086. if you want love, we'll make it [1/11]
Title | if you want love, we'll make it
Chapter | 1/11
Rating | hm. r-ish.
Characters | Blair/Serena.
Summary | Sometimes she forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
The first time it happens is not actually the first time (ever), and that's how Blair knows how it will go the moment Serena's lips start hovering close to her cheek.
"S," she says quietly, kind of a protest, more like a question. There's not much she can do to prevent the inevitable.
"B," is the quick reply she gets, cheeky and sweet. She loses track of Serena's hands; S has always been a touchy-feely drunk.
"Let's do shots," Serena whisper-shouts right by her ear. The boys closest to them are staring.
She laughs, feeling a strange, unprompted rush of affection, and reaches up to press her hands to Serena's cheeks. "I think you've had enough."
The lights pulse around them and Serena's eyes glitter with intoxicated mischief as she slips an arm around Blair's waist, pulling her close. "Not enough," she insists through quiet giggles.
Blair disentangles herself gently from Serena's grip, reaching instead for her hand. "Let's get some air."
She shakes her head as she pulls Serena out onto the street, inhaling deeply. Paris shines more brightly than Manhattan does in the middle of the night - it makes her smile, makes her feel free. "It's pretty here," she comments softly, glancing at Serena.
A sly smile and a tug of Blair's hand. "You're pretty here."
There's an alleyway right beside the bar. The walls are made of cement that is unforgiving against Blair's back - her couture dress rips and her skin is scratched but those details get lost beneath the feel of Serena's tongue ghosting over her lips, a not-so-subtle request for Blair to open her mouth.
"Serena," she hisses sharply, through her teeth, as she pulls away.
An alley at three a.m. in Europe with her best friend - this was not the way her summer was supposed to go.
But Serena's mouth tastes like martinis and smoke and Blair's own lip gloss, borrowed without permission, and she says, "B, I need - "
So Blair kisses her, murmurs shh against her mouth, swallows down the rest of her words.
Morning (afternoon, technically) sun leaks into their hotel room, beating against her eyelids until she finally gives in and blinks, lifting her head very slowly from her pillow. She stays completely still for a moment, trying to gauge the intensity of her hangover, waiting for the weight of her headache to recede a little bit.
The room is a mess - clothes strewn everywhere, shoes kicked across the floor. Her hair feels greasy; last night's mascara is smeared on her white pillowcase.
It smells vaguely like sex.
Across the room, in the other bed, there's a lump of blankets with blonde hair peeking out of the top. When it feels safe to move without vomiting, Blair tugs a robe on over her underwear and walks across the room, lifting the blankets and curling up silently.
Serena's eyes are shut but she's clearly not asleep. Her cheeks are damp and tear-streaked. Blair aligns on her body to S's, their feet and calves and hips and noses touching.
"Who're you crying over?" she whispers gently.
Eyelashes flutter and blue eyes open. "I don't know," is the whispered reply.
Blair nods understandingly, feeling tears sting at her own eyes and start to gather in her throat. "That's okay."
Serena buries her face in her pillow and takes a shuddering breath. "Not really, though."
She inches even closer, until her eyelashes are pressed to Serena's cheek, giving butterfly kisses every time she blinks. "We'll just stay here," she whispers. "Until it's okay."
They don't wake up again until it's dark in their room, the world a pale blue colour outside of the window.
Blair pulls away first, rolling onto her back and blinking up at the ceiling. "Shower, S," she says quietly, an order framed as a recommendation.
For a moment they're both still, but then Serena rolls away and pads into the bathroom. A moment later, the shower starts.
When Serena's done, she peeks her head out from behind the curtain, looking at Blair, who is already standing in front of the mirror over the sink, reapplying her makeup.
"You know, it's funny," Blair says, fighting to keep her voice measured. She focuses only on her reflection, making sure not to meet Serena's eyes. "I can't remember a thing about last night."
Even without looking at Serena, she can see the way the blonde's jaw clenches.
"Funny," she agrees faintly.
Blair has always been very good at not-remembering, but she sort of perfects the art over that summer.
Days pass. The sun rises and the sun sets and in between they act like they always have - walks on cobblestone streets, impulse buys on shopping sprees, macaroons and laughter. They wear dresses and hats and boys stop them on the street, grinning Cheshire-cat grins and murmuring praise in French. The two of them, together, are something of a novelty.
Boys come and boys go - all accented and European and suave. Serena rides away on the back of their vespas, hair flying in the wind; Blair lets them wine and dine her.
