087. if you want love, we'll make it [2/11]
Title | if you want love, we'll make it
Chapter | 2/11
Rating | hm. r-ish.
Characters | Blair/Serena (Blair/Random, hints of Blair/Chuck)
Summary | Sometimes she forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
"Blair-Bear!"
She breaks into a smile, a genuine one, at the sight of her father standing in the doorway of his sprawling mansion, his arms extended toward her for a hug.
"Daddy!" she calls back, jogging the last couple steps and launching herself into his embrace. Even after all these years, Harold still wears the same cologne, and she breathes in the comfort of that scent, closing her eyes.
He gives her a moment to savour the hug before he pulls back, grinning widely at her. "You look beautiful, Bear." His eyes dart downward, to her feet. "Those shoes look painful."
She rolls her eyes a little, deadpans, "Beauty is pain."
He watches her face for an extra moment. "So they say." And then his eyes drift upward, over her shoulder, searching behind her. "Did Serena fall asleep on the drive from the airport?" he teases.
She can feel the way her smile freezes. "No. She's not here."
Harold's eyebrows knit together. "She's not here?"
"No." She tries very hard to sound nonchalant about it but her words feel heavy on her tongue. "Just me."
His frown fades away. "Just you?" he asks, reading her mood. "Sweetheart, there is nothing just about you." One arm around her, he guides her inside. "Come say hello to Roman and Handsome."
She swims and tans and laughs with her father and Roman in the kitchen. She takes Handsome for walks over the grounds and calls home to talk to her mother and Dorota and hear about Anastasia. She watches mindless television, French soap operas and re-runs of The Hills.
She shops a lot - impulse buys and dresses in one size too small and jeans that she'll never wear.
And she drinks sometimes, on her own, full glasses of red wine when she's alone in her bed late at night, her thoughts tangled in the stars that shine through her window.
Dan calls on a Thursday morning.
"Look," he says, awkward even with the Atlantic Ocean between them, "I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't…"
"Desperate?" Blair chirps helpfully, rolling her eyes even though he can't see her.
He sighs. "Is she with you?"
She presses her lips together. "Humphrey. Sometimes you need to know when to quit."
"I just…"
Like a hypocrite, she says, "I don't have all day."
Dan sighs again. "I miss her, okay? And I need to talk to her."
She hangs up on him and flops back on her bed.
"Me too," she tells no one.
Harold finds her in the kitchen. It's late, past midnight; she's wearing the lavender-coloured nightgown she's always loved and the lights are off. There's cheesecake on the counter.
"Bear," he murmurs. He does not turn on the lights as he approaches her and lays a gentle hand on her head. "I can call New York for you."
She knows what New York is code for, and she ducks away from his touch. "No."
He studies her. "More of a suggestion than an offer, Blair. Unless you'd like to meet with someone here. Roman has a friend - "
She lifts her face toward his trustingly, and she must be a masochist because he's left her, too, but he's still her dad and if not him then she doesn't know who. "Daddy - " she begins, and then her throat clogs up with tears.
"You can tell me, honey. What is it?"
For a sleepy, heartbroken moment she allows herself to wonder about what her father's reaction would be if she said I think maybe after two years of loving and hating Chuck Bass, I actually might be gay, or at least terribly in love with the one person who knows me better than anybody. The thought almost makes her smile. He'd probably be happy. Maybe he'd even finance a chateau for the two of them (and Handsome, of course).
"Blair?"
She snaps out of it with a shake of her head, letting her hair fall into her face. She smiles at him and reaches over to open a nearby drawer. "Two forks," she announces, nodding toward the cake. "We need two forks."
Blair throws out half of her underwear while she's there, including some of her favourite La Perla pieces. It might be petty but it's also good catharsis, and she needs to get rid of all of the things that remind her of Serena's smoky eyes and smoky mouth.
When Roman sees her marching through the halls with a pile of tangled lingerie in her arms he raises his eyebrows but he doesn't comment; he holds a door open for her instead.
She gets homesick in August.
She lies out in the backyard, sprawled out on her stomach on top of a blanket that's laid out over the freshly-cut grass. Handsome scampers around her, barking at butterflies, his pink tongue hanging out while he bounds around.
