104. you never did give a damn thing, honey
Title | you never did give a damn thing, honey
Chapter | 1/1
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena. Dan/Serena, Dan/Blair, Serena/Blair, Chuck/Blair, Nate/Serena, Nate/Blair.
Summary | All she knows is that she was the one who was supposed to cheat.
Notes | I have no excuses for this. I don't even know. This is possibly part of a bigger 'verse, we'll see what happens, lol.
And you come away with a great little story
of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you.
- Taylor Swift, "Cold As You"
Here is her truth: Blair is the one she punishes for his transgressions.
It's silly, but that's the way it always is with girls, isn't it - especially two girls who love each other as fiercely as they do, as they did. She remembers being sixteen, remembers it distinctly, burning glares across crowded rooms and you had sex with my boyfriend in the chilliest voice she's ever heard from her best friend.
And she remembers (masochistically) the boy who picked up her pieces without ever even acknowledging that she was broken.
Her first instinct isn't one she's proud of.
She goes to that boy, the boy in the part of her heart that is still fifteen years old, a boy who's a man now with a girlfriend and a job and a life that he deserves.
It isn't fair of her, and she knows that from the way his eyes widen when he looks at her and the way their kisses taste like the salt of her tears.
Fair is fair; he doesn't protest once so it has to be his fault, too, at least a bit. But he is gentle with her, hands tangled in her hair and reverent kisses against her skin, laying her down on his bed, his sheets and his pillows, like he believes she belongs there.
All she knows is that she was the one who was supposed to cheat.
She goes to Chuck with mascara staining her cheeks.
He pours her a drink.
She empties her glass in one smooth, long swallow, arches an eyebrow at him and waits.
"Sometimes," he says, "I think you'll never grow up."
"Only sometimes?"
She shivers when they kiss. He calls her a cab and sends her home - to her husband.
Blair actually has the audacity to hug her, this quick little embrace during which their cheeks press together.
Then again, she was the one who had the gall to come back, all those years ago.
It's funny how everything still feels like high school.
They go shopping. Blair pays for coffee and Serena thinks she tastes guilt.
He writes a lot after he fucks her best friend.
Notebook after notebook filled with every bit of inspiration he got from his new muse. He takes them with him when he leaves - she's never alone with those notebooks and she thinks that says it all.
She thinks about being sixteen, of her first tastes of love where the only barrier was some sort of stupid class division, when two different worlds could be conquered, could be merged. She remembers a yellow dress and his arms holding her, keeping her safe, and the way he'd looked at her, like he'd loved her.
Ironically enough - it was Blair who once warned her that artistic men are fickle.
(He proposed without a ring.
She didn't think before she said yes.)
Blair is laughing, tucking her hair out of her face with perfectly manicured fingers, relating her latest Chuck Bass drama.
"Maybe," Serena says softly, "you can meet your true love in high school after all."
Blair doesn't even flinch. "Oh, sweetie, Chuck's not my true love."
There is a pause, a pause just long enough to be awkward, and then she adds: "You and Dan are different, S."
Serena thinks about the truth in that as she gnaws at her fingernails, a habit her mother always said was uncouth. "We really are," she says softly.
With those gentle, perfect fingers, Blair tucks Serena's hair out of her face. "Are you okay? You're so quiet today."
Like they're a decade younger, Serena decides to test her. "Dan's been…off, lately," she says, her eyes fixed firmly on Blair's face.
Blair cuddles her - they're on her bed, the same satiny sheets she's had her whole life, and it is so easy for Blair's fingers to slip beneath Serena's shirt, pressing into her skin a little harder than necessary.
"B," she murmurs, her hair falling into her face.
"Relationships have their ups and downs, Serena. You and I have definitely had ours."
She thinks of Nate and the sunset and the way she'd felt like she could float away; she feels Blair's breath against her neck, a quick press of lips to skin.
She surrenders to that feeling, muttering, "I think we're even now."
After she sleeps with Nate he holds her, tangled up in his sheets.
"Tell me," he says. His eyes are sad, like she's broken his heart one thousand times.
She probably has. She tugs away from him and searches for her clothes, steals a shirt and a kiss.