Somehow, she always comes home alone, and Serena's always there.
"Europe's starting to bore me," she says in her very best unaffected voice. She leans her elbows on the balcony railing, staring down into the streets. There is a mug of coffee cradled in her hands.
Serena kisses her shoulder, bare in the sundress that she's wearing, and then perches her chin there. "Europe or me?"
Blair turns her head, just barely smiling. "S."
Leaning in, Serena captures her lips in a brief kiss. She shrugs. "Just wondering."
Her heart pounds. Someone could see. Someone on the ground could tilt their head up and see them, kissing on a balcony like it's normal -
Serena pulls away. She's wearing a dress - short hemline, deeply cut, a stark blue colour: the usual. It has multiple straps, criss-crossing all over her back, and for a moment Blair is annoyed at the intricacy of those straps, at the challenge that would present if she should ever want to get it off.
Then she shakes her head, tells herself to think rationally (she must have heatstroke or something) just in time to hear Serena say, "You've had a lot of…short-term memory loss lately."
Blair throws a purposefully careless glare in her direction. "Don't do that. It's just…summer fun," she says lamely.
Serena reaches for a pack of cigarettes and tugs one out. Her fingers are shaking. "Lovely," she murmurs.
Blair finds the lighter before Serena can and tosses it right off the balcony, hoping that it doesn't hit some unsuspecting person walking on the sidewalk below. She smiles evenly. "Isn't it?"
One night she arrives home and it's Serena, sitting on her bed, knees pulled to her chest, teeth digging into her lip.
"What is it?"
"My mom called."
Blair arches an eyebrow, kicking off her heels. "New husband?"
"Chuck got shot," Serena blurts.
The room does one tiny, extraordinarily slow spin. Blair sits, right on the floor, right by the door.
"B?" There's a panicked edge to Serena's voice.
She blows out a frustrated breath. "Cushion the blow, next time."
Seventeen hours later, hyper-awake, her skin sticky with sweat, it occurs to her to ask, "Is he okay?"
Serena laughs, actually laughs. "God, yes."
Blair drags her fingers through Serena's hair lazily. "This is prime dread-locking material, you know." She licks her lips. "Have you thought about Brown?"
Quiet laughter and it makes Blair shift, ticklish and edgy. Serena's cheek is resting against her stomach, their skin glued together by perspiration, and her hand is resting uncomfortably high on Blair's thigh.
"You're thinking about school right now?"
She huffs, almost primly, which is ridiculous because they're both half-naked and she's been fucking her best friend for nearly a month now. "What do you want me to think about instead?"
Serena lifts her head. Her lips are red and they look slick (and that makes Blair's heart drop to the pit of her stomach and then soar up into her throat; it never seems to exist where it's supposed to anymore), her cheeks are speckled with the summery freckles that pop up every year like clockwork, and one of the straps of the shirt she's wearing has fallen off her shoulder and it is entirely impossible not to notice how she's not wearing a bra.
Blair may or may not have forgotten how to breathe.
"Tell me something, B." Serena's voice is so easy, so natural, like sharing a bed is as simple as sharing their secrets has always been.
She wants to know something about Chuck, that much is clear, and the sentence that tumbles out of Blair's mouth, uneven and breathy, is as follows: "You're better than him, you know…at this."
Serena's laughter sounds like bells or fucking angels or some other kind of horrible cliché that is too picture-perfect to exist, loud and clear, accented with joy, and it just makes Blair forget.
"Buh-lair," she says, splitting Blair's name apart the way she used to when they were thirteen and like presented itself as every third work in all of her sentences. She keeps laughing, "Tell me something I don't know."
When she wakes, Serena is halfway out the door, wearing her hair gathered into a ponytail and a skirt that barely covers her ass.
"What…" Her voice is strangely hoarse.
"I have a date."
Blair touches her forehead and tries to figure out if she's dreaming. "A date?" she echoes.
Serena nods, her eyes an icy blue. "I know, B. You were just upset before."
It didn't mean anything goes unsaid.
It never does rings loudly throughout their room.
There's a knock on the door and Serena turns to go.
Sometimes Blair forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
She sleeps fitfully, night after night, tossing and turning and gasping as her eyes fly open. She turns her face into her pillow to muffle whimpers, only half-awake. She bites down on the fabric lightly as her eyes slowly adjust to the light.
She doesn't know what this is, but she just aches and her dreams are a mess images that fly by too fast to be recognizable.
In her bare feet, she pads across the room and slips into Serena's bed instead.