"Don't you ever stay still?" she asks him fondly, shaking her head. She props her chin on her folded arms and sighs.
A part of her kind of misses the Hamptons, friends and galas and cocktails.
And, yes, she misses summers how they used to be with Serena - skinny-dipping late at night, daring each other to tan topless on the beach, their lipstick prints overlapping on the rims of their shared glasses of champagne.
Handsome head-butts her neck and slobbers all over her cheek, and she can do nothing more but glare half-heartedly at him even as she reaches out to scratch behind his ear.
"You're hopeless," she tells him on an exhale. "Like me."
Roman sets her up and Blair fights with her father about it, pulls him into the kitchen to stomp her foot and pout and glare, fully aware that Roman can hear all of her protests.
"He's a nice boy, sweetheart," Harold says evenly, gently disentangling himself from her grip.
"I can find my own nice boys," she seethes. "This isn't nineteen-twenty-two. I'm not exactly an old maid yet."
His mouth quirks - he's trying not to laugh at her, she can tell. "I know that, Bear. Roman and I have just noticed - "
"Don't notice!" she snaps. "I've been…I've been fine this summer." And that should be enough.
Her father's eyes darken the exact same way her own when she's especially serious. "Blair," he says firmly. "I'm happy that you're healthy, but eating three meals a day and keeping them down does not automatically make you fine."
She glares, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at a point on the wall just behind his head.
"You seem lonely."
Blair opens her mouth to protest, but her father speaks over her.
"You've been alone all summer. You are lonely, don't tell me otherwise."
Tears spring to her eyes. "Daddy."
"Blair-Bear," he retorts, finally giving into the temptation to smile. "Pierre really is a lovely boy."
So she goes on a date.
Pierre is a lovely boy, by all universal standards. He opens doors for her and walks on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street and pulls out her chair for her when they sit down to dinner. He's twenty-three and he attends La Sorbonne; he carries their conversation intelligently and effortlessly. He compliments her French and tells her that she has beautiful eyes. He orders dessert for them both and finishes hers automatically when she demurs about being full after only two bites.
Something about him makes her feel nostalgic. In another lifetime, or maybe at another time or in a place other than this one, she might have adored him.
As things stand now, she makes an attempt at holding up her end of their conversation and smiling at him at least once every fifteen minutes.
They go for a walk after dinner.
The air is heavy with humidity; she can't quite breathe when he touches her, his palm cupping her cheek affectionately. He lingers there for so long, his eyes searching hers, that she wonders if he's going to ask permission to kiss her.
Instead, he drops his hand and shoves both hands into his pockets, a boyish gesture that startles her.
"You love someone," he says.
Blair blinks. "Excuse me?"
He repeats it in English, as if that will guarantee that she understands, "There's someone else, isn't there? Someone Roman and your father don't know about. You love someone."
She stares at his shoes - sensible, classy loafers. "Everyone loves someone," she murmurs.
Pierre tilts his head. In her peripheral vision, she can see the knowing twinkle in his eyes. "Not as madly as you do, chérie."
She lifts her chin, feeling a little defiant. He doesn't know a thing about her. "It's just…it's been a long year."
He winks, ever-charming, not believing a word she's said. "I won't tell."
Her father and Roman wait up with her.
Blair puts on the show she knows they're awaiting. She smiles brightly, hoping that she looks convincingly starry-eyed. "He is so…" she gushes, trailing off on a dreamy note.
They beam back at her and she keeps on smiling.
For two weeks, Pierre is her excuse.
They do things together: playing tennis and eating lunch and splashing around in the pool on her property. They eat dinner with her father(s) a couple times, and they push their chairs together while Pierre smiles sweetly at her and she giggles at imaginary jokes.
He doesn't seem to mind. There is a girl, he finally tells her bashfully and after much prodding, at his university, and they're still…unfinished.
"Do you know how that is?" he asks her, his expression wistful.
Blair forces herself to think of a diamond ring clattering against the tiled floor of a hospital lobby instead of the scent of another girl's skin on her sheets. She hooks her arm through Pierre's as they walk.
"I do," she says.
It's not until he takes her to Paris for the weekend - Roman grins and her father frowns like he's not entirely sure what to think about that idea - and they spend only about two of the forty-eight hours of their trip in the same hotel room that she realizes.