One thousand and one.
They aren't even careful.
Serena sits in her dark room, waiting for prints to dry. She doesn't even need Gossip Girl to tell her what the people in her life are doing - she knows, when they disappear on her at the same time.
She lost Blair once. In a crowd at tennis camp for about two minutes. She cried.
She lost her husband two months ago and she hasn't cried about that yet.
A psychologist might be able to tell her exactly what that means, but she'd rather just pretend it away.
"Are you kidding me?"
Chuck shows up drunk some time past three o'clock in the morning, when the hours aren't even worth counting anymore. Serena stifles her giggles against her knuckles and tugs him into the kitchen, flicking on a solitary light and shushing her stepbrother - her husband's asleep upstairs.
"Humphrey." His forehead rests against the table. "Are you kidding me?"
Serena wraps her robe tighter around herself, pours him a glass of water and watches him with unsympathetic eyes. "I always knew B could do better than you."
"You know this is your fault." Chuck's words are slurred. "For meeting him in the first place."
She flinches at that but she pretends she doesn't.
"She would have killed you," he continues. "If you'd ever fucked me - " Something changes in his eyes, like an idea.
But Serena ignores that too. "No, she wouldn't have. She would have done exactly what I'm doing."
"And what's that? Acting like none of it happened?"
"B's specialty." She rubs at her eyes. "I play her game, Chuck, I always have. And I broke the rules first."
He's silent for a while, for too long. "You love her."
She glares. "You love her."
Chuck shakes his head lazily. "I don't love," he lies.
She pushes away from the table in a sudden burst of anger. "Screw you," she hisses.
"Please do," he smarms back, but there is a thread of honest-to-god begging in his voice.
When he kisses her it hurts, the edge of the countertop digging into the small of her back, his fingers tight over her hips. She whimpers into his mouth, struggles against him, says, "I'll yell. He'll wake up."
"So let him wake up," he growls.
She gives him a firm shove away - she's always been able to handle Chuck, maybe even more than Blair ever learned to. "No."
Not yet.
She's clearing dishes from the table one night - they don't have maids, not even one, he'd never want that - when he slips an arm around her waist and tugs her into his lap. She stops breathing, watching him guardedly as he takes her hand in his free one and presses a gentle kiss to her palm.
"What's wrong?" he asks, more tenderness in his voice than she'll allow him anymore.
"Nothing, baby," she breathes, throwing him a smile that slips too quickly.
Dan looks as sad as she feels. "You have secrets," he says in that quiet voice she associates with his writing, the one he used to read her poems with. "It's strange, how I forget that, I…I thought I knew everything about you before we even met."
"Maybe…" All of her resolve melts away. "Maybe I shouldn't have married you."
He looks shocked, and ready to say something, but she touches his lips with her fingertips and says, soft and shaky, "Can you just…"
And he kisses her before she even has to ask.
And she closes her eyes.
And it feels like home.
Blair looks wary when Serena slides closer to her in their limo, hooks an arm through hers and lays her blonde head against her shoulder.
"S?" she asks.
"Talk to me, B. I miss you."
"You miss me?" She tilts her head, frown softening into a smile. "I'm here all the time."
Serena doesn't move. "Tell me what you're thinking about."
There's that pause again, the one that tiptoes on the line between comfortable silence and something horribly awkward, and then Blair says, laughter tucked into her words, "I was thinking today that I should have stuck with my plan to marry Nate. It would have been easier."
Serena doesn't want to hear anymore, especially not about that, so she lifts her head and gives Blair the lightest of kisses. The brunette looks a little triumphant afterward, like that was her plan all along.
She rips Blair's blouse when she gets tired of the delicate little buttons, feels angry and hurt and needy as she pushes Blair's skirt up her thighs, teasing but never giving.
"S - "
She presses her mouth against Blair's collarbone and bites down lightly, wants to burst blood vessels, wants to leave a mark, wants to claim someone (Blair) as hers and only hers.
"Serena." Blair snaps it, her nails digging into Serena's arms. "Chuck told me."
"Hmm?"
"Chuck told me," she says with more emphasis, pulling away. She looks scared and defiant all at once, hurt in the same way Serena is. "He told me that…you told him. That…you know."