"Mm?" Serena shifts closer instinctively, moulding her body to Blair's. Their breasts press together and their hips knock a bit; it feels a little hollow and awkward and yet, comfortable - a place she's been before, a place she'll be again.
"You smell like cologne," Blair whispers scathingly. "Cheap cologne."
"So."
She kind of wants to pull out Serena's hair. "Did you even know his name?"
"Doesn't matter, B." Serena's tone is sleepy with a warning tucked into it - she wants Blair to shut up and let her drift off again.
But Blair feels so needy that she just can't. "Why not?"
"It…never matters." Serena sighs, opening her eyes. "It's just fooling around. It's not like it means anything."
A spark of something seems to burst in her chest. "Did you do with him what you do with me?"
"Blair."
"Simple question." She's wide awake and she wants Serena to be, too. Her hands seem to move of their own accord, pushing up Serena's shirt, desperate to feel skin.
"S'different with you."
"Why?" she presses on.
"B."
"Do you love me?"
Serena's lips press tight together until they turn white. "That's not a question."
"Like you did Nate, I mean."
Blue eyes finally fly open, alarmed and guarded. "No," is the sharp reply.
One of Serena's thighs wedges between both of Blair's and her breath catches in the back of her throat. She sort of claws at Serena's skin and she doesn't know how or when or why she started needing this, but she does.
"What if I want you to? I want you to."
Serena looks truly confused. "To what?"
"To love me like that." A pause, and then she adds (and this is begging, she can't deny it), "Please."
Something flashes across Serena's face that Blair can't quite recognize in the darkness - it looks a little bit like regret - and then Blair's back is pushed flat against the mattress and everything gets lost in a haze of yes.
While Blair packs, Serena pretends to sleep.
She leaves a note: at daddy's for the weekend. xo, B.
Turnabout is fair. Serena's left her before, once, twice, thrice upon a time.
Still, it's a single tear that rolls down her cheek and drops onto Serena's skin when she leans over to kiss her best friend goodbye.
She flirts with a cute boy while she's waiting for her helicopter, but his eyes are such a bright shade of blue that a knot forms in her stomach and she has to excuse herself from the conversation to escape to washroom.
In the mirror, she looks worse for wear than she did almost two months ago, when she set out to leave everything behind.
She presses the heels of her hands against her eyelids and thinks about crying.
tbc.
Chapter | 1/11
Rating | hm. r-ish.
Characters | Blair/Serena.
Summary | Sometimes she forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
The first time it happens is not actually the first time (ever), and that's how Blair knows how it will go the moment Serena's lips start hovering close to her cheek.
"S," she says quietly, kind of a protest, more like a question. There's not much she can do to prevent the inevitable.
"B," is the quick reply she gets, cheeky and sweet. She loses track of Serena's hands; S has always been a touchy-feely drunk.
"Let's do shots," Serena whisper-shouts right by her ear. The boys closest to them are staring.
She laughs, feeling a strange, unprompted rush of affection, and reaches up to press her hands to Serena's cheeks. "I think you've had enough."
The lights pulse around them and Serena's eyes glitter with intoxicated mischief as she slips an arm around Blair's waist, pulling her close. "Not enough," she insists through quiet giggles.
Blair disentangles herself gently from Serena's grip, reaching instead for her hand. "Let's get some air."
She shakes her head as she pulls Serena out onto the street, inhaling deeply. Paris shines more brightly than Manhattan does in the middle of the night - it makes her smile, makes her feel free. "It's pretty here," she comments softly, glancing at Serena.
A sly smile and a tug of Blair's hand. "You're pretty here."
There's an alleyway right beside the bar. The walls are made of cement that is unforgiving against Blair's back - her couture dress rips and her skin is scratched but those details get lost beneath the feel of Serena's tongue ghosting over her lips, a not-so-subtle request for Blair to open her mouth.
"Serena," she hisses sharply, through her teeth, as she pulls away.
An alley at three a.m. in Europe with her best friend - this was not the way her summer was supposed to go.
But Serena's mouth tastes like martinis and smoke and Blair's own lip gloss, borrowed without permission, and she says, "B, I need - "
So Blair kisses her, murmurs shh against her mouth, swallows down the rest of her words.
Morning (afternoon, technically) sun leaks into their hotel room, beating against her eyelids until she finally gives in and blinks, lifting her head very slowly from her pillow. She stays completely still for a moment, trying to gauge the intensity of her hangover, waiting for the weight of her headache to recede a little bit.
