collarbone. Beautiful. Strong. Smart. "Peculiar."

He felt her stiffen underneath his palms. Peculiar?

"Peculiar?" she echoed his brain.

Dan squeezed his eyes shut, mentally slapped himself, and detached from where his lips had been exploring.

He met her gaze. "Well you know…peculiar. Uh, let's see…synonyms include atypical, curious…" Dan fumbled over his explanation and Blair cocked an eyebrow. As he struggled to find more words with a positive spin, she began to play with the top button of her blouse.

"Uncommon…" Dan continued, intent on saving the situation.

"Strange. Weird. Eccentric," Blair interjected and soon his stare was drawn to the fact that with each pointed word she was undoing a button. "Abnormal." Button. "Odd." Button. "Unconventional?" She finished with the last and slowly peeled her blouse back.

Dan gulped. What a woman. What a….

"What a….what are you wearing?" he asked, stumbling a little over his words. But it wasn't the allure of her breasts that caused his collar to tighten.

She was wearing the bra. As yet undistributed for retail purposes. It was simple. White, functional, not overly sexy. Though it had two cross-crossed seams in the front that drew the eye right to the center and accentuated the cleavage. It was a simple, yet effective design. And did it ever look amazing on Blair…what was her last name? Waldorf.

A second ago she was a feisty brunette of loose moral character and a sharp tongue. Now she was the enemy. The competition. Possibly a spy.

He heard a giggle out on the perimeter of his senses and snapped back to the present to find Blair's shoulders curling forward in amusement.

"Do you like it?" she asked coyly. "I just got it today."

Dan's lips turned up into a half smile. So she was playing some sort of game here. He'll play along too.

"I do," he answered and took the liberty to lean in once again and nibble at her neck. His hands roamed over her waist and felt the coolness of her bare stomach and finally palmed her breasts through the fabric of her bra.

"Mmm," she purred. "What would say are its best qualities? From a man's perspective I mean."

He pulled himself back again and creased the lines on his forehead with considerable suspicion. He knew he couldn't answer her; it'd give her ideas. And ideas where the endgame of this business.

"What's your angle?" he asked and her eyes widened. Her lips parted slightly in either offense or feigned offense to mask how entirely caught she was.

"Excuse me?" she said haughtily. "I don't…I…nothing," she ended shrilly.

"I don't believe you," he said flatly. They were still close, cramped even, in the small little powder room and his sudden harshness only accentuated their close quarters and drained the oxygen from the space. Her chest was heaving up and down and his eyes locked her into a dead stare.

"Cross my heart," she said in a near whisper before she reached a hand out and cautiously snaked her fingers around his and drew his arm up close to her. She gripped two of his fingers and guided him to her bosom, miming the motion to cross her heart along the criss-crossed seams of her bra.

Her other hand grasped the back of his neck and she surged forward, trying to rectify whatever damage she thought she had done. Her lips fell open and she searched for his, but he held her in place.

"What do you do?" he asked. "For a living?"

"What do you do?" she whispered against his ear, hot breath curling over him.

"I'm a writer," he said, softening. His resolve was about to crumble.

"I'm in advertising," she said.

There it was. Her hands were exploring his chest through his shirt when he gripped each of her wrists in a desperate attempt to get her to stop.

"What is it?" she asked, trying to hide the alarm in her voice, and it sounded meek and cracked a little. He'd say it was so unlike her, but he didn't know what she was like.

"I have to go," he said coldly and began to push his way passed her towards the door. He jiggled the handle much too excitedly before bolting out without further explanation.

He had an idea.

TBC

p.s. Did I pull it off?