Serena licks her lips, looks at Blair from underneath lowered lashes. "Told you what?" she asks flatly.
"I hate you," she tells Chuck.
He opens his arms in an all-encompassing gesture. "Join the club."
"Shut up, man," Nate hisses edgily, his glass of scotch still full, untouched. He touches Serena's arm, slides his hand from her elbow toward her hand. "Hey," he murmurs. "Do you want to just…get out of here?"
Chuck laughs without mirth. "That trick only works if you're Baizen. Save your breath, Nathaniel."
She doesn't even bother looking at him. "Natie," she sighs. "I - "
He hugs her, crushes his face into her hair, against her neck, clings to her like a lifeline.
He's always known how to understand the things she couldn't (can't) say.
"I'm sorry." There are tears sparkling in Blair's eyes and Serena feels them sting her own. "S, I - "
She shrugs. "I know."
Blair looks heartbroken. "What now?"
They're holding hands, her wedding rings pressing into Blair's skin.
"Chuck asked me to marry him."
Serena snorts. "Do you want to say yes?"
A deep breath. "Do…do you want me to say yes?"
Serena bites her lip until she tastes blood.
She dreams about dreams, about how when she was younger she wanted to travel the world, wanted to fall in love, wanted to be the kind of mother she'd wanted but had not had.
She never - never - wanted to get married. Not until he asked her.
Blair tells him. It's either betrayal or salvation - it doesn't matter.
She tells him, so Dan knows that she knows. Everyone knows.
He looks so sad, his face like that of a boy in an elevator facing a love that can't be salvaged: I still…
"Serena," he murmurs.
There are so many things she could say. She could say, I slept with Nate and they could fight, she could say how could you? and they could cry, she could say, I wasn't supposed to turn into my mom. She could ask him what do you want? and they could give up on something she was once so sure would last forever.
Instead, she says, "I love you."
The pen is mightier than the sword; words are stronger than physical blows.
If he taught her anything, it's that the truth hurts the most when you say it out loud.
fin
Chapter | 1/1
Rating | pg-13
Characters | Serena. Dan/Serena, Dan/Blair, Serena/Blair, Chuck/Blair, Nate/Serena, Nate/Blair.
Summary | All she knows is that she was the one who was supposed to cheat.
Notes | I have no excuses for this. I don't even know. This is possibly part of a bigger 'verse, we'll see what happens, lol.
And you come away with a great little story
of a mess of a dreamer with the nerve to adore you.
- Taylor Swift, "Cold As You"
Here is her truth: Blair is the one she punishes for his transgressions.
It's silly, but that's the way it always is with girls, isn't it - especially two girls who love each other as fiercely as they do, as they did. She remembers being sixteen, remembers it distinctly, burning glares across crowded rooms and you had sex with my boyfriend in the chilliest voice she's ever heard from her best friend.
And she remembers (masochistically) the boy who picked up her pieces without ever even acknowledging that she was broken.
Her first instinct isn't one she's proud of.
She goes to that boy, the boy in the part of her heart that is still fifteen years old, a boy who's a man now with a girlfriend and a job and a life that he deserves.
It isn't fair of her, and she knows that from the way his eyes widen when he looks at her and the way their kisses taste like the salt of her tears.
Fair is fair; he doesn't protest once so it has to be his fault, too, at least a bit. But he is gentle with her, hands tangled in her hair and reverent kisses against her skin, laying her down on his bed, his sheets and his pillows, like he believes she belongs there.
All she knows is that she was the one who was supposed to cheat.
She goes to Chuck with mascara staining her cheeks.
He pours her a drink.
She empties her glass in one smooth, long swallow, arches an eyebrow at him and waits.
"Sometimes," he says, "I think you'll never grow up."
"Only sometimes?"
She shivers when they kiss. He calls her a cab and sends her home - to her husband.
Blair actually has the audacity to hug her, this quick little embrace during which their cheeks press together.
Then again, she was the one who had the gall to come back, all those years ago.
It's funny how everything still feels like high school.
They go shopping. Blair pays for coffee and Serena thinks she tastes guilt.