He's in the middle of asking her if she wants to go to the Eiffel Tower when reality sinks in: he's her beard.
Blair is mildly (hopelessly), possibly (probably) in love with the one girl whom she should know better than to fall in love with, and this French boy, with his flawless manners and blue blood…he's her beard.
"Pierre and I broke up," she announces to her father and Roman while they're eating dinner.
Roman stares at her face, stricken. Harold's eyes fall to the piece of pie that Blair is nudging with the tines of her fork.
"I'm so sorry," Roman offers. He fills up her wine glass again.
"I'm fine," she says brightly, waving away his apology. "It wasn't meant to be or anything."
They exchange a glance. She takes a big bite.
"Do you miss Chuck, ma petite?" Roman asks carefully, his sentiment only halfway conveyed; she can hear because it's okay if you do as loudly as if he'd said it.
She sets down her fork. "No."
Harold studies her for a moment. "What happened with Serena?" he finally asks.
Blair bites the inside of her lip until she can taste blood. "People fall out of love," she says, and then hurries to add, "And friendship. They fall out of friendship."
"You two had a fight," he guesses, his words slow, still a bit uncertain.
"No, Daddy." She extends her wine glass toward Roman for another refill.
The two of them have had everything but.
She loves her father, and she might love Roman a bit too, but after nearly a month with them her tolerance for their love of British pop music is starting to wane.
No matter how much she loves them, the Natasha Bedingfield lyrics are starting to grate her nerves.
I've got a pocket, got a pocketful of sunshine, I've got a love and I know that it's all mine.
It feels a little like a mockery.
She takes Handsome for a walk in the village closest to her home-away-from-home, and she finds herself lingering outside of the tiny stone church for too long, long enough for Handsome to tire of running circles around her and to sit next to her feet instead, clearly unimpressed with her lack of movement.
"Come on, boy," she says softly. "Let's go in for just a second."
The inside of the church is homey, colourful stained-glass windows and well-worn wooden pews. She takes a seat toward the middle, feeling the way the silence seems to echo around her, full of confessed sins.
"So," she says, glancing at the ceiling very briefly. "I kind of need advice."
Quiet.
"Yeah," she whispers, hands knotted together in her lap. "I guess you don't work that way."
She passes Handsome off to her towncar's driver and goes into a corner store. She buys every single magazine and newspaper and tabloid rag they have in stock.
At home, she lies across her bed and flips studiously through every single page, searching for the telltale flash of blonde hair and a coy smile over the edge of a martini glass.
No luck.
She presses her fingertips into the crease of the cheap magazine she's reading and remembers, why would you leave without saying goodbye? Those stupid floppy-rimmed hats that Serena likes to wear, tears stinging her eyes and her heart aching in her chest, the worry that she was loving more than she was being loved.
My world is falling apart. And you're the only one who would understand.
She curls up in bed for the rest of the day, toying with the idea of sending a text message to the number that has already been first on her speed-dial.
Before she can officially make up her mind, she drifts off to sleep.
Prior to her return to Manhattan, her father and Roman sit her down and tell her that they're planning on adopting.
She blinks at them, a bit startled. She'd thought this was her going-away brunch, but it looks instead like a welcoming party for a sibling she'd never really expected to have.
"Oh," she says. A pause, and then, "Congratulations."
"And congratulations to you, Blair," Roman says with a peaceful smile. "You'll be a big sister."
"Yes. Wow."
Harold reaches across the table to take her hand. "We'd like it if you'd name the baby."
Something inside of her melts and she offers him a tentative smile. "I'd like that, too."
On her second-last day with them, feeling magnanimous, she joins Roman for some patio yoga.
It's a lovely idea in theory, but with the sun beating down on her head the edges of her vision start to blur, and all yoga reminds her of is Serena sitting on her bed amongst discarded dresses, her smiles shy and tentative and hopeful, summer plans, dream journals and yoga and finding love.
She mutters excuses about heatstroke and goes inside to pack.
Blair Waldorf touches back down on New York soil at 5:57 in the evening, one-half lighter (missing a tall blonde companion) but somehow feeling heavier.
No one is there to meet her when she arrives.
She isn't surprised.
Really. She isn't.
tbc.