The room is a mess - clothes strewn everywhere, shoes kicked across the floor. Her hair feels greasy; last night's mascara is smeared on her white pillowcase.
It smells vaguely like sex.
Across the room, in the other bed, there's a lump of blankets with blonde hair peeking out of the top. When it feels safe to move without vomiting, Blair tugs a robe on over her underwear and walks across the room, lifting the blankets and curling up silently.
Serena's eyes are shut but she's clearly not asleep. Her cheeks are damp and tear-streaked. Blair aligns on her body to S's, their feet and calves and hips and noses touching.
"Who're you crying over?" she whispers gently.
Eyelashes flutter and blue eyes open. "I don't know," is the whispered reply.
Blair nods understandingly, feeling tears sting at her own eyes and start to gather in her throat. "That's okay."
Serena buries her face in her pillow and takes a shuddering breath. "Not really, though."
She inches even closer, until her eyelashes are pressed to Serena's cheek, giving butterfly kisses every time she blinks. "We'll just stay here," she whispers. "Until it's okay."
They don't wake up again until it's dark in their room, the world a pale blue colour outside of the window.
Blair pulls away first, rolling onto her back and blinking up at the ceiling. "Shower, S," she says quietly, an order framed as a recommendation.
For a moment they're both still, but then Serena rolls away and pads into the bathroom. A moment later, the shower starts.
When Serena's done, she peeks her head out from behind the curtain, looking at Blair, who is already standing in front of the mirror over the sink, reapplying her makeup.
"You know, it's funny," Blair says, fighting to keep her voice measured. She focuses only on her reflection, making sure not to meet Serena's eyes. "I can't remember a thing about last night."
Even without looking at Serena, she can see the way the blonde's jaw clenches.
"Funny," she agrees faintly.
Blair has always been very good at not-remembering, but she sort of perfects the art over that summer.
Days pass. The sun rises and the sun sets and in between they act like they always have - walks on cobblestone streets, impulse buys on shopping sprees, macaroons and laughter. They wear dresses and hats and boys stop them on the street, grinning Cheshire-cat grins and murmuring praise in French. The two of them, together, are something of a novelty.
Boys come and boys go - all accented and European and suave. Serena rides away on the back of their vespas, hair flying in the wind; Blair lets them wine and dine her.
Somehow, she always comes home alone, and Serena's always there.
"Europe's starting to bore me," she says in her very best unaffected voice. She leans her elbows on the balcony railing, staring down into the streets. There is a mug of coffee cradled in her hands.
Serena kisses her shoulder, bare in the sundress that she's wearing, and then perches her chin there. "Europe or me?"
Blair turns her head, just barely smiling. "S."
Leaning in, Serena captures her lips in a brief kiss. She shrugs. "Just wondering."
Her heart pounds. Someone could see. Someone on the ground could tilt their head up and see them, kissing on a balcony like it's normal -
Serena pulls away. She's wearing a dress - short hemline, deeply cut, a stark blue colour: the usual. It has multiple straps, criss-crossing all over her back, and for a moment Blair is annoyed at the intricacy of those straps, at the challenge that would present if she should ever want to get it off.
Then she shakes her head, tells herself to think rationally (she must have heatstroke or something) just in time to hear Serena say, "You've had a lot of…short-term memory loss lately."
Blair throws a purposefully careless glare in her direction. "Don't do that. It's just…summer fun," she says lamely.
Serena reaches for a pack of cigarettes and tugs one out. Her fingers are shaking. "Lovely," she murmurs.
Blair finds the lighter before Serena can and tosses it right off the balcony, hoping that it doesn't hit some unsuspecting person walking on the sidewalk below. She smiles evenly. "Isn't it?"
One night she arrives home and it's Serena, sitting on her bed, knees pulled to her chest, teeth digging into her lip.
"What is it?"
"My mom called."
Blair arches an eyebrow, kicking off her heels. "New husband?"
"Chuck got shot," Serena blurts.
The room does one tiny, extraordinarily slow spin. Blair sits, right on the floor, right by the door.
"B?" There's a panicked edge to Serena's voice.
She blows out a frustrated breath. "Cushion the blow, next time."
Seventeen hours later, hyper-awake, her skin sticky with sweat, it occurs to her to ask, "Is he okay?"
Serena laughs, actually laughs. "God, yes."
Blair drags her fingers through Serena's hair lazily. "This is prime dread-locking material, you know." She licks her lips. "Have you thought about Brown?"
Quiet laughter and it makes Blair shift, ticklish and edgy. Serena's cheek is resting against her stomach, their skin glued together by perspiration, and her hand is resting uncomfortably high on Blair's thigh.