He writes a lot after he fucks her best friend.
Notebook after notebook filled with every bit of inspiration he got from his new muse. He takes them with him when he leaves - she's never alone with those notebooks and she thinks that says it all.
She thinks about being sixteen, of her first tastes of love where the only barrier was some sort of stupid class division, when two different worlds could be conquered, could be merged. She remembers a yellow dress and his arms holding her, keeping her safe, and the way he'd looked at her, like he'd loved her.
Ironically enough - it was Blair who once warned her that artistic men are fickle.
(He proposed without a ring.
She didn't think before she said yes.)
Blair is laughing, tucking her hair out of her face with perfectly manicured fingers, relating her latest Chuck Bass drama.
"Maybe," Serena says softly, "you can meet your true love in high school after all."
Blair doesn't even flinch. "Oh, sweetie, Chuck's not my true love."
There is a pause, a pause just long enough to be awkward, and then she adds: "You and Dan are different, S."
Serena thinks about the truth in that as she gnaws at her fingernails, a habit her mother always said was uncouth. "We really are," she says softly.
With those gentle, perfect fingers, Blair tucks Serena's hair out of her face. "Are you okay? You're so quiet today."
Like they're a decade younger, Serena decides to test her. "Dan's been…off, lately," she says, her eyes fixed firmly on Blair's face.
Blair cuddles her - they're on her bed, the same satiny sheets she's had her whole life, and it is so easy for Blair's fingers to slip beneath Serena's shirt, pressing into her skin a little harder than necessary.
"B," she murmurs, her hair falling into her face.
"Relationships have their ups and downs, Serena. You and I have definitely had ours."
She thinks of Nate and the sunset and the way she'd felt like she could float away; she feels Blair's breath against her neck, a quick press of lips to skin.
She surrenders to that feeling, muttering, "I think we're even now."
After she sleeps with Nate he holds her, tangled up in his sheets.
"Tell me," he says. His eyes are sad, like she's broken his heart one thousand times.
She probably has. She tugs away from him and searches for her clothes, steals a shirt and a kiss.
One thousand and one.
They aren't even careful.
Serena sits in her dark room, waiting for prints to dry. She doesn't even need Gossip Girl to tell her what the people in her life are doing - she knows, when they disappear on her at the same time.
She lost Blair once. In a crowd at tennis camp for about two minutes. She cried.
She lost her husband two months ago and she hasn't cried about that yet.
A psychologist might be able to tell her exactly what that means, but she'd rather just pretend it away.
"Are you kidding me?"
Chuck shows up drunk some time past three o'clock in the morning, when the hours aren't even worth counting anymore. Serena stifles her giggles against her knuckles and tugs him into the kitchen, flicking on a solitary light and shushing her stepbrother - her husband's asleep upstairs.
"Humphrey." His forehead rests against the table. "Are you kidding me?"
Serena wraps her robe tighter around herself, pours him a glass of water and watches him with unsympathetic eyes. "I always knew B could do better than you."
"You know this is your fault." Chuck's words are slurred. "For meeting him in the first place."
She flinches at that but she pretends she doesn't.
"She would have killed you," he continues. "If you'd ever fucked me - " Something changes in his eyes, like an idea.
But Serena ignores that too. "No, she wouldn't have. She would have done exactly what I'm doing."
"And what's that? Acting like none of it happened?"
"B's specialty." She rubs at her eyes. "I play her game, Chuck, I always have. And I broke the rules first."
He's silent for a while, for too long. "You love her."
She glares. "You love her."
Chuck shakes his head lazily. "I don't love," he lies.
She pushes away from the table in a sudden burst of anger. "Screw you," she hisses.
"Please do," he smarms back, but there is a thread of honest-to-god begging in his voice.
When he kisses her it hurts, the edge of the countertop digging into the small of her back, his fingers tight over her hips. She whimpers into his mouth, struggles against him, says, "I'll yell. He'll wake up."
"So let him wake up," he growls.
She gives him a firm shove away - she's always been able to handle Chuck, maybe even more than Blair ever learned to. "No."
Not yet.