Chapter | 2/11
Rating | hm. r-ish.
Characters | Blair/Serena (Blair/Random, hints of Blair/Chuck)
Summary | Sometimes she forgets how long they've both been playing the same game.
"Blair-Bear!"
She breaks into a smile, a genuine one, at the sight of her father standing in the doorway of his sprawling mansion, his arms extended toward her for a hug.
"Daddy!" she calls back, jogging the last couple steps and launching herself into his embrace. Even after all these years, Harold still wears the same cologne, and she breathes in the comfort of that scent, closing her eyes.
He gives her a moment to savour the hug before he pulls back, grinning widely at her. "You look beautiful, Bear." His eyes dart downward, to her feet. "Those shoes look painful."
She rolls her eyes a little, deadpans, "Beauty is pain."
He watches her face for an extra moment. "So they say." And then his eyes drift upward, over her shoulder, searching behind her. "Did Serena fall asleep on the drive from the airport?" he teases.
She can feel the way her smile freezes. "No. She's not here."
Harold's eyebrows knit together. "She's not here?"
"No." She tries very hard to sound nonchalant about it but her words feel heavy on her tongue. "Just me."
His frown fades away. "Just you?" he asks, reading her mood. "Sweetheart, there is nothing just about you." One arm around her, he guides her inside. "Come say hello to Roman and Handsome."
She swims and tans and laughs with her father and Roman in the kitchen. She takes Handsome for walks over the grounds and calls home to talk to her mother and Dorota and hear about Anastasia. She watches mindless television, French soap operas and re-runs of The Hills.
She shops a lot - impulse buys and dresses in one size too small and jeans that she'll never wear.
And she drinks sometimes, on her own, full glasses of red wine when she's alone in her bed late at night, her thoughts tangled in the stars that shine through her window.
Dan calls on a Thursday morning.
"Look," he says, awkward even with the Atlantic Ocean between them, "I wouldn't be doing this if I wasn't…"
"Desperate?" Blair chirps helpfully, rolling her eyes even though he can't see her.
He sighs. "Is she with you?"
She presses her lips together. "Humphrey. Sometimes you need to know when to quit."
"I just…"
Like a hypocrite, she says, "I don't have all day."
Dan sighs again. "I miss her, okay? And I need to talk to her."
She hangs up on him and flops back on her bed.
"Me too," she tells no one.
Harold finds her in the kitchen. It's late, past midnight; she's wearing the lavender-coloured nightgown she's always loved and the lights are off. There's cheesecake on the counter.
"Bear," he murmurs. He does not turn on the lights as he approaches her and lays a gentle hand on her head. "I can call New York for you."
She knows what New York is code for, and she ducks away from his touch. "No."
He studies her. "More of a suggestion than an offer, Blair. Unless you'd like to meet with someone here. Roman has a friend - "
She lifts her face toward his trustingly, and she must be a masochist because he's left her, too, but he's still her dad and if not him then she doesn't know who. "Daddy - " she begins, and then her throat clogs up with tears.
"You can tell me, honey. What is it?"
For a sleepy, heartbroken moment she allows herself to wonder about what her father's reaction would be if she said I think maybe after two years of loving and hating Chuck Bass, I actually might be gay, or at least terribly in love with the one person who knows me better than anybody. The thought almost makes her smile. He'd probably be happy. Maybe he'd even finance a chateau for the two of them (and Handsome, of course).
"Blair?"
She snaps out of it with a shake of her head, letting her hair fall into her face. She smiles at him and reaches over to open a nearby drawer. "Two forks," she announces, nodding toward the cake. "We need two forks."
Blair throws out half of her underwear while she's there, including some of her favourite La Perla pieces. It might be petty but it's also good catharsis, and she needs to get rid of all of the things that remind her of Serena's smoky eyes and smoky mouth.
When Roman sees her marching through the halls with a pile of tangled lingerie in her arms he raises his eyebrows but he doesn't comment; he holds a door open for her instead.
She gets homesick in August.
She lies out in the backyard, sprawled out on her stomach on top of a blanket that's laid out over the freshly-cut grass. Handsome scampers around her, barking at butterflies, his pink tongue hanging out while he bounds around.