"You're thinking about school right now?"
She huffs, almost primly, which is ridiculous because they're both half-naked and she's been fucking her best friend for nearly a month now. "What do you want me to think about instead?"
Serena lifts her head. Her lips are red and they look slick (and that makes Blair's heart drop to the pit of her stomach and then soar up into her throat; it never seems to exist where it's supposed to anymore), her cheeks are speckled with the summery freckles that pop up every year like clockwork, and one of the straps of the shirt she's wearing has fallen off her shoulder and it is entirely impossible not to notice how she's not wearing a bra.
Blair may or may not have forgotten how to breathe.
"Tell me something, B." Serena's voice is so easy, so natural, like sharing a bed is as simple as sharing their secrets has always been.
She wants to know something about Chuck, that much is clear, and the sentence that tumbles out of Blair's mouth, uneven and breathy, is as follows: "You're better than him, you know…at this."
Serena's laughter sounds like bells or fucking angels or some other kind of horrible cliché that is too picture-perfect to exist, loud and clear, accented with joy, and it just makes Blair forget.
"Buh-lair," she says, splitting Blair's name apart the way she used to when they were thirteen and like presented itself as every third work in all of her sentences. She keeps laughing, "Tell me something I don't know."
When she wakes, Serena is halfway out the door, wearing her hair gathered into a ponytail and a skirt that barely covers her ass.
"What…" Her voice is strangely hoarse.
"I have a date."
Blair touches her forehead and tries to figure out if she's dreaming. "A date?" she echoes.
Serena nods, her eyes an icy blue. "I know, B. You were just upset before."
It didn't mean anything goes unsaid.
It never does rings loudly throughout their room.
There's a knock on the door and Serena turns to go.
Sometimes Blair forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
She sleeps fitfully, night after night, tossing and turning and gasping as her eyes fly open. She turns her face into her pillow to muffle whimpers, only half-awake. She bites down on the fabric lightly as her eyes slowly adjust to the light.
She doesn't know what this is, but she just aches and her dreams are a mess images that fly by too fast to be recognizable.
In her bare feet, she pads across the room and slips into Serena's bed instead.
"Mm?" Serena shifts closer instinctively, moulding her body to Blair's. Their breasts press together and their hips knock a bit; it feels a little hollow and awkward and yet, comfortable - a place she's been before, a place she'll be again.
"You smell like cologne," Blair whispers scathingly. "Cheap cologne."
"So."
She kind of wants to pull out Serena's hair. "Did you even know his name?"
"Doesn't matter, B." Serena's tone is sleepy with a warning tucked into it - she wants Blair to shut up and let her drift off again.
But Blair feels so needy that she just can't. "Why not?"
"It…never matters." Serena sighs, opening her eyes. "It's just fooling around. It's not like it means anything."
A spark of something seems to burst in her chest. "Did you do with him what you do with me?"
"Blair."
"Simple question." She's wide awake and she wants Serena to be, too. Her hands seem to move of their own accord, pushing up Serena's shirt, desperate to feel skin.
"S'different with you."
"Why?" she presses on.
"B."
"Do you love me?"
Serena's lips press tight together until they turn white. "That's not a question."
"Like you did Nate, I mean."
Blue eyes finally fly open, alarmed and guarded. "No," is the sharp reply.
One of Serena's thighs wedges between both of Blair's and her breath catches in the back of her throat. She sort of claws at Serena's skin and she doesn't know how or when or why she started needing this, but she does.
"What if I want you to? I want you to."
Serena looks truly confused. "To what?"
"To love me like that." A pause, and then she adds (and this is begging, she can't deny it), "Please."
Something flashes across Serena's face that Blair can't quite recognize in the darkness - it looks a little bit like regret - and then Blair's back is pushed flat against the mattress and everything gets lost in a haze of yes.
While Blair packs, Serena pretends to sleep.
She leaves a note: at daddy's for the weekend. xo, B.
Turnabout is fair. Serena's left her before, once, twice, thrice upon a time.
Still, it's a single tear that rolls down her cheek and drops onto Serena's skin when she leans over to kiss her best friend goodbye.
She flirts with a cute boy while she's waiting for her helicopter, but his eyes are such a bright shade of blue that a knot forms in her stomach and she has to excuse herself from the conversation to escape to washroom.
In the mirror, she looks worse for wear than she did almost two months ago, when she set out to leave everything behind.
She presses the heels of her hands against her eyelids and thinks about crying.
tbc.