She's clearing dishes from the table one night - they don't have maids, not even one, he'd never want that - when he slips an arm around her waist and tugs her into his lap. She stops breathing, watching him guardedly as he takes her hand in his free one and presses a gentle kiss to her palm.
"What's wrong?" he asks, more tenderness in his voice than she'll allow him anymore.
"Nothing, baby," she breathes, throwing him a smile that slips too quickly.
Dan looks as sad as she feels. "You have secrets," he says in that quiet voice she associates with his writing, the one he used to read her poems with. "It's strange, how I forget that, I…I thought I knew everything about you before we even met."
"Maybe…" All of her resolve melts away. "Maybe I shouldn't have married you."
He looks shocked, and ready to say something, but she touches his lips with her fingertips and says, soft and shaky, "Can you just…"
And he kisses her before she even has to ask.
And she closes her eyes.
And it feels like home.
Blair looks wary when Serena slides closer to her in their limo, hooks an arm through hers and lays her blonde head against her shoulder.
"S?" she asks.
"Talk to me, B. I miss you."
"You miss me?" She tilts her head, frown softening into a smile. "I'm here all the time."
Serena doesn't move. "Tell me what you're thinking about."
There's that pause again, the one that tiptoes on the line between comfortable silence and something horribly awkward, and then Blair says, laughter tucked into her words, "I was thinking today that I should have stuck with my plan to marry Nate. It would have been easier."
Serena doesn't want to hear anymore, especially not about that, so she lifts her head and gives Blair the lightest of kisses. The brunette looks a little triumphant afterward, like that was her plan all along.
She rips Blair's blouse when she gets tired of the delicate little buttons, feels angry and hurt and needy as she pushes Blair's skirt up her thighs, teasing but never giving.
"S - "
She presses her mouth against Blair's collarbone and bites down lightly, wants to burst blood vessels, wants to leave a mark, wants to claim someone (Blair) as hers and only hers.
"Serena." Blair snaps it, her nails digging into Serena's arms. "Chuck told me."
"Hmm?"
"Chuck told me," she says with more emphasis, pulling away. She looks scared and defiant all at once, hurt in the same way Serena is. "He told me that…you told him. That…you know."
Serena licks her lips, looks at Blair from underneath lowered lashes. "Told you what?" she asks flatly.
"I hate you," she tells Chuck.
He opens his arms in an all-encompassing gesture. "Join the club."
"Shut up, man," Nate hisses edgily, his glass of scotch still full, untouched. He touches Serena's arm, slides his hand from her elbow toward her hand. "Hey," he murmurs. "Do you want to just…get out of here?"
Chuck laughs without mirth. "That trick only works if you're Baizen. Save your breath, Nathaniel."
She doesn't even bother looking at him. "Natie," she sighs. "I - "
He hugs her, crushes his face into her hair, against her neck, clings to her like a lifeline.
He's always known how to understand the things she couldn't (can't) say.
"I'm sorry." There are tears sparkling in Blair's eyes and Serena feels them sting her own. "S, I - "
She shrugs. "I know."
Blair looks heartbroken. "What now?"
They're holding hands, her wedding rings pressing into Blair's skin.
"Chuck asked me to marry him."
Serena snorts. "Do you want to say yes?"
A deep breath. "Do…do you want me to say yes?"
Serena bites her lip until she tastes blood.
She dreams about dreams, about how when she was younger she wanted to travel the world, wanted to fall in love, wanted to be the kind of mother she'd wanted but had not had.
She never - never - wanted to get married. Not until he asked her.
Blair tells him. It's either betrayal or salvation - it doesn't matter.
She tells him, so Dan knows that she knows. Everyone knows.
He looks so sad, his face like that of a boy in an elevator facing a love that can't be salvaged: I still…
"Serena," he murmurs.
There are so many things she could say. She could say, I slept with Nate and they could fight, she could say how could you? and they could cry, she could say, I wasn't supposed to turn into my mom. She could ask him what do you want? and they could give up on something she was once so sure would last forever.
Instead, she says, "I love you."
The pen is mightier than the sword; words are stronger than physical blows.
If he taught her anything, it's that the truth hurts the most when you say it out loud.
fin