"Don't you ever stay still?" she asks him fondly, shaking her head. She props her chin on her folded arms and sighs.
A part of her kind of misses the Hamptons, friends and galas and cocktails.
And, yes, she misses summers how they used to be with Serena - skinny-dipping late at night, daring each other to tan topless on the beach, their lipstick prints overlapping on the rims of their shared glasses of champagne.
Handsome head-butts her neck and slobbers all over her cheek, and she can do nothing more but glare half-heartedly at him even as she reaches out to scratch behind his ear.
"You're hopeless," she tells him on an exhale. "Like me."
Roman sets her up and Blair fights with her father about it, pulls him into the kitchen to stomp her foot and pout and glare, fully aware that Roman can hear all of her protests.
"He's a nice boy, sweetheart," Harold says evenly, gently disentangling himself from her grip.
"I can find my own nice boys," she seethes. "This isn't nineteen-twenty-two. I'm not exactly an old maid yet."
His mouth quirks - he's trying not to laugh at her, she can tell. "I know that, Bear. Roman and I have just noticed - "
"Don't notice!" she snaps. "I've been…I've been fine this summer." And that should be enough.
Her father's eyes darken the exact same way her own when she's especially serious. "Blair," he says firmly. "I'm happy that you're healthy, but eating three meals a day and keeping them down does not automatically make you fine."
She glares, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at a point on the wall just behind his head.
"You seem lonely."
Blair opens her mouth to protest, but her father speaks over her.
"You've been alone all summer. You are lonely, don't tell me otherwise."
Tears spring to her eyes. "Daddy."
"Blair-Bear," he retorts, finally giving into the temptation to smile. "Pierre really is a lovely boy."
So she goes on a date.
Pierre is a lovely boy, by all universal standards. He opens doors for her and walks on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street and pulls out her chair for her when they sit down to dinner. He's twenty-three and he attends La Sorbonne; he carries their conversation intelligently and effortlessly. He compliments her French and tells her that she has beautiful eyes. He orders dessert for them both and finishes hers automatically when she demurs about being full after only two bites.
Something about him makes her feel nostalgic. In another lifetime, or maybe at another time or in a place other than this one, she might have adored him.
As things stand now, she makes an attempt at holding up her end of their conversation and smiling at him at least once every fifteen minutes.
They go for a walk after dinner.
The air is heavy with humidity; she can't quite breathe when he touches her, his palm cupping her cheek affectionately. He lingers there for so long, his eyes searching hers, that she wonders if he's going to ask permission to kiss her.
Instead, he drops his hand and shoves both hands into his pockets, a boyish gesture that startles her.
"You love someone," he says.
Blair blinks. "Excuse me?"
He repeats it in English, as if that will guarantee that she understands, "There's someone else, isn't there? Someone Roman and your father don't know about. You love someone."
She stares at his shoes - sensible, classy loafers. "Everyone loves someone," she murmurs.
Pierre tilts his head. In her peripheral vision, she can see the knowing twinkle in his eyes. "Not as madly as you do, chérie."
She lifts her chin, feeling a little defiant. He doesn't know a thing about her. "It's just…it's been a long year."
He winks, ever-charming, not believing a word she's said. "I won't tell."
Her father and Roman wait up with her.
Blair puts on the show she knows they're awaiting. She smiles brightly, hoping that she looks convincingly starry-eyed. "He is so…" she gushes, trailing off on a dreamy note.
They beam back at her and she keeps on smiling.
For two weeks, Pierre is her excuse.
They do things together: playing tennis and eating lunch and splashing around in the pool on her property. They eat dinner with her father(s) a couple times, and they push their chairs together while Pierre smiles sweetly at her and she giggles at imaginary jokes.
He doesn't seem to mind. There is a girl, he finally tells her bashfully and after much prodding, at his university, and they're still…unfinished.
"Do you know how that is?" he asks her, his expression wistful.
Blair forces herself to think of a diamond ring clattering against the tiled floor of a hospital lobby instead of the scent of another girl's skin on her sheets. She hooks her arm through Pierre's as they walk.
"I do," she says.
It's not until he takes her to Paris for the weekend - Roman grins and her father frowns like he's not entirely sure what to think about that idea - and they spend only about two of the forty-eight hours of their trip in the same hotel room that she realizes.
He's in the middle of asking her if she wants to go to the Eiffel Tower when reality sinks in: he's her beard.
Blair is mildly (hopelessly), possibly (probably) in love with the one girl whom she should know better than to fall in love with, and this French boy, with his flawless manners and blue blood…he's her beard.
"Pierre and I broke up," she announces to her father and Roman while they're eating dinner.
Roman stares at her face, stricken. Harold's eyes fall to the piece of pie that Blair is nudging with the tines of her fork.
"I'm so sorry," Roman offers. He fills up her wine glass again.
"I'm fine," she says brightly, waving away his apology. "It wasn't meant to be or anything."
They exchange a glance. She takes a big bite.
"Do you miss Chuck, ma petite?" Roman asks carefully, his sentiment only halfway conveyed; she can hear because it's okay if you do as loudly as if he'd said it.
She sets down her fork. "No."
Harold studies her for a moment. "What happened with Serena?" he finally asks.
Blair bites the inside of her lip until she can taste blood. "People fall out of love," she says, and then hurries to add, "And friendship. They fall out of friendship."
"You two had a fight," he guesses, his words slow, still a bit uncertain.
"No, Daddy." She extends her wine glass toward Roman for another refill.
The two of them have had everything but.
She loves her father, and she might love Roman a bit too, but after nearly a month with them her tolerance for their love of British pop music is starting to wane.
No matter how much she loves them, the Natasha Bedingfield lyrics are starting to grate her nerves.
I've got a pocket, got a pocketful of sunshine, I've got a love and I know that it's all mine.
It feels a little like a mockery.
She takes Handsome for a walk in the village closest to her home-away-from-home, and she finds herself lingering outside of the tiny stone church for too long, long enough for Handsome to tire of running circles around her and to sit next to her feet instead, clearly unimpressed with her lack of movement.
"Come on, boy," she says softly. "Let's go in for just a second."
The inside of the church is homey, colourful stained-glass windows and well-worn wooden pews. She takes a seat toward the middle, feeling the way the silence seems to echo around her, full of confessed sins.
"So," she says, glancing at the ceiling very briefly. "I kind of need advice."
Quiet.
"Yeah," she whispers, hands knotted together in her lap. "I guess you don't work that way."
She passes Handsome off to her towncar's driver and goes into a corner store. She buys every single magazine and newspaper and tabloid rag they have in stock.
At home, she lies across her bed and flips studiously through every single page, searching for the telltale flash of blonde hair and a coy smile over the edge of a martini glass.
No luck.
She presses her fingertips into the crease of the cheap magazine she's reading and remembers, why would you leave without saying goodbye? Those stupid floppy-rimmed hats that Serena likes to wear, tears stinging her eyes and her heart aching in her chest, the worry that she was loving more than she was being loved.
My world is falling apart. And you're the only one who would understand.
She curls up in bed for the rest of the day, toying with the idea of sending a text message to the number that has already been first on her speed-dial.
Before she can officially make up her mind, she drifts off to sleep.
Prior to her return to Manhattan, her father and Roman sit her down and tell her that they're planning on adopting.
She blinks at them, a bit startled. She'd thought this was her going-away brunch, but it looks instead like a welcoming party for a sibling she'd never really expected to have.
"Oh," she says. A pause, and then, "Congratulations."
"And congratulations to you, Blair," Roman says with a peaceful smile. "You'll be a big sister."
"Yes. Wow."
Harold reaches across the table to take her hand. "We'd like it if you'd name the baby."
Something inside of her melts and she offers him a tentative smile. "I'd like that, too."
On her second-last day with them, feeling magnanimous, she joins Roman for some patio yoga.
It's a lovely idea in theory, but with the sun beating down on her head the edges of her vision start to blur, and all yoga reminds her of is Serena sitting on her bed amongst discarded dresses, her smiles shy and tentative and hopeful, summer plans, dream journals and yoga and finding love.
She mutters excuses about heatstroke and goes inside to pack.
Blair Waldorf touches back down on New York soil at 5:57 in the evening, one-half lighter (missing a tall blonde companion) but somehow feeling heavier.
No one is there to meet her when she arrives.
She isn't surprised.
Really. She isn't.
tbc.